ALEXANDER wasn’t quite so great after all. Sure, he conquered most of the world known to the ancient Greeks, but he didn’t found the Egyptian city of Alexandria – he just rebranded it. It now seems that this part of the Nile has been settled for at least 4500 years, pre-dating Alexander’s arrival by a good two millennia.
Alain Véron from the Paul Cézanne University in Aix-en-Provence, France, and colleagues made the discovery by measuring the variations in lead concentration in a mud core from Alexandria’s ancient harbour. They determined how lead levels had changed over time by carbon-dating seashells found…
