Rivers

Toby Wilkinson is one of the world’s foremost Egyptologists, and the author of a new history of the Nile, telling the story of Egypt through its great river. He believes the gift of the Nile and its bounty has always made Egyptians feel set apart, and that the river and the geography of the Nile Valley have played a vital role in shaping the Egyptian psyche and moulding its civilisation. Toby’s most recent book is The Nile: Downriver through Egypt’s Past and Present. 

Professor Mathew Wells is from the department of physical and environmental sciences at the University of Toronto in Scarborough in Canada. Mathew studies the many underwater rivers that criss-cross our oceans and lakes, some many thousands of kilometres long, tens of kilometres wide and hundreds of metres deep.  His particular interest in these underwater rivers is to look at their role in climate change, due to their important role in transporting heat away from the poles. He is also researching the way some underwater rivers transport sediment: where the sediment is, is where the oil is, and this is of great interest to oil companies.

Olwen Fouéré is an award winning Irish actor and theatre maker. She is currently on a world tour performing – unusually – a river – Olwen’s adaptation of the voice of the river from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. In her show riverrun, Olwen explains how rather than representing a person, she feels  she is playing the embodiment of river energy, neither male nor female, but a force  of constant motion and renewal that contains past, future and present.  Photo credit: Colm Hogan

In our Sixty Second Idea to improve the world, the environmental scientist Mathew Wells suggests that more people should go canoeing on the river. Not only would this  be fun but it would also help people learn to value rivers more. People forget how important rivers have been historically, and that until quite recently, the river used to be the main mode of travel.
Photo credit: Eyewire, Inc.