The BEAST-project: Modelling Environmental Changes in Ancient Egypt

Egypt witnessed dramatic climatic changes during the Holocene (9700bc-present). The Green Sahara phase - where lush savannahs covered large parts of what is now desert - ended gradually 5000 years ago, around the same time that Egypt was unified into a single state.

The Leverhulme-funded BEAST-project (‘Biodiversity in Egyptian Archaeology during Societal Transitions’) investigates climate-biodiversity-society interactions.

Combining models of historical climate change with our knowledge of the ecological requirements of different wild species allows us to recreate expected wildlife distributions at different times in the past. 

Some species disappear before we would have expected, pointing to human activities as a likely contributor to their demise.

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