Kerma, in present-day northern Sudan, was the first Bronze Age kingdom in Africa outside Egypt. A catastrophic 30 year drought 4,200 years ago, which produced low Nile floods, created chaos downstream in Egypt’s old kingdom for at least a century, and archaeological evidence argues that other civilizations in the Near East and Mesopotamia were also severely hit by this drought. Why did Kerma continue to flourish? Geomorphologists and dating specialists recently have analyzed three ancient river channels where the Nile once flowed and have proven that its floods weren’t too low or too high to sustain life between 2,500 BC and 1,500 BC, when Kerma thrived and was a major rival to its more famous neighbor downstream. Their studies also show that the thousand year civilization came to end when the Nile’s flood levels were not high enough and a major channel system dried out – though an invasion by resurgent Egyptians was the final cause of Kerma’s demise. Travel to Sudan with Far Horizons!
