Agriculture As Evidence of An African Egypt

[Mentuemhat]

For a long time Ancient Egyptian culture was seen as nothing more than a transplant of South West Asia, the so called Middle East. It was assumed that all the major aspects of that civilzation arose from that region--the political systems; the religion and ofcourse the Agriculture systems. However in more recent times the consensus has moved away from South West Asia to the region further south of Ancient Egypt--the Western Desert and Sudan, as being the source for the most signifigant aspects of Egyptian civilization.

Analysis of language for instance has shown Ancient Egyptian being closer to languages spoken in the Horn of Africa, such as Somali, than in the middle East; the archaeological evidence also points out similarities between the culture of Ancient Egypt and its African or Nubian neighbours further south ( Ehret 1996). In a matter of fact such evidence attest to the idea of Dynastic culture being formulated in the south close to modern day Sudan and then moving up north(Bard, 2000). But the most decisive evidence has proven to be in the field of population biology:Recent studies on crania and skeletal remains show ancient Egyptians mapping closest to Africans, especially Sudanic and North East African peoples as opposed to neighbouring Southwest Asians. (Keita, 1993) Recent Genetic studies (Stevanovitch et al, 2004) placing the origins of Ancient egypt in East Africa have been the most recent addition to the plethora of biological evidence proving the Africanity of Ancient Egypt.

Agriculture however has not been as decisive as these other areas of study in proving the Africanity of Ancient Egypt. It just seemed too farfetched to assume that agriculture in Africa could have been an indigenous African development. As mentioned earlier, the most important domesticates and crops were not indigenous to the continent, but instead came from the Levant. One also has to consider the historical blight that Africa has suffered as a result of European colonialism. The only way that the European enslavement and subsequent colonization of Africans could be justified was through the demonization and caricature of Africans as inferior or uncivilised. This led to among other things the ingenious theory of the Hamitic race (Aaron Kamushiga, 2003; Keita, 1993) where every example of what Europeans considered as high culture or civilzation in Africa was explained away as the result of a wandering race of Hamites( dark skin white people) originally from Eurasia or the so called Middle East. Ofcourse the Biological evidence more than sufficiently refutes these old worn out racial theories, however remnants of these old theories remain, continuing to resist ideas such as the early domestication of animals or cultivated crops in Africa.

Christopher Ehret in defending Africa as the earliest example of domesticated cattle in human history explains in an interview with World History Connected:

The older generation of scholars have trouble seeing that the archaeology is there. They try to find reasons that it's not there. They say, well, you don't have enough cattle bones. I want hundreds of cattle bones, not tens of cattle bones. They have all kinds of excuses, but I think it's the remnant thinking based on early western European racism and just the general assumption that African history didn't begin as early. People believe that everything in Africa had to come from somewhere else.

These Africans who Ehret is making reference to are the Nilosaharans. They resided in the Sudan and Western desert during the Green Phase of the Shara. And what is the Green Sahara. The Green Sahara refers to a period in history when climatic conditions in Africa allowed ecosystems very similar to what we associate with today's Sahel or Serengeti today to flourish in the Sahara desert. Fred Wendorf explains the Green Sahara phase of Egypt's Western Desert.

Before 12,000 years ago the summer monsoon
system of tropical Africa moved
northward as far as southern Egypt, and
during the more moist phases brought
rainfall .......Whatever the
amount, the precipitation was limited and
highly seasonal; both plants and animals
indicate that most of the rain fell during
the summer months. The rainfall was also
unpredictable, droughts, were frequent,
and some areas may have received no rain
at all for long periods...These limited rains during the early
Holocene caused seasonal lakes and
ponds to develop in the depressions previously
hollowed out by the wind. The
Western Desert was still a dry and unpredictable
environment, with no permanent surface water and few resources. Only
small animals could live there, the largest
of which were two varieties of gazelles,
together with hares, jackals, lizards, rodents,
and desert foxes, all of which could
exist on dew or moisture from vegetation.
Cattle, regarded as domestic, were also
present. Limited as it was, the Holocene
moist period in the Western Desert lasted
about 5000 years, until around 5900 cal
B.P., and at several intervals it supported
reasonably large, but highly mobile human
populations who existed by large and
small animal pastoralism, hunting, and intensive
gathering of a wide variety of wild
plants.

This period in Egyptian pre-dynastic history is known as the Saharan Neolithic. There are many, though who are wary of using the word Neolithic to speak about this period , as the word neolithic often refers to Levantine Agriculture defined by the domestication of crops and well established Horticulture. Whereas in the case of the Saharan neolithic we are speaking of Pastoral Agriculture defined largely by the domestication of Cattle and the invention of Ceramics and pottery ( invented 2000 years before the middle East). For that reason some have suggested that Saharan Ceramic would be more appropriate. (Stan Hendricx and Pierre Vermeersch, 2000). But besides pastoralism, these people also relied heavily on intensive hunting, fishing and more interestingly the intensive collecting and harvesting of wild grains such as millets and sorghum, which were also processed using grindstones. This latter activity, in the world of archaeology is seen as the evolutionary step to crop cultivation. Interestingly enough, Wendorf did come across possible evidence of sorghum being purposely cultivated; it was not fully determined though whether or not this posed sufficient evidence for crop domestication as opposed to simply the intensive harvesting of wild grains. Nonetheless there are exceptions like Ehret(2003) who believes that there is evidence to support grain cultivation.

One of the more important finds at Nabta Playa is a series of rock megaliths interpreted by experts to have religious and astronomical value. As far as many experts are concerned it is the earliest example of social complexity and organisation in the region, possibly a socio-cultural proto type for the subsequent development of dynastic Egypt. Espellialy when one takes into context the relevance of cattle to these peoples. It seems that cattle were idependently domesticated by these people as early as 9000 BC. Cattle bones were found buried in connection to what some experts have interpreted as religious or spiritual veneration. This is signifigant as the later Egyptians had the veneration of cows as being central to their spiritual lives. An even earlier study by Frankfort had linked the cultural traditions of other African Nilotic peoples, such as the Nuer and Shilluk (who most likely emerged from the final dessertification of the Sahara, although Frankfort would have not known it at the time). These populations, even to this present day possess pastoral agricultural lifestyles quite similar to that deduced from investigating the material culture of these Nilo-saharans of the Western Desert. For instance, they relied on their cattle primarily for its milk and blood as oppossed to its meat; also the seasonal nature and harsh conditions of their environment led to peculiar belief and spiritual systems such as that of the King as the Rain Maker God as was the case of Ancient Egypt.

In pointing out the distinction between Mesopotamian and and Egyptian sociocultural and Kingship systems, Stuart Pigott in his "Dawn of Civilization" making reference to Cyril Aldred's "Egypt To the End of the Old Kingdom" confirms the centrality of the Raimaker King/God concept to Pharaonic Egypt:

In Mesopotamia the beginnings of little independent city-states under tutelary gods, rulers, councils and assemblies are perceptible, though later to be submerged in a familiar pattern of oriental despotism, but in Egypt from the beginning we are able to glimpse that essentially African figure, the omnipotent, rainmaking, god-king. The prehistoric cheiftain, a rainmaker and medicine-man, with magic power over the weather and therefore able to keep his people in health and prosperity becomes with the founding of the first dynasty, the Pharoah, a divine king being in command over the Nile and able to sustain and protect the nation.

Perhaps it would even be more useful to emphasize the importance of cattle to both Nilo-Saharans and their later Egyptian counterparts. Wendorf and Schilds, in their 1998 paper making reference to Frankfort points out, the religious parallels and continuity between the cattle based pastoral lifestyles of Nilo-Saharans and the later Dynastic egyptians:

Another way of exploring
this is by examining those aspects of political
and ceremonial life in the Predynastic
and Old Kingdom that might reflect
impact from the Saharan cattle pastoralists.
In this we have been preceeded by
Frankfort (1978: 3–12).....To support
his position Frankfort pointed to the similarities
in religious beliefs the early Egyptians
shared with Nilotic cattle pastoralists.
During the Old Kingdom, cattle were
a central focus of their belief system. They
were deified and regarded as earthly representatives
of the gods. A cow was also
seen as the mother of the sun, who is
sometimes referred to as the ‘‘Bull of
Heaven.’’ The Egyptian pharaoh was a god (similar to the Shillok king, and not an
intermediary to the gods as in Mesopotamia).
He was the embodiment of two
gods, Horus, for Upper Egypt, and Seth,
for Lower Egypt, but he was primarily Horus,
son of Hathor, who was a cow. Horus
is often depicted as a strong bull, and images
of cattle are prominent in Predynastic
and Old Kingdom art; in some instances
the images of bulls occur with
depictions of stars, a concept that goes
back to the Predynastic (Frankfort 1978:
172). Dead pharaohs were sometimes described
as the Bull in Heaven. Another
important Old Kingdom concept was Min,
the god of rain, who is associated with a
white bull, and to whom the annual harvest
festival was dedicated.
It is interesting to note that the emphasis
on cattle in the belief system of the Old
Kingdom is not reflected in the economy.
While cattle were known and were the
major measure of wealth, the economy
was based primarily on agriculture and
small livestock—sheep and goats. Frankfort
saw this emphasis on cattle as an indication
that the Old Kingdom beliefs
were part of an older stratum of East African
concepts.....

Nonetheless many people continue to mistake the presence of South West Asian crops and animals in Ancient Egypt as evidence of Demic diffussion from the Levant. However the examination of the unique agricultural lifestyles of these peoples (not just Nilo Saharans but also the Predynastic cultures of Egypt) would seem to argue against that theory. Demic diffussion from the Levant would have meant a sudden introduction of a well established horticulture system from the Levant, however the archaeological records show the Predynastic Egyptians incorporating aspects of Levantine agriculture (namely individual crops and domesticates) on their own terms and at their own leisure into a preestablished indigenous semi-nomadic pastoral lifestyle, which also involved hunting and fishing. In other words, they may have imported sheep and goats from the levant, but not the idea of Agriculture. Ehret et al referencing Wetterstrom assert that much in " The Origins of Afro-asiatic":

Furthermore, the archaeology of northern Africa DOES NOT SUPPORT demic diffusion of farming from the Near East. The evidence presented by Wetterstrom indicates that early African farmers in the Fayum initially INCORPORATED Near Eastern domesticates INTO an INDIGENOUS foraging strategy, and only OVER TIME developed a dependence on horticulture. This is inconsistent with in-migrating farming settlers, who would have brought a more ABRUPT change in subsistence strategy. "The same archaeological pattern occurs west of Egypt, where domestic animals and, later, grains were GRADUALLY adopted after 8000 yr B.P. into the established pre-agricultural Capsian culture, present across the northern Sahara since 10,000 yr B.P.

And what is the signifigance of concentrating on this older Nilosaharan culture which preceded Dynastic Egypt? Well the consensus within academia is that the Western Desert occupied by these people, along with the Sudan, was the source for the subsequent predynastic cultures of the Upper Nile Valley or Southern Egypt; a sequence of cultures which eventually led to what we now recognise as Ancient Egypt. They are respectively: Tasian, Badarian and Naqadan(Kathryn A Bard, 2000). The Tasian is believed to be directly derived from the Sudan, and the Badarian contemporary to the Tasian, is believed to be mostly from the Western Desert . Over a period of centuries these two cultures eventually morph into the Naqadan. And out of the Naqadan we get the Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt; the creation of the 1st dynasty; the old Kingdom; the pyramids and, all the rest of it. Therefore, it would be no exaggeration to see Ancient egypt as A Sudanic--Saharan Transplant.


References*

----Angel, Biological Relations of Egyptians and Eastern Mediterranean Populations during pre-dynastic and Dynastic Times (1972)

----A.I Asiwaju and Robin Law, The History of West Africa (1985)

----Bard, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2010)

---Dr. Bar Yosef, Pleistocene connections between Africa and SouthWest Asia: an archaeological perspective, 1987

----Brace et al, The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form.

--- Ehret, Interview with Christopher Ehret; World History Connected, (2003). ;Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture(1996). The origins of Afroasiatic (2004)

----Frankfort, Kingship and the gods. A study of ancient NearEastern religion as the integration of society and nature. Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago (1978)

----Hendrickx and Vermeersch, The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt(2003)

---Kamushiga, Finally in Africa? Egypt, from Diop to Celenko (2003)

---Keita, Studies and comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological relationships (1993).

---Mystery Solver Blog, Africa Timeline Index and Other Issues, Trivia on the Natufians(2010); Examples of Cultural Similarities between those in the Nile Valley and those in other areas of Africa (2008).

----Pigott, Dawn of Civilization (1961)

---Sereno et al, Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change (2010)

----Simon Simones, Kings and Gods as Ecological Agents: Reciprocity and Unilateralism in the Management of Natural Order (2006)

----Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al.Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt (2004)

----Wendorf and Schild, Nabta Playa and Its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory (1998)

 

[Mentuemhat]

I hope if this thread is closed again that it is closed for some valid reason besides the moderator disliking the idea expressed. That would be the height of pettiness and childishness!!! And i appeal to all those who care to contribute to this thread please do so in the same spirit of maturity and seriousness which i wrote the OP in.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Moderator Action: If you have an issue with mod actions, pls PM the mod involved and discuss it in private. Public discussion of moderator action is disallowed here.

As for this thread, I will let it go for now since here is not OT and please do not post if you have nothing useful to add. Thank you.

 

[Verbose]

I'm still stuck on being flabbergasted by what the devil the concept of something being "biocultural" is supposed to contain?

 

[Skwink]

You REALLY have to give us a tl;dr version. This is way way way way way too long. There won't be a good discussion unless you do that.

I'm guessing your a fan of Egypt?

 

[Mentuemhat]

You REALLY have to give us a tl;dr version. This is way way way way way too long. There won't be a good discussion unless you do that.

I'm guessing your a fan of Egypt?

Thank you for the suggestion. Am gonna give it some thought.

 

[Cynovolans]

After reading the first two paragraphs I'm left with the feeling you haven't even read your sources.

 

[Lord Baal]

Oh crap, another "EGYPTIANS ARE BLACK!!!! thread. Haven't we done this before, twice, with both times ending in tears?

 

[Mentuemhat]

After reading the first two paragraphs I'm left with the feeling you haven't even read your sources.

here are the original two paragraps. Could you be more specific about what makes you feel that am not familiar with my sources?

In the world of Academia, the controversial question of the biocultural origins of Ancient Egypt has been largely defined as a struggle between the south as represented by The Sudan/Sahara, which is equated with 'black' or subsaharan Africa, and the North as represented by the northernmost part of Egypt and the adjacent Palestine/Syria region, where North Africa is esentially seen as an extension of the Middle East. It was argued in the early part of Ancient Egyptian historiography that the population of AE were South West Asians from the Syria/Palestine region who bought the light of civilization to the docile and submissive African savages. So it was assumed that all the accoutrements of civilization were brought from South West Asia such as sophisticated religious and socio-political systems , language and writing systems, and ofcourse pastoral and settled modes of Agriculture. Agriculture, especially seemed most evident of this supposed theory, as some of the most important crops such as wheat and barley and ofcourse livestock, especially sheep and goats were all derived from Southwest Asia.

However more recently the consensus has moved away from Southwest Asia to Africa as the origin of these major aspects of Ancient Egyptian civilization. Analysis of language for instance has shown Ancient Egyptian being closer to languages spoken in the Horn of Africa, such as Somali, than in the middle East; the archaeological evidence also points out similarities between the culture of Ancient Egypt and its African or Nubian neighbours further south. In a matter of fact such evidence attest to the idea of Dynastic culture being formulated in the south close to modern day Sudan and then moving up north. But the most decisive evidence has proven to be in the field of population biology:Recent studies on crania and skeletal remains show ancient Egyptians mapping closest to Africans, especially Sudanic and North East African peoples as opposed to neighbouring Southwest Asians. (Shomarka Keita) Recent Genetic studies of Y chromosome haplogroups placing the origins of Ancient egypt in East Africa have been the most recent addition to the plethora of biological evidence proving the Africanity of Ancient Egypt.

 

[Cynovolans]

Analysis of language for instance has shown Ancient Egyptian being closer to languages spoken in the Horn of Africa, such as Somali, than in the middle East;

There is no consensus on how the branches of the Afro-Asiatic language family are related to each other, but even then no one has proposed that Somali(member of the Cuhorsehockeyic branch) is closer to Egyptian than any of the Semitic languages. If this is suppose to be from Ehret, then you should know he clusters Egyptian with Semitic and Berber, but not with Cuhorsehockeyic.

the archaeological evidence also points out similarities between the culture of Ancient Egypt and its African or Nubian neighbours further south ( Ehret 1996).

I prefer a source that actually has something to do with archaeology instead of languages.

Recent Genetic studies (Stevanovitch et al, 2004) placing the origins of Ancient egypt in East Africa have been the most recent addition to the plethora of biological evidence proving the Africanity of Ancient Egypt.

Stevanovitch suggested that an unusually high amount, for a nile valley population, of M1 lineages in the Gurna population could be a trace from an ancient East African movement(this was before Olivieri et al 2006 found a Eurasian origin for M1 to be more likely), he did not say anything about the origins of ancient egyptians, and his study still found that the majority of lineages had a Eurasian origin.

 

[Mentuemhat]

I prefer a source that actually has something to do with archaeology instead of languages

.

well Chris Ehret is not simply a linguist he is a professor of history. And this is what he had to say in his Esssy "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African culture", about culytural similarity and continuity between the nile valey, the Sahara and the Sudan.

Between about 5000 and 3000 B.C. a new era of southern cultural influences took shape. Increasing aridity pushed more of the human population of the eastern Sahara into areas with good access to the waters of the Nile, and along the Nile the bottomlands were for the first time cleared and farmed. The Egyptian stretches of the river came to form the northern edge of a newly emergent Middle Nile Culture Area, which extended far south up the river, well into the middle of modern-day Sudan. Peoples speaking languages of the Eastern Sahelian branch of the Nilo-Saharan family inhabited the heartland of this region.

If that is not enough for you there is also what Hendrickx and Vermeersch have to say in chapter 2, "Prehistory: From the Palaeolithic to the Badarian Culture" in "The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt". Lets first look at what they had to say about the peopling of the Green Western Desert when the rains begin:

The rainfall is a result of the northward shift of the monsoon belt;therefore human occupation in the Western Desert started from the south. The Settlers came most probably from the Nile Valley, an idea that is primarily based on the absence of other possibilities, but seems to be confirmed by similarities with the lithic technology of sites in the Nubian Valley.

And bear in mind that the Western Desert is believed to be the primary source of the later Badarian culture:

It seems obvious that the Badarian culture did not appear from a single source, although the Western Desert was probably the predominant one.

What is even more interesting is what they have to say about the Tasian Culture, contemporary and possibly even older than the Badarian:

The existence of a still earlier culture, the Tasian has been claimed. This culture would have been characterized by the presence of round-based calciform beakers with incised designs filled with white pigmet, which are also known from contexts of similar date in Neolithic Sudan. However the existence of the Tasian as a chronologically or culturally separated unit has never been demonstrated beyond doubt. Although most scholars consider the Tasian to be simply part of the Badarian culture, it has also been argued that the Tasian represents the continuation of a lower Egyptian tradition, which would be the immediate predecessor of the Naqada I culture. This however seems rather implausible, first because similarities with the Lower Egyptian Neolithic cultures are not convincing, and secondly, because of the Tasian's obvious ceramic links with the Sudan. If the Tasian must be considered as a separate cultural entity, then it might represent a nomadic culture with a Sudanese background, which interacted with the Badarian culture.

As i mentioned in the last paragraph of my revised OP, these predynastic cultures, whose origins can ultimately be traced back to Sudanic peoples, eventually morph into the Naqadan out of which we get Pharaonic Egypt. So again the culture of Ancient gypt could effectively be described as a SUDANIC TRANSPLANT!

 

[Cynovolans]

As i mentioned in the last paragraph of my revised OP, these predynastic cultures, whose origins can ultimately be traced back to Sudanic peoples, eventually morph into the Naqadan out of which we get Pharaonic Egypt. So again the culture of Ancient gypt could effectively be described as a SUDANIC TRANSPLANT!

The formation of the Egyptian state and culture is much too complex to just call it an offshoot of another culture. From The prehistory of Egypt from the first Egyptians to the first pharaohs by Beatrix Midant-Reynes,

We therefore have a whole range of different opinions: the Badarian people from the south, from the east, from the west, and even from the north-- from all the cardinal points. But there is one of these points of view that can be supported without any difficulty: the view expressed by Holmes(1989b: 185), since it is she who argues that the single most definite feature of the problem is the fact that the Badarian cannot be regarded as a tradition that emerged from one simple unique source. We are thus dealing with a complex culture, which was already deeply “Egyptian“ in the sense that it appears to have assimilated, and converted into powerfully original forms, traits that are rarely encountered elsewhere.

You also have some wrong ideas about the influences on Predynastic cultures of Egypt. The Western Desert was very important to the development of the Egypt, but there is no evidence that the inhabitants of the Western Desert were Nilo-Saharans, the only thing that may suggest their origin is the style of their pottery which is very similar to styles that have been discovered in Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, and really all through out the Sahara(Wendorf 2002). I don’t know why you only mention the Nabta Playa when it comes to the Western Desert’s influence on Egypt, I consider the Dakleh and Kharga oases to be much more important. The Bashendi cultures of Dakleh and Kharga are the first examples of a semi-sedentary lifestyle in the region, and certainly had some influence on Badarian tools (McDonald 2006). What makes Nabta Playa significant is the possibility of domestic cattle were around in Northeast Africa thousands of years earlier than anywhere in else in the region, (although Brass 2003 points out many of the flaws in the evidence that was interpreted to suggest the cattle remains found at Nabta were domesticated), other than that it doesn’t seem the inhabitants of Nabta had a direct influence on Egyptian culture.

It is important that the Western Desert was not the only influence on Upper Egyptian cultures. The Eastern Desert(region between Nile Valley and Red Sea) has not had nearly as many excavations as the Western Desert so until recently it was unknown exactly what influence the region had on the development of Egypt. From Majer (1992)

Shells of Red Sea gastropods were occasionally found in the Northern Nile reaches of the Fayum,(Caton-Thompson and Gardner 1934:87-88), and were also present in small numbers at Merimde, El-Omari, and Wadi el-Hof (Hayes 1965:111-21). This shows that trade with the Red Sea had reached those regions early in the Valley history.

However, the Badarian cultural contexts show the closest connection with the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea. Their burials frequently contained Red Sea shells (Brunton and Caton-Thompson 1928:27-38). A prominent find in the graves were huge masses of glazed steatite beads. Some Egyptologists believe those derived from Mesopotamian and Syrian contexts (Finkenstaedt, 1983), although they may also have originated from sources in the Eastern Desert.

While some maintain that Badarians originated in the Eastern Desert, Brass concludes that the similarities are from trade and occasional migrations between the two regions, and that contact between the Nile and the Eastern desert was more common that previously thought.

You also do not consider Lower Egyptian and Faiyum cultures. The Merimde(contemporary to the Badarians) culture of Lower Egypt and the Faiyum regions, shows strong connections with the Levant region, and Kozlowski and Ginter(1989) identify a Near Eastern origin, specifically the Jordanian valley region, although indigenous and Faiyum origins have been proposed. The villages of predynastic Lower Egypt have also been compared to the villages of the Levant and Upper Egypt(Badarians) and they were found to be much more similar to Levantine villages (Hoffman 1979, p.176). The El-Omari culture that later replaced the Merimde culture, also shows strong similarities to Palestinian cultures (Midant-Reynes 1992/2000, p.121). The culture that inhabits Lower Egypt before being absorbed into Naqada, Maadi-Buto, has been compared to Palestinian sites because of the similarities between architecture (Watrin and Blin 2003). While Lower Egyptian culture may have been absorbed into Upper Egyptian culture, cities of Lower Egypt still maintained some regional differences from Upper Egypt and some Maadi influences (Seeher 1992).

And the most important component to the development of Egyptian culture was the Egyptians themselves. As stated in the quote I posted at the top from Midant-Reynes, outside cultures did not create the Egypt, but only influenced the development of the complex Egyptian culture.

 

[vogtmurr]

There was a lot of flux in humanity in the last 10,000 years and the Nile Valley was populated very early. I know there was speculation of a dynastic race arriving from somewhere later but is there really any evidence ?

I'm sure no Egyptologist but I am inclined to say that Egypt was unique enough on its own to be considered part of the African tapestry in its own right. I can't comment on racial proportions, but surely Saharan and Libyan peoples entered in the distant past as Nilotic peoples did later. Many of these early peoples were probably significantly unique in the same way that North African berbers are from other Africans. They all migrated from that area at one time or another and it was so long ago that some characteristics changed. But I don't know that the ancient Egyptians as we know them necessarily came from Asia.

 

[Mentuemhat]

The formation of the Egyptian state and culture is much too complex to just call it an offshoot of another culture...

I think you have misunderstood. What you need to consider is that the modern day political boundary separating Egypt from the modern day Sudan did not exixst in the ancient world. The Predynastic cultures of Ancient Egypt were a African cultural complex which originated most likely from the Sudan and was located in regions on either side of the modern day political biundary. The evidence of the Qustul incense burner of the A group Nubians(Bruce Williams) is evidence that these Nubians at the least possesed an embryonic pharaonic culture which run parallel to that being developed by the Naqada culture of Upper Egypt. And this at a time when no such similar culture existed in the north.

The Biological evidence further supports this point. Shomarka keita:

Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Ku****es, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans.

This means essentially that the difference between Upper Egyptians and their northern counterparts in the delta region during the formative predynastic period was greater than the difference between them and their Nubian counterparts.

 

[Zardnaar]

Oh crap, another "EGYPTIANS ARE BLACK!!!! thread. Haven't we done this before, twice, with both times ending in tears?

My theory is that the Pharoahs were time traveling Jewish neo nazis who needed to lord oit over Kush. They were also ninja pirate dinosaur riders

 

[Mentuemhat]

You also have some wrong ideas about the influences on Predynastic cultures of Egypt. The Western Desert was very important to the development of the Egypt, but there is no evidence that the inhabitants of the Western Desert were Nilo-Saharans, the only thing that may suggest their origin is the style of their pottery which is very similar to styles that have been discovered in Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, and really all through out the Sahara(Wendorf 2002). I don’t know why you only mention the Nabta Playa when it comes to the Western Desert’s influence on Egypt, I consider the Dakleh and Kharga oases to be much more important. The Bashendi cultures of Dakleh and Kharga are the first examples of a semi-sedentary lifestyle in the region, and certainly had some influence on Badarian tools (McDonald 2006). What makes Nabta Playa significant is the possibility of domestic cattle were around in Northeast Africa thousands of years earlier than anywhere in else in the region, (although Brass 2003 points out many of the flaws in the evidence that was interpreted to suggest the cattle remains found at Nabta were domesticated), other than that it doesn’t seem the inhabitants of Nabta had a direct influence on Egyptian culture.

Pottery similar in style being found throughout the Sahara, Algeria and Egypt simply supports my first point that the modern day political boundaries separating sudan from Egypt was not a factor in the Ancient world. These similarities came about as a common culture being shared by African peoples who most likely migrated from the Sudan into the Green Sahara with the upward shift of the monsoons. Veermersch and Hendricks again explain this process for the Western Desert:

The rainfall is a result of the northward shift of the monsoon belt;therefore human occupation in the Western Desert started from the south. The Settlers came most probably from the Nile Valley, an idea that is primarily based on the absence of other possibilities, but seems to be confirmed by similarities with the lithic technology of sites in the Nubian Valley.

Now this process can be applied for the whole of the Sahara Desert. Basil Davidson in his classic documentary nile valle civilzations gives a quite succinct explanation of the Green Sahara's common culture.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w1x8nVD4xs&feature=related

You also do not consider Lower Egyptian and Faiyum cultures. The Merimde(contemporary to the Badarians) culture of Lower Egypt and the Faiyum regions, shows strong connections with the Levant region, and Kozlowski and Ginter(1989) identify a Near Eastern origin, specifically the Jordanian valley region, although indigenous and Faiyum origins have been proposed. The villages of predynastic Lower Egypt have also been compared to the villages of the Levant and Upper Egypt(Badarians) and they were found to be much more similar to Levantine villages (Hoffman 1979, p.176). The El-Omari culture that later replaced the Merimde culture, also shows strong similarities to Palestinian cultures (Midant-Reynes 1992/2000, p.121). The culture that inhabits Lower Egypt before being absorbed into Naqada, Maadi-Buto, has been compared to Palestinian sites because of the similarities between architecture (Watrin and Blin 2003). While Lower Egyptian culture may have been absorbed into Upper Egyptian culture, cities of Lower Egypt still maintained some regional differences from Upper Egypt and some Maadi influences (Seeher 1992).

And the most important component to the development of Egyptian culture was the Egyptians themselves. As stated in the quote I posted at the top from Midant-Reynes, outside cultures did not create the Egypt, but only influenced the development of the complex Egyptian culture.

These last two paragraphs to me seem confused. First you suggest that the Northern cultures of Ancient Egypt maybe Palestinian as opposed to African or even Egyptian. And yet you warn against outside cultures being given credit for the development of Egyptian culture.You should either make up your mind or listen to your own advice!

 

[Cynovolans]

I think you have misunderstood. What you need to consider is that the modern day political boundary separating Egypt from the modern day Sudan did not exixst in the ancient world. The Predynastic cultures of Ancient Egypt were a African cultural complex which originated most likely from the Sudan and was located in regions on either side of the modern day political biundary. The evidence of the Qustul incense burner of the A group Nubians(Bruce Williams) is evidence that these Nubians at the least possesed an embryonic pharaonic culture which run parallel to that being developed by the Naqada culture of Upper Egypt. And this at a time when no such similar culture existed in the north.

The Biological evidence further supports this point. Shomarka keita:



This means essentially that the difference between Upper Egyptians and their northern counterparts in the delta region during the formative predynastic period was greater than the difference between them and their Nubian counterparts.

Nubia =/= Sudan so your first point is meaningless, the A group culture of nubia inhabited Southern Egypt between the first and second cataracts, and their similarities to Upper Egypt were probably brought to them from Naqada. They had strong trade with the Egyptians, and a very large amount of their pottery and other materials is actually of Naqadan origin (Lille, 1976).

Pottery similar in style being found throughout the Sahara, Algeria and Egypt simply supports my first point that the modern day political boundaries separating sudan from Egypt was not a factor in the Ancient world. These similarities came about as a common culture being shared by African peoples who most likely migrated from the Sudan into the Green Sahara with the upward shift of the monsoons. Veermersch and Hendricks again explain this process for the Western Desert:

Now this process can be applied for the whole of the Sahara Desert. Basil Davidson in his classic documentary nile valle civilzations gives a quite succinct explanation of the Green Sahara's common culture.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w1x8nVD4xs&feature=related

Similar ceramics =/= shared ancestry, and it doesn't matter because I'm not going to say that Rome is a Levantine transplant just because the Cardium Pottery culture originated in Syria.

These last two paragraphs to me seem confused. First you suggest that the Northern cultures of Ancient Egypt maybe Palestinian as opposed to African or even Egyptian. And yet you warn against outside cultures being given credit for the development of Egyptian culture.You should either make up your mind or listen to your own advice!

It is outside influences upon the Egyptian cultures, some aspects of the early Faiyum and Lower Delta cultures can be traced(some archaeologists maintain that they originated in) to the Near East, but overall those cultures only made some influences upon the Egyptian state and culture.

 

[Dachs]

Similar ceramics =/= shared ancestry, and it doesn't matter because I'm not going to say that Rome is a Levantine transplant just because the Cardium Pottery culture originated in Syria.

Hey, these are the same guys who say that ethnicity and genetics are inherently connected; did you really expect them not to think that material culture is connected to either? That would be such a twentieth-century opinion!

 

[Mentuemhat]

Nubia =/= Sudan so your first point is meaningless, the A group culture of nubia inhabited Southern Egypt between the first and second cataracts, and their similarities to Upper Egypt were probably brought to them from Naqada. They had strong trade with the Egyptians, and a very large amount of their pottery and other materials is actually of Naqadan origin (Lille, 1976).

Echoes of the Hamitic hypothesis. You are saying that the sophistication of A Group Nubians were the result somehow of outside influence from Egypt. Do you believe that Nubians or Africans to the south of Egypt simply lacked within themselves what it took to be sophisticated or create 'high culture'? Well Bruce Williams(1998) certainly does not think so. This is what he had to say in "A Prospectus For Exploring The Essence of Nubia" about cultural continuity and paralles between Egyptians and other Africans:

Elements of the tradition often either combined with, were supplanted by, or even replaced Egyptian motifs in a way that indicates considerable reciprocity existed in the relationship between Egypt and countries to the south.... evidence for the complex occurred in every archaeological phase from the Neolithic to the Christian period...

Similar ceramics =/= shared ancestry, and it doesn't matter because I'm not going to say that Rome is a Levantine transplant just because the Cardium Pottery culture originated in Syria.

It is outside influences upon the Egyptian cultures, some aspects of the early Faiyum and Lower Delta cultures can be traced(some archaeologists maintain that they originated in) to the Near East, but overall those cultures only made some influences upon the Egyptian state and culture.

You are essentially trying to redfine the very meaning of archaeology to suit your own convenience. Similar ceramics shared by Saharans, Sudanics and Nile vally peoples is not evidence of a common culture or reciprocal influence, however architectural similarities between the Northern cultures of Predynastic KMT and the Levant is? I call that a gymnastic kind of logic, or rather illogic.

 

[Mentuemhat]

You also do not consider Lower Egyptian and Faiyum cultures. The Merimde(contemporary to the Badarians) culture of Lower Egypt and the Faiyum regions, shows strong connections with the Levant region, and Kozlowski and Ginter(1989) identify a Near Eastern origin, specifically the Jordanian valley region, although indigenous and Faiyum origins have been proposed. The villages of predynastic Lower Egypt have also been compared to the villages of the Levant and Upper Egypt(Badarians) and they were found to be much more similar to Levantine villages (Hoffman 1979, p.176). The El-Omari culture that later replaced the Merimde culture, also shows strong similarities to Palestinian cultures (Midant-Reynes 1992/2000, p.121). The culture that inhabits Lower Egypt before being absorbed into Naqada, Maadi-Buto, has been compared to Palestinian sites because of the similarities between architecture (Watrin and Blin 2003). While Lower Egyptian culture may have been absorbed into Upper Egyptian culture, cities of Lower Egypt still maintained some regional differences from Upper Egypt and some Maadi influences (Seeher 1992).

While i donot discount the importance of Northern cultures in egyptian history, are you trying to throw doubt on the idea that dynastic culture was a direct offshoot of the Southern Predynastic cultures?