MIS 4-2 human occupation density in the Lower Nile Valley
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
In the Nile Valley, from Wadi Halfa down to the delta, MSA remains are very numerous. In Upper Egypt there should have been a very large population, suggested by the enormous surfaces which have been exploited for flint extraction. After 40 ka BP population density became restricted. Only some few sites have been found: Taramsa 1, Nazlet Khater 4 and 7, Shuwikhat 1, where blade production and utilisation, characteristic for an Upper Palaeolithic approach are present. An increase of population, fishers along intermittent lakes, is correlated with the dry phases of Greenland Stadial 2 (22.9-14.7 ka CalBP). During Greenland Interstadial 1 population density became very reduced and nearly no material remains are found from the following 4000 years.
However, our knowledge related to human occupation density is very much impacted by the extensive land reclamation and Nile erosion and sedimentation effects. Our available information remains therefore very scanty. Few studies have tried to include the whole of North Africa, from West to East, into a larger cultural, geographical and chronological context. The available chronometric dated material remains of humans for the time period of 40 to 10 ka CalBP from four regions, the Maghreb, Libya, Egypt and the Southern Levant, are analysed. A CalPal analysis is used to identify the human occupation in the regions over the time considered. It appears that the occupation of those regions through time was diversified and probably related to climatic proxies. Contacts with the rest of Africa is quite reduced, suggesting that culturally the humans have more in common with the Levantine and European Upper Palaeolithic than with the African Later Stone Age, confirming a “Back to Africa”.
References:
- Vermeersch P.M. (Ed.), 2000.Palaeolithic Living Sites in Upper and Middle Egypt. Egyptian Prehistory Monographs 2, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 330 pp.
- Vermeersch P.M. (Ed.), 2002. Palaeolithic Quarrying Sites in Upper and Middle Egypt.Egyptian Prehistory Monographs 4, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 365 pp.
- Van Peer P., Vermeersch P.M. & Paulissen E. 2010., Chert Quarrying, Lithic Technology and a Modern Human Burial at the Palaeolithic Site of Taramsa 1.Egyptian Prehistory Monographs 5, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 312 pp.
- Vermeersch, Pierre M. 2010. Middle and Upper Palaeolithic in the Egyptian Nile Valley. In Garcea Elena A.A. (Ed.) South-Eastern Mediterranean Peoples Between 130,000 and 10,000 Years Ago. Oxford, Oxbow books, Oxford and Oakville, 66-89.
- Vermeersch, P.M., Van Neer, W., 2015. Nile behaviour and Late Palaeolithic humans in Upper Egypt during the Late Pleistocene, Quaternary Science Reviews130 : 155-167. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.03.025.
Photos: P.M. Vermeersch. Left: Taramsa 1; Right: Shuwikhat 1.
