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New research published in Nature Geoscience suggests that a sudden major shift in the course of the Nile, 4,000 years ago, created a greatly enlarged area of fertile land. The team from Sweden’s Uppsala University and the University of Southampton in the UK drilled 81 boreholes across the Nile Valley near Luxor, analysed the cores, and dated the sediments. The results reveal a reduction in the volume of water due to climatic aridification, which caused larger amounts of sediment to be deposited, forming an expanded and stable floodplain. This expanded the area available for agriculture, contributing to the prosperity of ancient Egypt. Over time, the Nile evolved from a braided system (a network of small channels) into a series of more stable channels due to climatic shifts and human impact, eventually becoming around 2,000 years ago the single-channel we see today.
Text: Sarah Griffiths
