5200 B.C. Is New Date for Farms in Egypt

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Archaeologists found evidence of a farm settlement from 5200 B.C.

U.C.L.A./RUG Faiyum Project







                                         5200 B.C. Is New Date for Farms in Egypt
 




By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: February 12, 2008

Long before the rule of pharaohs, Egyptians grew wheat and barley and raised pigs, goats,
sheep and cattle.

Spotty evidence had suggested that agriculture was practiced there more than 7,000 years ago,
two millenniums earlier than the first royal dynasties.

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Rare, polished pottery shard







American and Dutch archaeologists reported last week the discovery at a desert oasis of what
they say is the earliest known farming settlement in ancient Egypt.

They said the animal bones, carbonized grains, hearths and pottery were roughly dated at
5200 B.C.

Now, for the first time, the archaeologists said, early agriculture in Egypt can be studied in a
village context, promising insights about the farmers and some answers to the questions of
how, why and when Egyptians adopted farming.

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In an announcement on Wednesday, Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme
Council of Antiquities, said the new research showed that “the settlement was much
larger than expected” and included clay floors of simple dwellings.

The discovery was made by a team led by Willeke Wendrich of the University of California,
Los Angeles, and Rene Cappers of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. They
said the research, supported in part by the National Geographic Society, expanded on
findings in 1925 by British archaeologists, who uncovered a wood sickle with a serrated
flint blade and grain storage pits.

                                                         


The remains of the Neolithic, or Late Stone Age, settlement were buried under a thick layer
of sand at an oasis about 50 miles southwest of Cairo, in a desert region called the Faiyum.
The excavations last fall uncovered multiple layers of farm remains and hearths, indicating
occupation over at least 1,000 years.

“Rather than seeing the Neolithic as one period, we can begin to understand its time depth
and discern different periods and developments,” Dr. Wendrich said.

The rise of agriculture occurred at various times around the world, beginning 10,000 to
11,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and adjacent lands in the Middle East.

Some artifacts suggested that the people at the settlement had trade links with the Red
Sea, a possible clue that this was the route by which agriculture was introduced to Egypt,
possibly from the region of present-day Iraq.

Dr. Wendrich said in a telephone interview that no one knew how early or from whom Egyptians
learned plant and animal domestication. The settlement, she said, does not appear to have
the mud-brick permanence of other ancient Middle East sites.

Bruce D. Smith, an anthropologist of early agriculture at the Smithsonian Institution, said the
discovery filled in “a very important and poorly known phase of the development of agricultural
systems which led to the pyramids and later civilizations.”

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                                                   Egypt's Earliest Farming Village Found





February 12, 2008—
National Geographic Magazine

Archaeologists working at the site of a 7,000-year-old village in Egypt's Faiyum depression excavate clay
floors and hearths.

The site is the earliest farm settlement yet found in Egypt, providing a major breakthrough in understanding
the enigmatic people of the late Stone Age who lived long before the appearance of the Egyptian pharaohs, experts say.

The discoveries were made by a joint U.S.-Dutch team of scientists digging deeper into a previously excavated mound of sand some 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Cairo (see map).

The remains of domesticated wheat, barley, pigs, sheep, and goats—all imported from the Middle East or Turkey—were also found, potentially adding a new chapter to the history of Egypt's contact with foreign cultures in pre-pharaonic times.

"It's a missing link, filling in a very important and poorly known phase of the development of agricultural systems, which led to the Pyramids and later civilizations," said Bruce Smith, an archaeobiologist and a member of National Geographic's Committee for Research and Exploration.

(The latest phase of excavations done at Faiyum was funded by the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)

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Artifacts (not shown to scale) recently discovered at Egypt's oldest known farm settlement include
(clockwise from top left) a late Stone Age arrowhead, a rare example of polished pottery, barley hulls,
and a sickle blade.

These and other remnants are helping scientists piece together the daily life of Egypt's earliest known
farmers, archaeologists announced February 12, 2008.

"Now we have information from the [animal] bones and from the seeds, and you can produce a kind of
[late Stone Age] diet, which was not possible before," said René Cappers, a paleobotanist at the
Netherlands' University of Groningen and co-director of the project that uncovered the site.

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Egypt's Faiyum region, shown in a file photo, is home to some of the earliest agricultural settlements
in the Nile Valley.

About 8,000 years ago the level of a nearby lake fell, prompting hunter-gatherers who lived in the
area to abandon it.

The lake level later rose again, and farming settlements were established along the shores.

The earliest known farm settlement in the area was unearthed recently by a U.S.-Dutch team of archaeologists working in Faiyum, who announced the discovery on February 12, 2008.

The discovery could alter the prevailing notion that the late Stone Age was a primitive period dis-
connected from later and more sophisticated stages of ancient Egypt, said Willeke Wendrich, an
associate professor of Egyptian archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-
director of the new dig.

"The most important thing is that we don't look at this very early period of Egyptian history as
something foreign to what happens later in the pharaonic period," she said.

"It's clear that this was not a bare existence that people had here. They made a pretty good
life for themselves."