It's unclear if residents living in the shadows of the Giza pyramids suffered health effects, but the finding offers a glimpse into how they lived.
The construction of Egypt’s famed Giza pyramid complex, one of the ancient world’s wonders, came with a cost. As laborers worked on the necropolis, they may have been exposed to significant amounts of copper, in what may be the earliest ever example of metal contamination.
In 2019, a team of geochemists from France’s Aix-Marseille Université drilled into the ground in Khufu harbor, a 4,500 year old port—the oldest in known history—near to the site that became home to the pyramids of pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure. The harbor sat alongside a tributary of the Nile River. The scientists then examined the samples using a technique known as plasma-less spectrometry to measure for levels of copper and other metals, such as aluminum, iron, and titanium.
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