The Biblical Plagues, the 10 calamities inflicted upon Egypt by God as mentioned in the Bible in order to convince the Pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves, were “Population imbalances influenced by nature.”

According to a study carried out by leading British scientist Prof Rogger Wotton, the dramatic series of events, including the Nile turning to blood and a plague of frogs, are nothing but natural phenomena, ‘The Times’ reported on Saturday. However, Prof Wotton of the University College-London, hasn’t denied that God could have instigated the events — “if God does indeed exist. Perhaps the 10 Plagues teach us that many explanations are possible for one series of events and warn against allowing belief in the truth of one explanation to inspire fundamentalism,” he said.

Prof Wotton said that the plagues, described in the Book of Exodus, were central to the liberation of the Jewish people from the oppression of the Egyptians.

“Myths arise around natural events when no rational explanation is immediately apparent,” according to Prof Wotton.

He says that Christians  and Jews accept the stories of the Ten Plagues of Egypt.

According to Prof Wotton, the plagues probably did happen, but they have been “embellished, ordered and described through the lens of religious mythology.”

The Rivers of blood could have been caused by heavy rainfall on baked soil, leading to sediment-rich water flowing into the Nile from tributaries where the underlying soil and rocks are red.

“Egyptians often spoke of the ‘red lands’ surrounding the fertile ‘black lands’ they occupied.

The sediments would also have killed the fish, as described in the Bible,” Prof Wotton said.

According to him, the plague of frogs could have been migrating frogs, or the sudden appearance of the frog-like Spadefoot toads from hiding places in damp undersoil after a sudden rainfall. Similarly, the plague of lice could have been merely the sudden hatching of lice throughout Egypt after rain that followed unusually hot and dry weather.

“The description of swarms of flies match the behaviour of dancing midges, which can sometimes be so dense that livestock have to be taken indoors to avoid asphyxiation. Again, unusual weather conditions could have led them to the Nile,” he said.

An abundance of biting insects would also have led to the “pestilence” that caused the death of the country’s cattle.

Similarly, the boils on the human population could have been caused by insect bites. According to Prof Wotton, the “fiery hail” could have been the large hailstones accompanied by ball lightning that sometimes appears during severe, dramatic storms.

“The locust swarms would also have been caused by severe environmental conditions and a dense storm could also have produced the darkening of the skies described in the Bible.”

But he has ducked out of explaining the most difficult plague, where God caused the “death of the first born” — perhaps it relates to some infectious disease, but why the effect on the first born?”