Alaskan volcano .. How did a natural disaster cause the end of the Pharaonic Kingdom and the establishment of the Roman Empire?

The year 43 BC was, by all accounts, a turbulent and chaotic time for the Mediterranean, as the assassination of Roman Emperor Julius Caesar one year ago caused a power struggle that lasted 17 years and led to the demise of the Roman Republic, and also ended the era of the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled ancient Egypt to replace them The Roman Empire that dominated large areas of the Mediterranean coast.

A series of rare natural events, extremely strange weather, and climatic shocks led to transformations in the course of human history at the time, characterized in 43 and 42 BC by torrential rains and intense and bitter cold that led to the spread of famines, diseases, crop corruption, and massive disturbances, and perhaps a volcanic eruption in American Alaska (which I haven’t discovered yet) why.

In the paper published in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (pnas), researchers say that the ancient and powerful civilizations in which natural shocks played a major role in directing their historical events, and the joint team of scientists and historians - by analyzing the volcanic ash found in the heart of Arctic ice - The disturbances of climate in the Mediterranean were linked to the eruption of Oakmook volcano in Alaska in 43 BC.

These natural events led to the collapse of two kingdoms in the north and south of the Mediterranean, which historians see as lessons that can be compared with the role of the Corona pandemic in shaping contemporary history, as it shows the extent of interdependence between parts of the world even more than two thousand years ago.

Republic in crisis

Many factors contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic, but the Oakmock eruption and the climate change that followed it may have been the straw that broke the back of the Roman Republic and the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, which lived in difficult circumstances that included bad leadership, wars, internal conspiracies and floods, according to the study.

By 44 BC, the ancient Roman Republic was on the verge of collapse after decades of political and economic troubles that in history are called "crises of the Roman Republic" and the weather shock exacerbated the conditions, and during the eruption, the exhausts in the atmosphere prevented the arrival of solar radiation to the surface of the Earth, Which caused a sudden cold weather and a series of climatic repercussions.

Ancient Greek and Roman historians painted a bleak picture of the cold years, and scientists wrote that repeated snowstorms, diseases, and food shortages afflicted land, crops, and people, and famine and disease contributed to the aggravation of the turbulent political situation enough for the collapse of the republic and giving way to subsequent authoritarian rule in the time of the Roman Empire.

Looking at the conditions, the extreme weather caused by the Oakmock eruption may have some influence on historical events, and it is difficult to ascertain the extent of the volcano's direct impact on the fall of the republic, "said McConnell, the academic involved in the study. That was what happened, "and the researchers considered that the two years following the explosion were the coldest in the Northern Hemisphere for 2,500 years.

The history of Rome can be divided into three periods. First there was the establishment when the Roman kings ruled after the overthrow of the tyrant king Lucius Tarquinus from his post in 509 BC and Rome became a republic.

During this Republic period, the star of Rome ascended after the conquest of Italy and the overthrow of the Carthaginians, and the Romans became the dominant force in the ancient world, and as soon as the Republic collapsed as a result of the civil war, the imperial era began. During this latter period Rome was ruled by emperors until it eventually collapsed.

The Egyptian Kingdom

The historical records collected by Roman writers and philosophers point to a lack of food and starvation, and the philosopher Plutarch wrote in 43 BC that the Roman army lived on wild fruits, roots, and bark and "animals were never tasted before".

In the middle south bank, another ancient civilization was coexisting with the effects of volcanoes, including Oakmock, due to changes in the flooding of the Nile.

The study team says that the volcanic eruptions that occurred on the other side of the world may have caused the disruption of the flood on which Egypt relies mainly for irrigation and soil fertilization, which are crucial to the ancient agricultural community in Egypt before the construction of modern agricultural dams, according to a New York Times report. American.

Academic Manning of Yale University said that the entire general rhythm in ancient Egypt was built around responding to floods, and the research team found that floods either weaken or are completely absent during the years following the major volcanic eruptions on Earth.

Dr. Manning and his collaborators then extracted nearly 100 records of papyrus to estimate the size of the floods during the rule of the Ptolemaic Pharaonic dynasty, which lasted from 305 to 30 BC.

Once again, they found that the flooding of the Nile is very weak or disappears at all during the time of the Great Volcanic Eruption, and the cooling of the climate affects the precipitation in Abyssinia as the main sources of the Nile that supply water to the river and flood.

The historical records of the Ptolemaic period revealed that this low flood had great social, economic and political consequences for the ancient Pharaonic society.

The Ptolemies were a family of Macedonian descent who had been displaced to Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and Alexander the Great's commander, Ptolemy I, took over the rule of Egypt.