Chapter III - Primitive Man in Egypt, Western Asia and Europe in Palaeolithic Times

Summary

I. EGYPT

The earliest record of man’s presence in Egypt is written in the ancient gravels and silts of the Nile. The pioneer work of Sandford and Arkell in this field, together with that of Caton-Thompson and Gardner in the Faiyum, set a standard which remains substantially unchallenged, though supplemented by later work—in particular that of Ball and Little.

The Nile valley was already excavated nearly in its present form by the end of the Miocene, but the high sea-level of the Pliocene brought the Mediterranean flooding into the depression, transforming it into a long narrow gulf, reaching as far south as Kom Ombo in Upper Egypt. Into the southern end of this flooded inlet the Nile and its tributaries continued to pour detritus, until by the end of the Pliocene it was filled almost to water-level. In the Lower Pleistocene the sea withdrew to the north, and the river began to erode its bed in conformity with the falling base-level, with pauses marked by gravel terraces at heights ranging from 90 m. to 45 m. above the present stream. These high-level gravels, which can be traced at intervals from Wadi Haifa to Cairo, contain no traces of man. The first stone implements are found in the 30 m. terrace, the gravels of which have yielded bifaces of Abbevillian and Acheulean types, made from pebbles, or from small boulders of brown chert. Further down-cutting brought the river to 15 m. above its present level, and in the gravels of this stage were found ovate bifaces and discs of Middle Acheulean type, and some later Acheulean forms. Sandford considered that the deposits of the 30 m. and 15 m. terraces suggested the evenly distributed rainfall of temperate latitudes, and took the absence of windborne sand and faceted pebbles to mean that there were at that time no deserts in the region.