Page 400 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Kick-start

There is something mysterious about Egypt’s so-called ‘palaeolithic
agricultural revolution’. Here, quoted from the standard texts (Hoffman’s
Egypt before The Pharaohs and Wendorff and Schild’s Prehistory of the
Nile Valley) are some key facts from the little that is known about this
great leap forward that occurred so inexplicably towards the end of the
last Ice Age:

1 ‘Shortly after 13,000 BC, grinding stones and sickle blades with a
glossy sheen on their bits (the result of silica from cut stems adhering
to a sickle’s cutting edge) appear in late Palaeolithic tool kits ... It is
clear that the grinding stones were used in preparing plant food.’
6
2 At many riverside sites, at exactly this time, fish stopped being a
significant food source and became a negligible one, as evidenced by
the absence of fish remains: ‘The decline in fishing as a source of food
is related to the appearance of a new food resource represented by
ground grain. The associated pollen strongly suggests that this grain
was barley, and significantly, this large grass-pollen, tentatively
identified as barley, makes a sudden appearance in the pollen profile
just before the time when the first settlements were established in this
area ...’
7
3 ‘As apparently spectacular as the rise of protoagriculture in the late
Palaeolithic Nile Valley was its precipitous decline. No one knows
exactly why, but after about 10,500 BC the early sickle blades and
grinding disappear to be replaced throughout Egypt by Epipalaeolithic
hunting, fishing and gathering peoples who use stone tools.’
8
Scanty though the evidence may be, it is clear in its general
implications: Egypt enjoyed a golden age of agricultural plenty which
began around 13,000 BC and was brought to an abrupt halt around the
middle of the eleventh millennium BC. A kick-start to the process appears
to have been given by the introduction of already domesticated barley
into the Nile Valley, immediately followed by the establishment of a
number of farming settlements which exploited the new resource. The
settlements were equipped with simple but extremely effective
agricultural tools and accessories. After the eleventh millennium BC,
however, there was a prolonged relapse to more primitive ways of life.
The imagination is inclined to roam freely over such data in search of
an explanation—and all such explanations can only be guesswork. What

6 Egypt before The Pharaohs, p. 88.
Fred Wendorff and Romuald Schild, Prehistory of the Nile Valley, Academic Press, New
7
York, 1976, p. 291.
8 Egypt before the Pharaohs, pp. 89-90.

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