GLOBAL warming is one of the greatest threats to present day civilisation but work by a team of Scots scientists suggests the ancient Egyptians may have been earlier victims of climate change. Insight into this radical climate change at the heart of Africa has important implications for trying to understand the past, present and future climate. The flow of water would have slowed to a trickle, causing a devastating famine that lasted for 200 years, destroying the Old Kingdom and its people., leaving only the pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza as their legacy..