Scientists believe they may have solved the mystery of how 31 pyramids, including the world-famous Giza complex, were built in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago.
A research team from the University of North Carolina Wilmington has discovered that the pyramids are likely to have been built along a long-lost, ancient branch of the River Nile – which is now hidden under desert and farmland.
For many years, archaeologists have thought that ancient Egyptians must have used a nearby waterway to transport materials such as the stone blocks needed to build the pyramids on the river.
But up until now, “nobody was certain of the location, the shape, the size or proximity of this mega waterway to the actual pyramids site”, according to one of the study’s authors, Prof Eman Ghoneim.
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In a cross-continental effort, the group of researchers used radar satellite imagery, historical maps, geophysical surveys, and sediment coring (a technique used by archaeologists to recover evidence from samples) to map the river branch – which they believe was buried by a major drought and sandstorms thousands of years ago.
The team were able to “penetrate the sand surface and produce images of hidden features” by using the radar technology, the study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, said.
Among those features were “buried rivers and ancient structures” running at the foothills of where the “vast majority of the Ancient Egyptian pyramids lie,” Prof Ghoneim said.
