Neolithic cultures, overview (Archaeology of

Ancient Egypt)
The "Neolithic" (literally the "New Stone
Age") is the common (if imprecise) term widely
used to denote the initial appearance in a given
region of food-producingthat is, agricultural
economies. For hundreds of millennia efore
agriculture appeared in Egypt, people lived there
y hunting, fishing and gathering the area!s rich
profusion of natural flora and fauna, ut aout
",#$$ years ago people in several areas of Egypt
egan cultivating wheat and arley and herding
sheep, goats, cattle and pigs. %he modest farms
and crude hoes and grinding stones (two
important new forms of stone tools of the
&Neolithic&) of these first Egyptian farmers might
appear uninteresting and unimportant when
compared, for e'ample, to the great pyramids
and funerary riches of the pharaohs who followed
them, ut, as in all other great civili(ations of
anti)uity, Egypt!s first states were only possile
ecause agriculture provided vastly greater and
more reliale amounts of food than hunting and
gathering* all the toms and temples and great
cities of pharaonic Egypt were supported y the
primitive annual cultivation of wheat, arley and a
few other crops, supplemented y domesticated
sheep, goats, cattle, pigs and other animals.
+ow did this transition to agriculture occur, and
precisely when, And most interesting of all, why,
-enerations of scholars have contemplated
these )uestions, and not only in Egypt*
agriculture appeared in many areas of the world
at aout the same time.
%he .ey element in agriculture is environmental
modification. +unters and gatherers modify the
environments of plants and animals in a small
way, of course, y ma.ing camp fires and so
forth, ut farmers modify environments in much
more intense ways. %hey plow fields, cut and
urn forests, irrigate and weed crops, protect
their farm animals from predators, and in many
other ways alter the &natural& conditions of plant
and animal life. Even in Egypt, where the Nile
provided a relatively easy form of agriculture in
which seeds could e planted in the wet rich soils
left every year y the Nile floods, people still had
to weed, uild di.es to trap asins of water for
irrigation, hand-water some crops, pen cattle,
herd sheep and do other simple agricultural
tas.s.
The essence of domestication is
mutualism, the increasing dependence of
plants, animals and people on each other, often
to the point that plants and animals lose their
aility to survive in the wild. /heat and arley,
for e'ample, were altered genetically during the
domestication process so that, among other
changes, their seeds remain tightly attached to
the plant!s stem. %his would e an e'tremely
maladaptive change if these plants had to live in
their natural environment, without human help in
seeding these crops. /ild wheat and arley had
evolved ways of seeding themselves y means
of a rittle grain head that even light wind or the
activities of irds and rodents could shatter,
spilling the seeds on the ground to germinate the
ne't year!s plants. %his aility to reproduce
without human help has een largely lost as
people have manipulated these crops over the
millennia. 0ome of the initial genetic changes
were proaly accidental, made y people who
did not .now that y, for e'ample, harvesting wild
cereals more intensively y tapping ripe heads
and collecting the grains from the shattering
grain heads they were removing from the genetic
population the seeds with this rittle
characteristic. 1ut cereals with this tough non-
shattering grain head are far easier to collect with
sic.les than the rittle wild varieties, and at some
point people undoutedly egan intentionally to
plant seeds from parent plants with desirale
characteristics, 2ust as they egan to select for
sheep with etter wool, cows that produced more
mil., and so forth.
-iven this sense of what agriculture and
domestication are, we can consider how Egypt
made the transition to an agricultural society. %o
egin with, farming in Egypt did not start ecause
some genius oserved natural reproduction in
plants and animals and then domesticated
animals and laid out a farm. %he transition from
hunting-gathering to agriculture in Egypt too.
place over centuries and involved plants and
animals whose domestication re)uired many
millennia of oth &natural& and intentional
selection. Agricultural economies also re)uire the
development of speciali(ed tools. %hough vague,
the &Neolithic& is not altogether an inappropriate
term for early farming, ecause farming called for
an entirely different tool.it from that used in
hunting and gathering. 0ic.les and hoes in
particular are important cereal farming tools, and
archaeologically one of the most visile signs of
changing economies is an increase in the stone
mortars and pestles (grinding stones) used y
most ancient peoples to ma.e flour from grain.
3erhaps the most infallile mar.er of the growing
importance of agriculture is containers. +unter-
gatherers in different areas of the world used
gourds, and occasionally stone and wood owls
(and in Egypt, empty ostrich eggs), ut farming
re)uires many cheap containers for food
preparation, storage, plant watering and a
thousand other uses. 3ottery was, of course, the
means y which early farmers across the world
met this need for containers, and the processes
of pottery production were independently
invented many times.
It now seems very probable that all the ma2or
Egyptian farm crops and some of the
domesticated animals were domesticated outside
of Egypt, mainly in southwest Asia, and then
introduced to Egypt. 4arious scholars have
advanced the hypothesis that agriculture
appeared later in Egypt than in southwest Asia
ecause the Nile 4alley was so rich in native wild
animals and plants that there was a &resistance&
to farming, especially since we must assume that
early farming was a laorious and not always
reliale way of ma.ing a living in the preindustrial
world. +owever, there is some evidence that
ancient Egyptians were not simply passive
recipients of foreign domesticates, for they
appear to have domesticated several plants and
animals.
The best evidence for this is the result of many
years of research y Fred /endorf, 5omauld
0child, Angela 6lose and their associates, in the
/estern 7esert, the area in modern Egypt!s
southwest )uarter. %heir wor. has given us a
detailed picture of the hunter-gatherers who
roamed the fringes of the Nile 4alley efore
agriculture appeared. Aout 88,$$$ years ago
Africa!s southern monsoon rain elt shifted
northward, so that much more rain fell each year
in the southern part of what is now the eastern
0aharan 7esert. 1y aout 9,#$$ years ago,
people egan moving into the areas ordering
the Nile 4alley, into the rich grasslands that
supported great herds of ga(elles, wild cattle and
other animals. %he evidence is s.etchy ut it
seems to suggest that people moved out into
these grasslands from the Nile 4alley itself,
which at this time teemed with huge catfish,
hippopotami, waterfowl and many other animal
and plant resources. At :om ;mo,/adi
:uaniya and other southern Egyptian sites,
stone tools and other remains have een found
that represent sedentary communities of people
who relied heavily on animals and plants whose
environments they significantly modified. %he
mortars, sic.le lades and other implements
found at these sites suggest sustantial plant
use, ut the adaptation appears to have een a
moile one, ased on small groups pursuing a
diversified hunting- gathering economy. %he
earliest evidence of forms of susistence,
settlement and technology in northeast Africa
that differed significantly from those of the late
3leistocene comes from the desert areas of 1ir
:iseia and Nata in what is now southwest
Egypt. ;n the asis of evidence from this area,
/endorf, 0child and 6lose note that oth cattle
and pottery were .nown here as early as
anywhere else in the world.
Thus, as early as ,!!! years ago, ancient
Egyptians seem to have een in the process of
domesticating plants and animals and developing
the ground stone tools and other implements of
an agricultural economy. 1ut these local
domesticates appear to have een displaced at
some point after aout <,$$$ years ago, when
domesticated strains of wheat and arley were
introduced into Egypt, along with domesticated
sheep and goats (there is no reliale evidence
that the wild ancestors of either sheep (;vis
orientalis) or goats (6apra hircus) lived in North
Africa). /e do not .nowand may never .now
if people using these domesticated plants and
animals immigrated to Egypt or whether these
domesticates were simply introduced along trade
routes that had een in operation for many
centuries efore farming appeared. ;nce
estalished, however, the farming communities
)uic.ly spread through the 7elta and Nile 4alley,
displacing oth those hunter-gatherer groups that
might have remained as well as groups that were
already highly dependent on local plants and had
developed something of an agricultural
technology. %he growing aridity of the period
after aout "$$$ 16 may well have forced
people into the Nile 4alley from the increasingly
arren desert margins, and perhaps they rought
with them oth domesticated cattle and the
ground stone tools that would have een
especially productive when comined with
southwest Asian domesticated crops and
animals. %hese technological changes and the
contrast etween non-agricultural and
agricultural economies is vividly illustrated in
Egypt!s Fayum ;asis, which contains some of
the earliest and most e'tensive remains of
agriculture in Egypt. Around the ancient
shorelines of the la.e that used to fill this oasis
are the remains of hundreds of camp sites of
people who hunted, fished and foraged this rich
lacustrine environment etween aout 9$$$ and
=$$$ 16. %hese camp sites are mar.ed y
countless small stone tools, many of them in the
form of lades aout 8$cm long, and the animal
ones found amidst these tool scatters are from
the native wild fauna of the region, principally
fish, crocodiles, hippopotami, irds and wild
forms of cattle. %here are no grinding stones,
pottery fragments or other evidence that they
grew crops, and no evidence that they raised
domestic animals.
"owever, along other, later shorelines of the
Fayum la.e are the remains of settlements of
people who lived partly y farming. >n 89?#-=,
-ertrude 6aton %hompson and Ellen -ardner
e'cavated several of these Neolithic sites (later
dated to aout #$$$ 16) on the northern side of
the ancient Fayum la.e, and near these sites
they found many evidences of primitive
agriculture. >n one area, for e'ample, they found
8=# pits, many of them lined with coiled straw
&as.etry& and some of them containing wheat
(emmer wheat, %riticum dicoccum) and arley
(+ordeum sp.). %hese pits averaged 98-8??cm in
diameter and @$-=8cm in depth. >nside some of
the silos were agricultural tools, including a
eautifully preserved sic.le of wood and flint. 0o
well preserved was some of the grain that
investigators at the 1ritish Auseum tried
(unsuccessfully) to germinate it. >n the sites near
these silos are innumerale potsherds, hundreds
of limestone grinding stones, sic.le lades, and
the remains of the domesticated sheep, goats,
pigs and other animals that these Fayum people
used to complement their grain crops.
%hese evidences from the Fayum are still among
the very earliest signs of agriculture .nown in
Egypt, ut no evidence was found y 6aton
%hompson, or y any of the later researchers in
this area, that the people living in the Fayum
&invented& agriculture and made the transition to
farming there. %he wheat, arley, sheep and
goats of the Neolithic Fayum appear to e of
strains domesticated in southwest Asia, not
Egypt, and there seems to have een a period
etween the hunter-gatherers and the first
farmers when the Fayum was not occupied. 0o
where did these Fayum farmers come from, and
when, +ow did they initially ta.e up agriculture,
The answers to these #uestions, unfortunately,
may e lost or deeply uried in the Nile alluvium.
1ecause of the Nile!s scouring effects and
ecause of the intensity of occupation and
cultivation of the Nile!s margins, as well as the
thic. layer of silt that presumaly covers the
earliest occupations of the 7elta and other areas
of the Nile channel, very little is .nown aout
early agriculture in Egypt in areas eyond the
Fayum and Aerimde 1eni-salame. >f the
radiocaron date of aout B"$$ 16 from samples
ta.en y means of an auger from several meters
elow ground level (from 2ust aove a layer
containing pottery) in the far eastern 7elta is
representative, the earliest agricultural
communities in Egypt are far under the
groundwater levels, eneath thic. layers of silt.
;nce domesticated wheat, arley, sheep, goats,
pigs and cattle were well estalished in Egypt,
proaly at least y #$$$ 16, the cultural
landscape egan changing rapidly. %he Fayum
agriculturalists, for e'ample, seem never to have
made the transition to a fully agricultural way of
life ased on village communities, perhaps
ecause the productivity of the la.e made
primitive agriculture a somewhat marginal
improvement, ut also proaly ecause annual
floods made the la.e shore a less attractive
farming area than the flood asins along the Nile
itself.
Although the shift to agriculture )uic.ly resulted
in a ma2ority of food eing produced from cereals
and domesticated animals, Egyptians continued
to rely heavily on fish. >n fact, fish ones are a
common component of nearly every ancient
Egyptian archaeological site from the Neolithic
period to the recent past. Animals in the Nile and
the desert margins also continued to e hunted
throughout anti)uity, although eventually hunting
hippopotami, lions, ga(elles and other animals
ecame more of a royal sport than a susistence
activity. /ild fowl, especially duc.s and geese,
were an important element in ancient Egyptian
diets, and early in Egyptian anti)uity duc.s and
geese were penned and .ept oth for eating and
for their eggs (domesticated fowl was not
introduced to Egypt until 5oman times).
$y %!!! $& there were farming communities
at el'$adari, Aerimde 1eni-salame and proaly
hundreds of other places as well. %hese early
communities seem at first to have een made up
of simple round or oval pit-houses made of wood,
thatch and mud, ut soon rectangular uildings
made of mudric. and sharing common walls
the classic Aiddle Eastern architectural form
appeared, and within a few centuries most of
Egypt!s people lived in such communities. %his
type of farming community has shown great
staility and continuity of form and function. %he
remains of farming communities of ?$$$ 16
greatly resemle those of A7 8$$$, and even
into modern times the Egyptian farming village
shows strong resemlances to ancient
communities.
If, as seems li(ely, ancient Neolithic Egyptian
communities resemled those that are .nown
from their earliest representatives, they were
small clusters of reed huts or, later, mudric.
houses that were proaly occupied y memers
of several e'tended families, with a total
community population of a few hundred at most.
%he similarity of styles of artifacts suggests
cultural connections among these communities
ut there were proaly no political or economic
authorities or institutionsthat is, no &chiefs& or
other hereditary rulersuntil after B$$$ 16. %he
natural richness of the Nile 4alley would have
allowed these Neolithic communities to susist
without much e'change of foodstuffs among
them.
As in later )gyptian history, the core of the
Neolithic diet was proaly read and eer. Cater
te'ts show that eer was, of course, drun. in part
for its into'icating properties, ut the eer made
in ancient Egypt was also a good nutritional
complement to the diet. 1eer was made from
read that was crumled into water, mi'ed with
yeast and perhaps a few other sustances, and
then simply allowed to ferment* once fermented,
it was strained. %hus eer ma.ing was an
efficient way to use stale read and surplus
grain.
>t is difficult to define either a eginning or an
ending to the &Neolithic& period, since at least a
few Egyptians appear to have een
domesticating plants and animals and doing
some minor agriculture as early as 8$,$$$ years
ago, and in a sense the &Neolithic& economy of
mi'ed grain farming and livestoc. raising that
was well estalished y #$$$ 16 was not
asically changed until the 5omans introduced
many new crops and farming techni)ues #,$$$
years later. 5esearch on Egypt!s agricultural
origins continues, and in the future there is hope
that some of the ma2or )uestions can e
resolved. 0tudies of the 7NA of ancient Egyptian
cereals may show precisely from what strains of
southwest Asian variants they were derived.
*nderstanding the origins of Egyptian
agriculture is 2ust one piece of a much larger
pu((le, of course, for at the same time cereals
and herd animals were eing domesticated in
southwest Asia and introduced to North Africa,
many other animals and plants were eing
domesticated in south and southeast Asia, and in
North and 0outh America. 6ertainly the climatic
changes that occurred worldwide at the end of
the last >ce Age, some 8$,$$$ years ago, may
have een directly or indirectly involved in
agricultural origins, ut in each case a somewhat
different comination of climatic change,
population growth, evolving tool technologies and
other factors seems to have een the asis for
this momentous transition in human history.