Page 401 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

is certain is that the none of the evidence suggests that palaeolithic
Egypt’s ‘agricultural revolution’ could have been a local initiative. On the
contrary it feels in every way like a transplant. A transplant appears
suddenly, after all, and can be rejected equally fast if conditions change,
just as settled agriculture seems to have been rejected in ancient Egypt
after the great Nile floods of the eleventh millennium BC.

Climate Change

What was the weather like then?
We’ve noted in earlier chapters that the Sahara, a relatively young
desert, was green savannah until about the tenth millennium BC; this
savannah, brightened by lakes, boiling with game, extended across much
of upper Egypt. Farther north, the Delta area was marshy but dotted with
many large and fertile islands. Overall the climate was significantly
cooler, cloudier and rainier than it is today. Indeed, for two or three
9
thousand years before and about a thousand years after 10,500 BC it
rained and rained and rained. Then, as though marking an ecological
turning-point, the floods came. When they were over, increasingly arid
conditions set in. This period of desiccation lasted until approximately
10
7000 BC when the ‘Neolithic Subpluvial’ began with a thousand years of
heavy rains, followed by 3000 years of moderate rainfall which once
again proved ideal for agriculture: ‘For a time the deserts bloomed and
human societies colonized areas that have been unable to support such
dense populations since.’
11
By the birth of dynastic Egypt around 3000 BC, however, the climate had
turned around again and a new period of desiccation had begun—one
that has continued until the present day.
This, then, in broad outline, is the environmental stage upon which the
mysteries of Egyptian civilization have been played out: rain and floods
between 13,000 BC and 9500 BC; a dry period until 7000 BC; rain again
(though increasingly less frequent) until about 3000 BC; thereafter a
renewed and enduring dry period.
The expanse of years is great, but if one is looking for a First Time
within it which might accord with the golden age of the gods, one’s
thoughts turn naturally to the mysterious epoch of early agricultural
experimentation that shadowed the great rains and floods between
13,000 BC and 10,500 BC.

Ibid., p. 86.
9
10 Ibid., pp. 97-8.
11 Ibid., p. 161.

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