Key details about Egypt’s pyramids ‘contamination’ emerge | World | News

The details surrounding how the pyramids were built and the lives of those who built them have remained shrouded in mystery, but one archaeological breakthrough has revealed brand new information on this.

The discovery of high quantities of copper at Egypt‘s Khugu harbour – the world’s oldest known port dated to 4,500 years old – could reveal key information on how those who built the giant pyramid structures lived and died.

Geochemists from France’s Aix-Marseille Université made the initial discovery in 2019, and the presence of such high quantities of copper would have been vital for producing bronze tools, which workers would have likely used to build the pyramids.

While research has been collected about the ancient royalty and elites of Egypt, little is known about the lives of the general population that lived and worked on the land at the time.

AmU geochemist Alain Véron told Eos: “We’d like to know more about 95 per cent of the people rather than the elite.”

Years after the first discovery, the same team drilled into the ground at the harbour using a technique known as inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) together with carbon dating and measured the presence and age of metals such as titanium, iron, aluminium, copper and arsenic. 

The analysis found levels of copper were “five to six times higher than the natural background”, as revealed in the study published this year in Geology. 

Alain Véron explained that the copper had begun to contaminate the soil as early as 3,265 BC, and contamination reached its peak 750 years later before trailing off around 1,000 BC.

He said: “We found the oldest regional metal contamination ever recorded in the world.”

Véron explained that levels of copper during this period were “5 to 6 times higher than the natural background,” indicating significant local industrial activity.

Such large amounts of copper could have even caused painful deaths for the workers if they were unlucky enough to come into contact with it.

The findings are also crucial to understanding what types of tools were used to build the pyramids. The workers would have likely used arsenic to strengthen the tools and could have been making instruments like blades, chisels and drills.

The new research also suggests that humans occupied the area 200 years earlier than previously thought.

These details are incredibly exciting for scientists, archaeologists, and historians, as they shed light on the historical details of the lives of ordinary Egyptians during such a crucial period in history.

Véron said: “The chemical imprint of human activity remains, and that cannot be erased.”