Many more sites are known for the Late Paleolithic, which dates from ca. 21,000-12,000 years ago, than for the upper Paleolithic. Late Paleolithic sites are found in Lower Nubia and upper Egypt, but not farther north, where contemporary sites are probably buried under later river alluvium. From Late Paleolithic times onward the archaeological evidence points to more rapid technological and cultural development than had occurred during the several hundred thousand years of the Lower and Middle Paleolithic (with major gaps of information for the upper Paleolithic). Bladelets which appeared at this time are so small that they must have been hafted to make compound tools with sharp cutting edges or points, possibly suggesting the invention of the bow and arrow. Mortars and pestles are another new type of stone tool associated with the Late Paleolithic. According to Wendorf, the sequence of Late Paleolithic stone tool industries points to more regional variation than earlier, between upper Egypt and Lower Nubia, and within each region, which may represent local innovation and exploitation of a wider range of resources.
Late Paleolithic sites are located in different environmental settings, which were occupied, often repeatedly, at different times of the year. Archaeological evidence also suggests greater variation in subsistence strategies than earlier, with more diversified hunting and gathering practices. Large mammals such as wild cattle and hartebeest (as well as the small dorcas gazelle) were still hunted, but waterfowl, shellfish, and fish (including tilapia and catfish) were also consumed.
At Wadi Kubbaniya near Aswan, Wendorf has excavated Late Paleolithic sites dating to ca. 21,000-17,000 years ago in which the diversity of hunting and fishing is clearly demonstrated. Behind a dune at the mouth of the wadi, a seasonal lake formed after the yearly flooding. Eventually the wadi was blocked off entirely from the Nile and fed by ground water. Catfish were harvested in large quantities, probably when they were spawning, and then smoked in pits to preserve them for future consumption. At several sites there are also the first remains of (wild) plants that had been gathered for consumption: tubers, especially nut-grass, and seeds of wetland plants. The tubers contained toxins that could only be removed by grinding, and the grinding stones found there and at other Late Paleolithic sites in the Nile Valley were probably used for this purpose. That a significant effort was made to process these plants to make them edible demonstrates the increasing importance of plants in the diet, perhaps as a seasonal supplement to animal protein.
Figure 4.5 Figures of wild cattle at the Late Paleolithic rock art site of Qurta I, locality 1. Source: D. Huyge et al., First Evidence of Pleistocene Rock Art in North Africa: Securing the Age of the Qurta Petroglyphs (Egypt) through OSL Dating, Antiquity 85 (2011): 1184-1193, Figure 2. © Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels.
To the north of Wadi Kubbaniya (about 34 kilometers to the south of Edfu and to the south of the village of el-Hosh), Belgian archaeologists have recently discovered a locality with Late Paleolithic rock art carved on cliffs of Nubian sandstone. More Late Paleolithic rock art, which was first discovered by Canadian archaeologists in the early 1960s, has been (re)located across the river near the village of Qurta, 15 kilometers north of Kom Ombo. The Qurta rock drawings consist of at least 179 individual images incised or hammered in outline in a naturalistic style - similar to images in Upper Paleolithic caves in southern Europe. Wild cattle predominate among the Qurta figures, but there are also other large mammals, birds, fish and a few stylized human figures (Figure 4.5). A Late Paleolithic settlement has also been discovered at the base of one of the Qurta cliffs with rock drawings. Thus, there is emerging evidence that in Egypt as well as in Europe toward the end of the Pleistocene hunter-gatherers were creating a form of “art” that was relevant to their cultures, in different locations and different media - depending on opportunities in the local environment.
Around 13,000-12,000 years ago the last Ice Age came to an end, followed by the early Holocene, the present geological epoch in which we live. In highland Ethiopia there was increased rainfall and river discharge, and the White Nile, which had previously been dry, began to flow again. As a result of this significantly moister climate in East Africa, there were very high Nile floods in Egypt. Because of what has been termed the “Wild Nile” of this time, there are many gaps in the archaeological record. Three Late Paleolithic cemeteries in Nubia, however, date to the time of the Wild Nile, and belong to a culture with microlithic flakes, known in Lower Nubia and upper Egypt as the Qadan industry.
The earliest known Qadan cemeteries in the Nile Valley (ca. 14,000-12,000 bp) are in Lower Nubia. At the site of Jebel Sahaba, near Wadi Halfa on the east bank of the Nile, 59 burials of men, women, and children were found. They had been buried in pits covered with sandstone slabs. About 40 percent of the burials show evidence of violent deaths, with stone points still embedded in their bones or deep cut marks on their bones.
This may be the earliest evidence of human conflict in Egypt and Nubia. As the numbers of hunter-gatherer-fishers grew in the Late Paleolithic in the upper Nile Valley, perhaps there was increasing competition for resources, especially since there were major changes in the volume of the Nile at the time of the Jebel Sahaba burials (ca. 12,300 bp). Although there are other possible explanations (including social conflict and inter-group raiding) for the violent deaths in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery, some river locations may have been more resource rich than others, and competition between different groups may have resulted in conflict.
In another Late Paleolithic cemetery, at Wadi Tushka north of Abu Simbel in Lower Nubia, 19 burials were excavated. Several of these burials were marked with the skulls of wild cattle. cattle horns and bucrania have also been found in some Neolithic (human) burials in upper Nubia and northern Sudan. These later developments were not simply “cattle cults,” but reflect gradual, long-term changes in subsistence/economic practices with the increasing importance of herding, and ritual practices and beliefs found in the mainly preserved evidence of human burials, as David Wengrow has elegantly discussed. Much later in Nubia, in the late third and early second millennia bc, remains of domesticated cattle are significant in burials of the c-Group and Kerma cultures, demonstrating the continuing symbolic importance of cattle there.
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