Recalling on…

“1. Plant domestication was essentially a lowland adaptation that had a loing period of technological development, beginning as early as 18,000 BP with the use of grinding stones. The domesticated species were native to grassy steppes. Present evidence suggests that domestication is earliest in the Levant and on the Nile, and then spread to Mesopotamia and, finally, Europe.” http://www.sfu.ca/~csmith/genstuff/academic/comps/2partmodel.html

“Several early occupation and settlements were identified in this region. For example the remains of the early settlement of fishermen at Wadi El Kubbaniya, to the north of Aswan, dated to about 18 000 BC.[22] Numerous grinding stone and sickle plates were found in Tushki about 13 000 BC.[23] The inhabitants of the region made use of a geometric microlithic technique, which is considered among the oldest in the world.” http://www.arkamani.org/vol_5/archaeology_5/missinglinks.htm

Thought Writes:

It is now generally recognized by archaeologists that Nile Valley populations were responsible for introducing grind stones and microliths (sickles) to the Levant. It is now generally recognized by geneticists that one of the two predominate haplo-groups found in the “Near East” is the M35/215 lineage which derives from a early Holocene East African source. It is now generally recognized by linguists that the Afro-Asiatic language family which includes Semitic derives from languages spoken in East Africa during the early Holocene. What all of these varied intellectual entities have not done yet is put the pieces of the puzzle together and recognize the East African source of the Near East and European Neolithic. Some have not done so due to tunnel-vision and a lack of multi-disciplinary training. Other have done so for more insidious reasons. Still others will acknowledge this connection if prodded, but recognize the Neolithic as an event instead of a process. This of course is the same sort of thinking that allows Classicists to START “Western Civilization” with Greece instead of the African (Nile Valley) and Asian (Sumerian) complex cultures that preceded and fed Greece in an intellectual sense. The Neolithic is a process that dates back tens of thousands of years, not an event that only began when Eurasian got involved. The transition to microliths in Southern Africa laid the foundation for more advanced hunting and gathering techniques. The development of sickles, grind stones and the use of fire management (slash and burn) to procure more robust harvests among late Pleistocene Africans are major developments in human subsistence patterns. By claiming a linear START or event to human subsistence patterns biased scholars have wrote out the history of all human accomplishments before Eurasian involvement and hence facilitated a “racial” construct.
http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/Forum8/HTML/001654.html

Discovery of Egyptian Inscriptions Indicates an Earlier Date for Origin of the Alphabet

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

The limestone walls at Wadi el-Hol told a story of early writing.

On the track of an ancient road in the desert west of the Nile, where soldiers, couriers and traders once traveled from Thebes to Abydos, Egyptologists have found limestone inscriptions that they say are the earliest known examples of alphabetic writing.

Their discovery is expected to help fix the time and place for the origin of the alphabet, one of the foremost innovations of civilization.

Carved in the cliffs of soft stone, the writing, in a Semitic script with Egyptian influences, has been dated to somewhere between 1900 and 1800 B.C., two or three centuries earlier than previously recognized uses of a nascent alphabet. The first experiments with alphabet thus appeared to be the work of Semitic people living deep in Egypt, not in their homelands in the Syria-Palestine region, as had been thought.

Although the two inscriptions have yet to be translated, other evidence at the discovery site supports the idea of the alphabet as an invention by workaday people that simplified and democratized writing, freeing it from the elite hands of official scribes. As such, alphabetic writing was revolutionary in a sense comparable to the invention of the printing press much later.
Alphabetic writing emerged as a kind of shorthand by which fewer than 30 symbols, each one representing a single sound, could be combined to form words for a wide variety of ideas and things. This eventually replaced writing systems like Egyptian hieroglyphics in which hundreds of pictographs, or idea pictures, had to be mastered.

"These are the earliest alphabetic inscriptions, considerably earlier than anyone had thought likely," Dr. John Coleman Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, said last week in an interview about the discovery.

"They seem to provide us with evidence to tell us when the alphabet itself was invented, and just how."

Dr. Darnell and his wife, Deborah, a Ph.D. student in Egyptology, made the find while conducting a survey of ancient travel routes in the desert of southern Egypt, across from the royal city of Thebes and beyond the pharaohs' tombs in the Valley of the Kings. In the 1993-94 season, they came upon walls of limestone marked with graffiti at the forlorn Wadi el-Hol, roughly translated as Gulch of Terror.
Last summer, the Darnells returned to the wadi with several specialists in early writing. A report on their findings will be given in Boston on Nov. 22 at a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Working in the baking June heat "about as far out in the middle of nowhere as I ever want to be," Dr. Bruce Zuckerman, director of the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California, assisted the investigation by taking detailed pictures of the inscriptions for analysis using computerized photo interpretation techniques. "This is fresh meat for the alphabet people," he said.

"Because of the early date of the two inscriptions and the place they were found," said Dr. P. Kyle McCarter Jr., a professor of Near Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University. "it forces us to reconsider a lot of questions having to do with the early history of the alphabet. Things I wrote only two years ago I now consider out of date."

Dr. Frank M. Cross, an emeritus professor of Near Eastern languages and culture at Harvard University, who was not a member of the research team but who has examined the evidence, judged the inscriptions "clearly the oldest of alphabetic writing and very important." He said that enough of the symbols in the inscriptions were identical or similar to later Semitic alphabetic writing to conclude that "this belongs to a single evolution of the alphabet."

The previously oldest evidence for an alphabet, dated about 1600 B.C., was found near or in Semitic-speaking territory, in the Sinai Peninsula and farther north in the Syria-Palestine region occupied by the ancient Canaanites. These examples, known as Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite alphabetic inscriptions, were the basis for scholars' assuming that Semites developed the alphabet by borrowing and simplifying Egyptian hieroglyphs, but doing this in their own lands and not in Egypt itself.

From other, nonalphabetic writing at the site, the Egyptologists determined that the inscriptions were made during Egypt's Middle Kingdom in the first two centuries of the second millennium B.C. And another discovery in June by the Darnells seemed to establish the presence of Semitic people at the wadi at the time of the inscriptions.
Surveying a few hundred yards from the site, the Darnells found an inscription in nonalphabetic Egyptian that started with the name of a certain Bebi, who called himself "general of the Asiatics." This was a term used for nearly all foreigners, most of whom were Semites, and many of them served as mercenary soldiers for Egyptian rulers at a time of raging civil strife or came as miners and merchants. Another reference to this Bebi has been found in papyrus records.

"This gives us 99.9 percent certainty," Dr. Darnell said of the conclusion that early alphabetic writing was developed by Semitic-speaking people in an Egyptian context. He surmised that scribes in the troops of mercenaries probably developed the simplified writing along the lines of a semicursive form of Egyptian commonly used in the Middle Kingdom in graffiti. Working with Semitic speakers, the scribes simplified the pictographs of formal writing and modified the symbols into an early form of alphabet.

"It was the accidental genius of these Semitic people who were at first illiterate, living in a very literate society," Dr. McCarter said, interpreting how the alphabet may have arisen. "Only a scribe trained over a lifetime could handle the many different types of signs in the formal writing. So these people adopted a crude system of writing within the Egyptian system, something they could learn in hours, instead of a lifetime. It was a utilitarian invention for soldiers, traders, merchants."

The scholars who have examined the short Wadi el-Hol inscriptions are having trouble deciphering the messages, though they think they are close to understanding some letters and words. "A few of these signs just jump out at you, at anyone familiar with proto-Sinaitic material," said Dr. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, who teaches at the Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey and is a specialist in the languages and history of the Middle East. "They look just like one would expect."

The symbol for M in the inscriptions, for example, is a wavy line derived from the hieroglyphic sign for water and almost identical to the symbol for M in later Semitic writing. The meaning of some signs is less certain. The figure of a stick man, with arms raised, appears to have developed into an H in the alphabet, for reasons unknown.

Scholars said they could identify shapes of letters that eventually evolved from the image of an ox head into A and from a house, which looks more like a 9 here, into the Semitic B, or bayt. The origins and transitions of A and B are particularly interesting because the Egyptian-influenced Semitic alphabet as further developed by the Phoenicians, latter-day Canaanites, was passed to the Greeks, probably as early as the 12th century B.C. and certainly by the 9th century B.C. From the Greeks the simplified writing system entered Western culture by the name alphabet, a combination word for the Greek A and B, alpha and beta.

The only words in the inscriptions the researchers think they understand are, reading right to left, the title for a chief in the beginning and a reference to a god at the end.

If the early date for the inscriptions is correct, this puts the origins of alphabetic writing well before the probable time of the biblical story of Joseph being delivered by his brothers into Egyptian bondage, the scholars said. The Semites involved in the alphabet invention would have been part of an earlier population of alien workers in Egypt.

Although it is still possible that the Semites took the alphabet idea with them to Egypt, Dr. McCarter of Johns Hopkins said that the considerable evidence of Egyptian symbols and the absence of any contemporary writing of a similar nature anywhere in the Syria-Palestine lands made this unlikely.

The other earliest primitive writing, the cuneiform developed by Sumerians in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley of present-day Iraq, remained entirely pictographic until about 1400 B.C. The Sumerians are generally credited with the first invention of writing, around 3200 B.C., but some recent findings at Abydos in Egypt suggest a possibly earlier origin there. The issue is still controversial.

For Dr. Darnell, though, it is exciting enough to learn that in a forsaken place like Wadi el-Hol, along an old desert road, people showed they had taken a major step in written communication. He is returning to the site next month for further exploration.

Source: Courtesy of New York times 'Science' archives.

…several parallels may be drawn between the Pre-Kerma settlement and the ancient city of Kerma, whose earliest structures date from around 2300 to 2200 cal. BC. This town displayed certain architectural traditions which were inherited from the preceding period, such as huts, storage pits and palisades. But this was the full extent of the similarities: the dominant architectural forms at Kerma were built of mud bricks, which were apparently unknown during the Pre-Kerma period. The buildings were generally rectangular and possessed internal subdivisions. This spatial organisation reveals a desire for urbanism, with monumental buildings and a system of hierarchised streets and passages. All these elements were new to Nubian architecture. We are still lacking the intermediate stages, and need to define the importance of influences from the Egyptian civilisation. http://rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it/nubiaconference/honegger.doc

The Egyptian Predynastic: A review of the evidence

by Professor Kathryn Bard (Journal of Field Archaeology, Fall 1994; reproduced with the permission of the "Trustees of Boston University and the Journal of Field Archaeology")

In the 4th millenium B.C. two different Predynastic cultures, both of which practiced agriculture, evolved in Egypt: the Nagada culture in the south and the Maadi culture in the north. settlement sites of the latter are much better preserved, but in the south, where most of the archaeological evidence is from cemeteries, there is much greater evidence for the evolution of social hierarchies and complex societies. A review of the archaeological evidence for the Predynastic suggests that the early state had its cultural origins in the south, although the processes involved in the emergence of the state in Egypt can only be hypothesized at this time.

Recent studies suggest that in northern Egypt the Predynastic Maadi culture evolved from indigenous Neolithic cultures. According to Rizkana and Seeher (1987: 78), the Maadi culture

represents a continuation of the Lower Egypt cultural tradition, which since Neolithic times at the earliest bore a strong character of its own, only distantly related to the cultures of Upper Egypt.

Sites with Maadi ceramics extend from Buto near the Mediterranean to south of Cairo, and in the Fayum region as far south as Sedment (Rizkana and Seeher 1987: 63). The full distribution of Maadi sites and their dates, however, have yet to be established.
In Upper Egypt the origins of the Predynastic Nagada culture are probably to be found among indigenous hunter-gatherers and fisherman living along the Nile. As arid conditions developed in the Eastern and Western Deserts ca. 6000-5000 B.C., cattle pastoralists (?) were increasingly forced into the Nile Valley where they eventually "merged" with indigenous groups (Hassan 1985a: 327). At the site of el-Tarif in western Thebes, in an earlier stratum than those of a Nagada culture settlement, were artifacts that have been identified as belonging to the Tarifian (Ginter and Kozlowski 1984: 257, 259), a very different culture with distinctive ceramics. According to the excavators, the Tarifian level at El-Tarif suggests a settlement more like Paleolithic camps (Ginter and Kozlowski 1984: 257), but possibly belonging to a transitional Epipaleolithic/Neolithic culture in Upper Egypt that evolved into the more complex Nagada culture as the economy became increasingly dependent on farming.

With the rise of the Nagada culture in Upper Egypt in the early 4th millennium B.C., simple farming communities evolved into more complex societies. Archaeological evidence, mainly from cemeteries, suggests a core area of the Nagada culture that extended from Abydos in the north to Hierakonpolis in the south; but Nagada sites also exist on the east bank in the Badari region and in the Fayum. Major centers developed at Abydos, Nagada, Hierakonpolis (Nekton), and possibly at Uh (Dispels Parka). In Lower Nub there are numerous A-Group burials which contain many Nagada craft goods probably obtained through trade, but the nature of Egyptian Predynastic/A-Group relations (see Nordstroom 1972: 24; smith 1991: 108; Trigger 1976: 33) is beyond the scope of the present study.

By ca. 3050 B.C. the Early Dynastic state had emerged in Egypt, controlling much of Nile Valley from the Delta to the First Cataract at Aswan. The beginning of the First Dynasty was only about 1000 years after the earliest farming villages appeared on the Nile, so the Predynastic period, during the 4th millennium B.C., was one of fairly rapid social and political evolution.

The reason why there is relatively little settlement evidence from Upper Egypt is probably due in part to earlier excavators' priorities. Located on the low desert, Predynastic cemeteries with well preserved burials, some of which contained many grave goods in sometimes exotic materials, were simply of greater interest to excavate than settlements which had been disturbed by digging for sebbakh (organic remains used for fertlizer) or destroyed by expanding cultivation on the floodplain. Unless permanent architecture was detected, such as mud-brick walls excavated by Petrie at Nagada's South Town, more ephemeral Predynastic settlements, which left mainly dense scatters of sherds, such as Petrie describes at Abadiyeh, were interpreted as having been destroyed (Petrie 1901a: 32). In any case, archaeologists did not have the excavation techniques to understand such site and their formation processes.

Only more recently has interest in Upper Egypt shifted to the detailed excavation of Predynastic settlements. But such settlements, located on spurs above the floodplain, are deflated, with little or no evidence of permanent architecture. Missing, or perhaps deposited under alluvium, are large (fortified?) sites on higher ground of the floodplain, such as Kemp (1989: 33) posits; an exception is Nekhen, probably founded on a Nile levee, as shown by coring and sondage in 1984 (Hoffman, Hamroush, and Allen 1986: 181).

Because of alluviation, continuous cultivation, geological conditions in Upper Egypt, and the present dense occupation along the river we may never know much about settlement patterns except from sites preserved above the floodplain.

In northern Egypt, where Predynastic burials of the Maadi culture are relatively unspectacular, with only a few pots, or no burial goods at all, earlier excavations focused equally on settlements. But settlements in the north focused may also have been better preserved than in the south. Evidence at Maadi of rectangular buildings and subterranean structures suggests good preservation of architecture constructed mainly of wattle and matting (Rizkana and Seeher 1989: 75). Conditions for preservation of stratified remains in the Delta and its margins may be the best in Egypt, if reports of recent excavations there are correct (Chlodnicki, Fattovich, and Salvatori 1991; Eiwanger 1988; van den Brink 1988; von der Way 1987, 1988, 1989).

Since cemeteries in Egypt, both Predynastic and Dynastic, are located in the low desert above the floodplain, unlike the location of many early settlements, the cemetery evidence has been much better preserved, and therefore was of much more interest to excavators. Hence, much of Egyptian archaeology has been concerned with the clearance, recording, and conservation of tombs and mortuary monuments, and their artifacts, as well as stone temples located beyond the floodplain. Many of the early scholars who worked in Egypt were philologists whose interests lay in recording texts, or who were trained in fine arts and were attracted to the great art and monumental architecture of pharaonic Egypt. Unequivocally, Petrie can be considered the first archaeologist working in Egypt: he developed specific methods for excavating and was concerned with recording the context and period of the excavated materials. Not only was his Sequence Dating system a major contribution to archaeological method, but at the time it represented a way of thinking about artifacts other than simply as art objects.

Cemetery data, such as Petrie's from Nagada, have been useful for studying the rise of hierarchical society in Egypt (Bard 1989a), as well as for interpretations of symbolic systems (Bard 1992)…

More recently such research has concentrated on the settlement archaeology of prehistoric periods, within a regional framework. Research, such as Hassan's in the Nagada region and Hoffman's long-term project at Hierakonpolis, has focused less on the mortuary evidence, as Petrie did, and more on subsistence strategies in the transition from early farming communities to the formation of a state…

Nine more cemetery areas, dating from Nagada I through Nagada III, have also been located elsewhere in the Hierakonpolis region, and Adams and Hoffman (1987: 196, 198) estimate there were several thousand Predynastic graves in the region. One cemetery area (Locality 6), located 2.5km up the Great Wadi, contained more than 2000 Nagada I-II burials, and large Nagada "Protodynastic" tombs, up to 22.75 sq m. in floor area (Adams and Hoffman 1987: 196, 202). Burials of elephants, hippopotami, crocodiles, baboons, cattle, sheep, goats, and dogs have also been excavated SW of a stone-cut tomb in the western part of this cemetery (Hoffman 1983: 50). One of the largest tombs, tomb 11, though looted, retained fragments of beads in carnelian, garnet, turquoise, faience, gold, and silver. Also in this tomb were artifacts carved in lapis lazuli and ivory, obsidian and crystal blades, "Protodynastic" pottery, and a wooden bed with carved bulls' feet (Adams and Hoffman 1987: 178).

Evidence of postholes demonstrates that superstructures once covered some of the large tombs in Locality 6, and these tombs were surrounded by fences (Hoffman 1983: 49). Possibly a kind of perishable structure was built over some of the tombs, similar to the house structures Hoffman excavated. If so, then this may be the earliest association of large elite tombs with a superstructure that symbolized a house/shrine for the deceased. Hoffman (1983: 49) states that the Locality 6 tombs belonged to the Protodynastic rulers of Hierakonpolis, and speculates that the largest tomb there was that of King Scorpion. Hence, the Locality 6 tombs suggest that in the Nagada III period at Hierakonpolis there was a new location for the highest status burials, replacing the earlier elite cemetery where the Decorated Tomb (Nagada II) was located.

The best known Predynastic site in the Fayum region is the cemetery at Gerza, from which the term Gerzean (Nagada II) is derived. The site is located on the west bank, about 7 km NE of Medum. compared to the major cemeteries in Upper Egypt this was a small cemetery, with only 288 burials, a high percentage of them undisturbed; 198 of these were of adults and 51 were of infants or children (Petrie, Wainwright and MacKay 1912: 5). The ceramics listed for these burials are typical of the Nagada II period and include the Wavy-handled and Decorated classes. Beads, stone vases, zoomorphic slate palettes, flint knives, and other Nagada II artifacts, some of which were elite goods probably imported from the south, were also found in these graves. (No mention is made by Petrie of a Predynastic settlement at Gerza)…

Harageh, SE of the village of Lahun, was excavated in 1913-1914 by Reginald Engelbach, and consists of two Predynastic cemeteries, G and H. Engelbach (1923: 2) places the date for both cemeteries between S.D. 50-60, based on the pottery in the burials, which includes the Decorated class. Many of the graves were robbed, and there were no slate palettes and very few beads. Wavy-handled class pottery was found only in Cemetery H (Engelbach 1923: 7). Given its low number of burials and relatively few high status grave goods, Harageh was probably only a small Predynastic community with little social differentiation…

Some pottery from Harageh Cemetery H, which Engelbach thought was much later (Pan Graves?), resembles Lower Egyptian Predynastic pottery found at Sedment (Kaiser 1987: 121-122; Williams 1982: 220). The presence of pottery of Lower Egyptian origin at a site in this region is also attested at the cemetery of es-Saff on the east bank opposite Gerza (Habachi and Kaiser 1985: 46). From this evidence it seems likely that the Fayum region was where the two Predynastic cultures of Upper and Lower Egypt first came into contact…

Ancient Egypt is one of the earliest examples of (primary) state formation, and Predynastic data should elucidate general processes which may be applicable to other cases of state formation. but we only have a partial understanding of the Predynastic, based on different types of data in the north and south. Possibly new and forthcoming evidence from the Delta will provide information on the processes of state formation and unification there, but in the south there is the problem of so many missing settlement data, which are needed in order to make theoretical generalizations.

Despite the problem of poorer settlement evidence in Upper Egypt, the emerging picture of Egypt in the 4th millennium B.C. is of two different material cultures with different belief systems: the Predynastic Naqada culture of Upper Egypt and the Maadi culture of Lower Egypt. Archaeological evidence in Lower Egypt consists mainly of settlements, with very simple burials in cemeteries, and suggests a culture different from that of Upper Egypt, where cemeteries with elaborate burials are found. While the rich grave goods in several major cemeteries in Upper Egypt represent the acquired wealth of higher social strata, the economic sources of this wealth cannot be satisfactorily determined because there are so few settlement data, though the larger cemeteries were probably associated with centers of craft production. Trade and exchange of finished goods and luxury materials from the Eastern and Western Deserts and Nubia would also have taken place in such centers. In Lower Egypt, however, settlement data permit a broader reconstruction of the prehistoric economy, which at present does not suggest any great socio-economic complexity.

Differentiation in the Predynastic cemeteries of Upper Egypt (but not Lower Egypt) is symbolic of status display and rivalry (Trigger 1987: 60), which probably represent the earliest processes of competition and the aggrandizement of local polities in Egypt. The importation of exotic materials for craft goods found in burials may have become a political strategy, and the control of prestige goods would have reinforced the position of a chief among his supporters.

Evidence of extensive contact between Upper Egypt and Nubia in later Predynastic times is indicative f the increasing interest in prestige goods. Numerous Nagada culture trade goods have been found at most A-Group sites in Nubia between Kubania in the north and Saras in the south. These include jars that may have contained beer or wine, and Wavy-handled jars. Other Nagada pottery classes are found at A-Group sites, as are Naqada craft goods: copper tools, stone vessels and palettes, linen, and beads of stone and faience (Nordstrom 1972: 24; Smith 1991: 108).

A-group burials are very similar to graves of the Nagada culture, but inspite of similar burials and grave goods Trigger (1976: 33) thinks that the A-Group developed from an indigenous population that was in contact with Upper Egypt and much influenced by Nagada culture. A-Group wares are distinctive, and few A-Group artifacts have been found in Upper Egyptian graves, suggesting that the A-Group acted as middlemen in a trading network with Upper Egypt (Trigger 1976: 39). Luxury materials, such as ivory, ebony, incense, and exotic animal skins, all greatly desired in Dynastic times as well, came from father south and passed through Nubia. Kaiser (1957: 74, fig. 26), however, interprets the A-Group evidence as a "colonial" penetration into Lower Nubia to exploit trade and raw materials (Needler 1984: 29).

In his analysis of the Classic A-Group (contemporaneous with Nagada III) "royal" Cemetery L at Qustal, Williams (1986: 177) proposes another theory: that this cemetery represents Nubian rulers who were responsible for unifying Egypt and founding the early Egyptian state. The A-Group n Nubia, though, appears to have been a separate culture from that of Predynastic Upper Egypt, and the model that may best explain the archaeological evidence is one of accelerated contact between the two regions in later Predynastic times. That the material culture of the Nagada culture was later found in northern Egypt (with no Nubian elements) would seem to argue against William's theory of a Nubian origin for the Early Dynastic state in Egypt.

The unification of Egypt took place in late Predynastic times, but the processes involved in this major transition to the Dynastic state are poorly understood. What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to the other contemporaneous Near Eastern polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery, and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty. This cannot be demonstrated in Upper Egypt.

Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which also supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. thus archaeological evidence cannot support the earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race, from the East (Petrie 1920: 49, 1939: 77; Emery 1967: 38), or from the south, in Nubia (Williams 1986: 177).

How this transformation was accomplished and the amount of time involved are points of disagreement. Based on an analysis of archaeological evidence, the earliest writing in Egypt, and later king lists, Kaiser (1964: 118, 105-114) proposes that the Nagada culture expanded north in Nagada IIc-d times to sites in the Fayum region (such as the cemetery at Gerza), and then later to the Cairo area and the Delta. The unification, therefore, was much earlier than the period immediately preceding the beginning of the First Dynasty (Kaiser 1964: 114, 1985: 61-62, 1990: 288-289).

Trigger (1987: 61), however, states that if the unification occurred at an early date there would be archaeological evidence from Nagada III burials of a court-centered high culture. Instead, Trigger proposes that the northward expansion of the Nagada culture during Nagada II-III was the result of refugees emigrating from the developing states in the south, or the presence of Nagada traders involved in commerce with SW Asia. While the unification may have been achieved through conquest in the north, an earlier unification of southern polities (Nagada, Hierakonpolis, and Abydos), may have been achieved by a series of alliances (Trigger 1987: 61).

The eventual replacement of Maadi artifacts in the north by a material culture originating in the south may represent military exploits, while colonization by southerner may have occurred in northern regions where there were less well-developed local polities, as at Gerza or Minshat Abu Omar. Guksch (1991: 41) suggests that the Nagada IId ceramic horizon in Lower Egypt represents expanded Upper Egyptian trade into the NE Delta in late Nagada II times, with a (later) militarily-achieved political unification in Nagada III/dynasty 0 times. Possibly there was first a more or less peaceful (?) movement or migration(s) of Nagada culture peoples from south to north that may have been formalized by a later, or concurrent, military presence. A shift in settlement patterns is seen, and by the First Dynasty the north was much more densely inhabited than the south (Mortensen 1991: 24).

Archaeological evidence suggests a system much too complex for the southern expansion to be explained by military conquest alone, and the northern culture may have made important contributions to the unified polity which emerged (Seeher 1991: 318). One result of this expansion throughout northern Egypt would have been a greatly elaborated (state) administration, and by the beginning of the First Dynasty this was managed in part by the invention of writing, used on seals and tags affixed to state goods.

Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation in Egypt is less clear (Wenke 1991: 301). There is the archaeological evidence of Palestinian wares at Maadi and later Abydos (Tomb U0j), and also Nagada classes of pottery and stone vessels in forms resembling Palestinian prototypes (wavy-handles and ledge-handles). Cylinder seals of Egyptian manufacture, which undeniably originated in Mesopotamia, are found in a few late Predynastic graves (see Kantor 1952: 246), and Uruk culture architectural elements have recently been excavated at Tell el-Fara'in/Buto (see von der Way 1992b: 220-223). The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millennium B.C., however, is unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine - in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the late 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt was unique and indigenous in character.

Given the quality of earlier excavations and publications, and the poor preservation of many settlement data, we still cannot specify how a centralized state emerged in Egypt by 3050 B.C., and explanations for the origin of the early Egyptian state remain hypothetical. Nonetheless, the roots of the major transition from autonomous villages to an early state in Egypt from simple to complex society - are to be found in Upper Egypt at large centers such as Nagada, where Predynastic cemeteries provide the main evidence for this culture.

quote:

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Originally posted by Super car:
[b]The appearance of fully modern behavior apparently occurred in Africa earlier than anywhere else in the Old World, but spread very quickly, due to population movements into other geographical regions. - Paleoanthropologist Donald C. Johanson, professor of anthropology and Director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. [/B]

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Something happened around 60 000 years ago in Africa - a great leap forward. - Spencer Wells.

It is because modern human intelligent behavior originated in Africa, that recent out of Africa moderns quickly spread thru much of Asia, Australia and the Pacific Islands, and eventually to Europe where Out of Africa moderns supplanted Native European Neanderthal. And it is for this reason, that our lineages all trace back to Africa, and relatively recently, in an evolutionary sense.