Abstract

Over the past few decades, geologists have become regular contributors to archaeological digs. In Egypt, these explorations have proved a prospecting tool for ancient burials, and a useful insight to the hinterlands of many sites. By tessellation of results from many sites, we start to see a pattern of landscape change, itself driven by climate fluctuations. In the early Holocene, population was spread across the many lakes of the Saharan region but, as these dried out, they migrated into the Nile valley and started a process of ‘niche construction’, through irrigation and agriculture. In the process, humans started to divert and control the natural meandering of the Nile, devising methods to manage the climate-controlled fluctuations of the annual flood. Recent research suggests that, during periods of global warming, rainfall increased again in the Sahara and that the inhabitants returned to the desert, from the valley. Current research aims to inform the climate models by providing detailed analysis of ancient ecosystems.