The Western Desert of Egypt, near the Dakhleh Oasis, appears to be
one of the most uninhabitable places on the planet. Any search for signs
of life on this Martian surface seems pointless. But as we crest a ridge
of sand, with chunks of ironstone clinking underfoot, archaeologist Mary McDonald
is about to show me something that puts paid to that notion: evidence
that she has found not only the beginnings of settled life in North
Africa, but almost certainly the beginnings of the longest-lasting
civilization the world has ever known — the Pharaonic, or
Dynastic, civilization of the Nile Valley, heretofore thought to have
derived from elsewhere in the Middle East.
McDonald, a petite and sprightly Canadian with gray streaks in her
long black hair, wears a broad smile underneath her straw hat and a
Foreign Legion-style bandana. Her delight comes from telling me about
the scene that now lies before us: hundreds of round, oval and
rectangular spaces the size of camping tents, defined by flat stones
stuck on their edges in the sand, many with flagstone floors about 30
centimetres (12") below ground level. They’re clustered in what
may have been a village the size of three football fields. “Many
hundreds of people lived here,” she beams. “It’s the
largest Neolithic site in Africa.”
The question of where the great Pharaonic civilization came from and
how it arose has never really been answered, not by the ancient Greeks
nor by the first European explorers and archaeologists, who explored and
plundered it in the 19th century. Until just a few decades ago, the
received wisdom was that a “superior culture” must have
invaded Egypt, or migrated there, from the Levant or Mesopotamia —
regions that had civilizations a thousand years earlier. But for more
than 200 years, precious few archaeologists had the inclination to
explore this question of origins...
