The climate during the periods under discussion, especially during the Pleistocene and early Holocene periods, varied significantly between hyper-arid and very humid with torrential rains and ‘‘Wild Niles.’’ The latter resulted in a high degree of erosion and sedimentation that shaped the physical appearance of the Nile Valley today, and that affected the archaeological preservation and accessibility of sites (Butzer 1976; 1998). This is probably the reason why much of the archaeological evidence of the earliest human occupation is found not in the Nile Valley proper, but in the areas directly adjacent, for example, on preserved Nile terraces along the edges of the high desert plateau, and in particular the surrounding deserts and their oases.
The first evidence for human activity in the Nile Valley is provided by various and highly prolific lithic industries that derive from the Lower Palaeolithic Acheulean tradition (c.500,000 bp). The early assemblages are not associated with any evidence of human or structural remains until much later and well into the Upper (c.70,000-25,000 bp) and Late Palaeolithic (c.24,000-10,000 bp), which is when
There is the first, albeit scarce, evidence for human burial from the sites of Taramsa, Nazlet Khater, and Wadi Kubbaniya (Vermeersh 1983; Wendorf and Schild 1986). An important Late Palaeolithic site is Wadi Kubbaniya that includes several contexts with evidence for seasonal occupation and a subsistence which suggests that humans took advantage of the seasonally changing availability of food plants, wild animals and aquatic resources. These late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers were organized in small, mobile groups and were highly adapted to their environment (Wendorf and Schild 1980; Wetterstrom 1993).
World History
