Of course they do - they freeze to death.
You are incorrect.
Use of the title of pharaoh for Egyptian kings cannot be traced back further than the New Kingdom, middle of the 18th Dynasty. It continued in use (even foreign rulers such as the Great Kings of Persia used the additional title of “Pharoah of Egypt”) until the deaths of Cleopatra and Caesarion.
It is true that the collapse of the Old Kingdom was in part caused by a prolonged drought between 2200 and 2150 B.C., which did not stop the Nile from flowing but did stop it from flooding, and agriculture depended on the flooding. (The Old Kingdom was the one that built the pyramids.)
I cite cracked.com
Brian,
Thanks for the correction. It’s odd that some writers call the pyramid building period the ‘age of the Pharaohs’. The term must get abused.
I assume that the Nile began to flow much like the Rio Grande does today. There was flow in the sandy bed but it was intermittent. Some water could be diverted for agriculture, but not enough to sustain many large communities. Also, I would assume that there were periodic floods, otherwise the soil would have been completely depleted.
The point is that another altithermal could alter world agriculture for a prolonged period.
Crane
Chris,
Interesting link. They use the term Pharaoh for the Old Kingdom.
Crane
[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor]
Your argument’s not pinin’! Your argument’s passed on! Your argument’s no more! Your argument has ceased to be! Your arument’s expired and gone to meet its maker! Your argument’s a stiff! Bereft of life, your argument rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed the argument’s feet to the perch the arument’s 'd be pushing up the daisies! Your argument’s metabolic processes are now ‘istory! The argument’s off the twig! The argument’s kicked the bucket, the argument’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-ARGUMENT!!
[/QUOTE]
Anyone who can work the Dead Parrot sketch into a thread gets major props for trying. But I think you guys are talking past each other. Crane seems to be talking about the end of theOld Kingdom 2458 BCE, which some have speculated collapsed due to a hundred year or so period of no Nile floods (it’s the Nile floods which makes the region so agriculturally productive…without the floods the region is much less productive and so supports less people). You, on the other hand, seem to be talking about the Ptolemy period, of who Cleopatra VII was the last ruler in 30 BCE. There was a lot of history between those two times (it was over 2400 years after all), including the foundation of the New Kingdom, periods where other nations conquered and ruled Egypt for a time, a period where two pharaohs ruled, civil war, etc etc. The Ptolemy period was actually when Greeks ruled Egypt as a fragment of Alexander’s empire when he bit the dust.
The speculation on the downfall of the Old Kingdom due to drought brought caused the Old Kingdom to collapse (because the Nile didn’t flood for an extended time period) was on the History Channel recently, so I’d take the theory with a grain of salt unless there is more evidence than was presented on the show. Still, it’s not entirely implausible…I know the Nile flooding is key to agriculture in the region, especially back then.
-XT
There is at least some scientific evidence - see post 67 above.
Ah, I missed your earlier post. :smack: Thanks for telling me. The only place I had heard this was on the History Channel, and you have to take their theory type shows with some measure of skepticism.
-XT
Especially when the next show on the History Channel is something like “Revealed: Bigfoot built the Pyramids”. 
Before 1911, the majority of americans still worked on farms except for a few who lived in industrial areas like the Northeast. California was still being settled. The South was in ruins after the Civil War, and still using slaves on plantations before it. Until the 1950’s, the rest of the world saw America as a backwoods, primitive civilization.
A backwoods primitive civilzation that hosted four world’s fairs between 1893 and 1915? :dubious:
[QUOTE=Superhal]
Before 1911, the majority of americans still worked on farms except for a few who lived in industrial areas like the Northeast. California was still being settled. The South was in ruins after the Civil War, and still using slaves on plantations before it. Until the 1950’s, the rest of the world saw America as a backwoods, primitive civilization.
[/QUOTE]
They still see us like that today.
-XT
My only hope is that if this thread somehow survives 2000 years that our descendants still recognize sarcasm …
nm…
Well, are we asking about popular conceptions or scholarly knowledge? These are two very different questions. Our actual scholarly knowledge of the Middle Ages bears little resemblance to the image of it in the popular imagination.
Also, much depends on how our era ends. We could be seen as a lost and lamented golden age, a powerful but thoroughly corrupt and wicked civilization, or a primitive age barely groping its way into space.
What I definitely think will happen is that what they consider the important events of our age will not be what we consider to be the important ones.
I think this is where a lot of people get confused. The popular conception of the 1950s is greatly skewed, for example, and that was recent enough there are still many, many people alive who remember it first-hand. However, since there is a political goal to making the perceptions fuzzy, the propaganda to skew the 1950s continues and finds purchase. People who study the 1950s at a college level (I’m sure they exist) have a much more accurate view and the consistent cultural failure to communicate university-level knowledge outside universities is one of the great failures of every culture I know of.
Therefore, the average person of 3000 will no more distinguish the First and Second World Wars than the average person of today distinguishes the Wars of the Roses and the Glorious Revolution. It will likely take a sea change in educational effectiveness to preserve the names of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Ronald Reagan in the mass consciousness. However, deep in the halls of academia, there will still be people writing essays and monographs back and forth over whether Bush or Gore deserved to win in 2000.
The Age of Stupidity and Self Destruction
This is vacuous: That label can be hung on every age, with equal validity.
No, because it took us only the last 200 years to destroy the natural balance of our ecosystem that was in effect for the past hundreds of thousands of years.
The Earth will survive the humans, no doubt about that, because it has survived worse catastrophes.
But if we are around in 2,000 years, there’s no other way to describe what’s happening now, other than reckless destruction, mostly fueled by religion and political conservatism.