Ancient Egyptian Civilization Research Paper

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The African Origin of Ancient Egyptian Civilizationmore by Brandon Pilcher
This paper argues that the ancient Egyptian people and their civilization were primarily of indigenous African origin. Multidisciplinary evidence from physical anthropology, genetics, archaeology, and cultural anthropology are all cited... more
This paper argues that the ancient Egyptian people and their civilization were primarily of indigenous African origin. Multidisciplinary evidence from physical anthropology, genetics, archaeology, and cultural anthropology are all cited to buttress this argument.
More Info: Assignment
Between 5200 and 4000 BC, knowledge of plant cultivation spread from the Fayum into southern (or Upper) Egypt, but this did not immediately lead to Egyptians abandoning their cattle-herding ways. On the contrary, herding cattle, along with hunting wild game, continued to play much more important roles in prehistoric Upper Egyptian economies (Wilkinson 2003).Furthermore, Egyptian material culture, especially tools and pottery, continued to sharecharacteristics with more southerly African material culture (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko1965, Arkell 1975) and rock art from the heart of the Sahara shows similarities to prehistoric Egyptian art (Donadoni 1964).The thousand years between 4000 and 3000 BC saw the drying up of the Sahara from a grassy savanna to a hyper-arid desert, forcing the Egyptian people to crowd along the Nile and develop more urban, socially stratified societies. Most of this urbanization and growth of social complexity occurred in Upper Egypt, whereas northern (or Lower) Egypt remained somewhat of a cultural backwater (Wilkinson 2003). Eventually the Upper Egyptian culture would expand todominate the whole country and completely replace the simpler Lower Egyptian society (Bard1994). As this was happening, a prosperous monarchic culture very similar to Upper Egypt wasdeveloping in northern Sudan, again
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