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The floodwaters of the Nile once deposited a new layer of nutrient-rich mud in the river delta each year. By 5000 B.C.E., Egyptians were growing plentiful crops in the delta and had begun building the first settlements of their civilization.
Why Not Earlier?
Because the delta didn't exist until 6000 B.C.E., according to Daniel Stanley, a marine geologist at this Museum.
From 1985 to 1994, Stanley and nearly 50 specialists examined over 4,000 sediment samples from the delta. They used radiocarbon dating to pinpoint when river and desert sand turned to dark mud--a shift that marked the delta's birth.
Going, Going...
The future of the delta won't match its past, say Stanley and members of the Smithsonian's Delta-Global Change Project. Diverted by construction of the High Aswan dam in 1964 and irrigation canals in the delta, life-giving mud no longer reaches the region.
Some 60 million people now depend on depleted delta farmland, and reversing the decline of this critical resource has become one of the most serious challenges they face.
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