Africa

The ancient city of Napata, located in what is now northern Sudan, stood for centuries as a powerful urban and cultural center of the Kingdom of Kush. A new study explains how the city owed its enduring success to the stability of the Nile River, which deposited millennia of fertile clay and built up a broad floodplain. This combination of a stable river and a landscape suited for agriculture helped Napata thrive as a major hub of one of Africa’s earliest civilizations. Researchers from the University of Michigan, working alongside Sudanese archaeologists, examined the river valley beneath the site to determine the geological processes that led to the city's successful settlement. Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National