Such work is part of a new body of research emerging from collaborations between experts in fields like genetics or climatology and historians who previously focused more on written records and archaeology. Evidence of past climate change comes from the geologic record of ancient environments and glaciers, fossils of plant pollen, isotopes of elements such as carbon and oxygen, tree rings, and fossil distributions. The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers. What one of the greatest civilizations in history tells us about Donald Trump. The Egyptians and the Hittites couldn’t recover, and upstarts from more forgiving climes like the Romans rose to power. But the Ptolemaic Empire was also deeply dependent on crops watered by the summer flooding of the Nile. Virologists and geneticists, for example, are now teaming up with historians to reconstruct genomes of ancient diseases to understand how they drove historical events. They connected all that data with meticulous ancient records of the Nile’s water levels and papyrus records of political upheaval. “We started comparing them, and it was amazing how the revolts were matching up exactly with the eruptions.”. National corporate funding for NOVA is provided by Draper. The drying of the Middle East in 1250 to 1100 B.C. Pollen from tropical plants, for example, will appear in greater abundance in sediment cores when the climate is warm and wet. Although climate change has today become a much bigger and more globalized problem than in the past, ancient peoples did have to contend with local events that severely disrupted or even ended their way of life as they knew it. The issues facing the residents of Al-Max are only a prelude of what may come for Egypt as a result of unmitigated sea-level rise. Sandy. Harvey. Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Additional funding is provided by the NOVA Science Trust. By Thomas Page, for CNN. Last year, one climate expert who had been part of such ice core redating work, Francis Ludlow, happened to be at a dinner at Yale University with Manning, when Manning began rattling off dates of revolts during the Ptolemaic period that historians have never been fully able to explain. Funding for NOVA Next is provided by the Eleanor and Howard Morgan Family Foundation. correlates strongly with the collapse of those civilizations. The recent data on the dangers of climate change reaffirm the early warnings provided by the Climate Institute and others about Egypt’s vulnerability. To obtain the most precise results possible, Professor Finkelstein instructed the Tel Aviv scientists to focus on the period of 3,500 B.C. Photos: Africa's archaeological treasures. Pollen, which can survive in tact for millennia, is often used to reconstruct past climates. In the end, however, it did not save her nor the Ptolemaic Empire. One of the largest volcanic eruptions in the last 2,500 years occurred during the rule of the famed and final Ptolemaic leader Cleopatra. Moreover, its densely populated Nile delta is seriously threatened by sea level rise. In the March-April 1992 Climate Alert, the Climate Institute published a story summarizing several reports on vulnerable countries presented at the Climate Institute-sponsored symposium for UN missions and nongovernmental organizations. A researcher developed a mathematical method that shows climate change likely caused the rise and fall of an ancient civilization. They refused to change their politics and it left them vulnerable once larger forces in nature and in the world came along and pushed them over the edge.”. Those civilizations—and Egypt especially—would never regain their past glory. “The lesson I draw from all of this is how much we need to have humility,” McCormick said. 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