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Volcanic Eruptions Linked to the Downfall of the Last Ancient Egyptian Dynasty

posted by martyb on Friday October 20 2017, @09:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-thought-it-was-an-asp dept.

takyon writes:

Climate change caused by volcanic eruptions has been linked to the downfall of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire in 30 BC:

A series of volcanic eruptions may have helped bring about the downfall of the last Egyptian dynasty 2,000 years ago.

By suppressing the monsoons that swelled the Nile River each summer, triggering flooding that supported the region's agriculture, the eruptions probably helped usher in an era of periodic revolts [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00957-y] [DX], researchers report online October 17 in Nature Communications. That upheaval ultimately doomed the dynasty that ruled Egypt's Ptolemaic Kingdom for nearly 300 years until the death of Cleopatra.

[...] Manning and colleagues pored over historical texts from Ptolemaic Egypt, comparing periods of unrest with the volcanic record in the ice cores. Eruptions coincided with the onset of many recorded revolts. Political instability, famine and drought may have come to a head around 44 B.C., when Italy's Mount Etna erupted explosively. The Ptolemaic dynasty soon came to a close in 30 B.C. with Cleopatra's suicide.

Also at Live Science and The Washington Post (archive).

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday October 20 2017, @11:06PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday October 20 2017, @11:06PM (#585465) Journal

    The Ptolemaic dynasty /ˌtɒləˈmeɪ.ɪk/ (Ancient Greek: Πτολεμαῖοι, Ptolemaioi), sometimes also known as the Lagids /ˈlædʒɪdz/ or Lagidae /ˈlædʒɪˌdiː/ (Ancient Greek: Λαγίδαι, Lagidai, after Lagus, Ptolemy I's father), was a Macedonian Greek[1][2][3][4][5] royal family, which ruled the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt during the Hellenistic period. Their rule lasted for 275 years, from 305 to 30 BC.[6] They were the last dynasty of ancient Egypt.

    Take it up with Wikipedia.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @11:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @11:47PM (#585480)

    Their article on Ptolemy calls him "Greco-Roman."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_many_Wikipedians_does_it_take_to_change_a_lightbulb%3F [wikipedia.org]