In 1500 B.C., Egypt’s New Kingdom and its neighbors were thriving. Then, just a few hundred years later, it all came crashing down. Egypt, the Hittite Empire, and Greece would eventually be surpassed by the Roman Empire. Those civilizations—and Egypt especially—would never regain their past glory.
There are a wide number of theories about what lead to the collapse of Middle Eastern civilization more than 3,000 years ago, from wars to famine and disease. Now, a new analysis of pollen grains and radiocarbon dating suggests that climate change played a major role. Pollen, which can survive in tact for millennia, is often used to reconstruct past climates. Different plants produce pollen with a unique signature, and the relative abundance of various grains can tell scientists what types of plants were flourishing when the pollen was buried. Pollen from tropical plants, for example, will appear in greater abundance in sediment cores when the climate is warm and wet.
