The ancient Egyptians arrived on the banks of the Nile from the vast, rolling, savannah like region with its abundant vegetation and game that was slowly transformed into the Sahara Desert commencing about 7,000 years ago. At that time the climate was changing and the savannah like climate was becoming drier. For thousands of years the Sahara had been the home of vast herds of animals as can be seen in Kenya and the Serengeti today with seasonal rains that favoured the same species of animals. As the desert crept in, the human populations moved northwards to the Mediterranean following the game, to the west to the Atlas Mountains and in the east to the Nile.
‘In many areas of the Sahara paintings and engravings of wild animals, domesticated cattle, sheep, goats and humans are found. It’s like a lost world in the middle of a desert that’s so arid that only highly specialised animals can survive. These paintings show that prehistoric cultures thrived, hunting game and herding domesticated cattle, a lost people that has left practically no trace of their existence.’
‘Extraordinary.’
‘Not really, you only have to look at Darfur on the television to see what happened when the climate becomes drier, of course the population density was considerably less, they were hunter gatherers and herdsmen who were amongst the first to domesticate cattle.’
‘So they were the first Egyptians?’
‘Yes, you could say that, the banks of the Nile offered a refuge for those pushed by drought and their struggle for food and water ended, with their cattle and pottery making skills they became sedentary.’
‘So the settlers their animals and skills founded the base for the future civilisation.’
‘Yes, archaeological evidence shows that there was a first attempt at settlement on the Nile as early as 11,000BC.’
‘But where did they come from?’
‘Not so quick, if we examine modern man or to be precise Homo sapiens sapiens as opposed to his predecessors then we can see evidence of human activity in north-eastern Africa since the Middle Pleistocene Period.’
‘How many years ago is that for us non-specialists?’
‘The Middle and Upper Palaeolithic was between 90,000 to 10,000 years ago,’ he said smiling. ‘Now if I can go on, slowly hunter-gatherers migrated into the prehistoric Nile Valley, forced from the lake and savannah regions of the Eastern Sahara by climatic changes. Traces of these early peoples still survive as rock carvings along the Nile, just like can be seen across all of North Africa and especially in nearby Libya.’
‘So these nomadic hunter-gatherers settled along the edges of the Nile Valley, that’s when they started to become farmers?’
‘Yes amongst these were Neolithic cultures we call the Badarian, Amratian and Gerzean in Upper Egypt, but all this happened very, very, slowly over maybe one thousand years. It was probably one of the most important events in the history of man who had up to that time been a hunter-gatherer, a nomad following the game, transforming men into farmers and villagers.’
‘I thought that happened in the Fertile Crescent?’
‘Quite right, this was happening in many places around the world including the Middle East with its Fertile Crescent. But North Africa was a different because at that time an inexorable change had started as the climate became dryer. The vegetation that had supported great herds of game started to die, the savannah slowly giving way to and over the next few thousand years the Sahara Desert came into being. Humans were pushed relentlessly in all directions by the encroaching drought and sand, to the Mediterranean in the North, the Atlantic in the West and the Nile in the East, this great life giving river watered by the mountains of East Africa that in addition was much more temperate than the Nile Valley of today
The Lower Nile and its Delta is at the crossroads between Africa and the Levant. We can therefore imagine that this land would have been inhabited by men from prehistoric times until Egyptian civilization flowered with the early dynasties.’
‘So climate change was at the root of this transformation.’
‘Yes, as has often been the case in the history of man.’
‘Has this happened often in the Sahara region?’
‘Many times, if we stick to modern humans there was a long period when the Sahara had a very dry climate that did not allow humans to live there During this time men migrated to the Nile Valley, but about 11,000 years ago, the Nile went though what is called the Wild Nile and a new wet period in the Sahara with people returning to a renewed savannah.’
‘The Wild Nile?’
‘Yes at the end of the last Ice Age the glaciers on the mountains of Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda melted, that would be about 11,000 years ago, and the water from these melted glaciers poured northwards to Lake Victoria and to the Blue and White Nile Valleys, as a result terrible floods washed away all early settlements destroying the earliest beginnings of human life in Egypt. We call this the “Wild Nile” and it went on for about 3,000 years making human presence impossible, after which commenced the dry period that we know today.’
‘So from about 7000BC until the Sahara had completely dried up many of those people migrated to the Nile valley.’
‘Right, where the conditions had become more favourable with less heavy flooding.’
‘Those pre-dynastic peoples you mentioned, who were they?’
‘Well in 1923 archaeologists discovered tombs of the Badari culture that represented the earliest known Egyptian society dating from about 4500BC Egypt. Hunting no longer played an important role with the domestication of cattle, sheep, pigs and goats, plus crops of wheat and barley. Metal was introduced together with basketry, pottery, weaving, and leather. So you can see this formed a transitional phase between Stone Age nomadic tribal life and early civilization.’
57
The First Egyptians
The Legacy of Solomon Page 57