Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

3
STONEHENGE IN THE SAHARA
For the production of man a different apprenticeship was needed to sharpen the wits and quicken the higher
manifestations of intellect—a more open veldt country where competition was keener between swiftness and
stealth, and where adroitness of thinking and movement played a preponderating role in the preservation of the
species.
RAYMOND DART, AUSTRALOPITHECUS AFRICANUS, THE MAN-APE OF SOUTH AFRICA
Ancient Stonehenge-style stones spotted in Egypt’s Sahara Desert are the oldest megaliths yet discovered and
probably served as both calendar and temple, researchers said on Wednesday.
REUTERS, CABLE NEWS NETWORK, APRIL 2, 1998
SAHARA CLIMATE CYCLES: ANOTHER LINK TO THE STARS?
Before we look more closely at the initial discoveries at Nabta Playa, we must review the current knowledge of climate
changes in the Sahara. In this process, we will see how yet another intriguing piece to the puzzle of early human’s
intimate association with the heavens links to Nabta Playa.
The climate in the Egyptian Sahara is harsh, sometimes even violent. The first night of our April 2008 expedition to
Uwainat (told in more detail in chapter 5) was spent on an elevated pass somewhere in the deep, open desert. It was
strangely cold at night, considering the extreme heat of daytime, and we shivered under our many layers of covers—from
our cotton underwear to the padded sleeping bags—as the temperature plummeted to almost freezing during the late
hours of the night. The reason for such huge temperature swings from day to night is due to the almost lunarlike
conditions of the landscape and cloudless sky. The sun blazes in daytime, but after sunset the heat begins to whoosh out
into space, sending the thermometer down toward the zero-degrees-centigrade mark. From this lack of clouds also comes
the hyperaridity of the region, which is considered by climatologists as the driest on Earth. In deserts such as California’s
Death Valley there is some life—sparse plants, cacti, insects, lizards, occasional foxes, and even coyotes—but in the
Egyptian Sahara, especially around places such as Nabta Playa, there seems to be no life at all. There are no plants, no
animals, not even insects—only sand and rocks, blowing dust, drifting sand dunes, fossils, loose pebbles and compacted
desert pavement, loose boulders, and bedrock outcrops. In other words, the deep Egyptian Sahara is the location on Earth
most like the Martian landscape.
But it was not always so. In November 1981, the NASA space shuttle Columbia carried a radar-imaging camera
from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that was designed to view through the sands of the Sahara and “see” what was
beneath. When the radar camera was trained on the Egyptian Sahara, it picked up the contours of dried-out ancient rivers
and lakes beneath the sands. 1 This discovery jumpstarted a revolution in our understanding of the drastic climate changes
of the ancient Sahara. We now know that the long-term climate of the Sahara has undergone violent swings.
Around 12,000 BCE, Earth’s sea level rose suddenly more than 20 meters (about 66 feet) in less than two hundred
years. 2 This was the direct result of catastrophic glacial melting that heralded the beginning of an eight-thousand-year
period scientists call the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose 120 meters (almost 400 feet) essentially to the level
they are today. The Mediterranean Sea also rose, causing the climate of the Sahara to fluctuate and change. Around 9000
BCE the monsoon rains moved north over what is now southwestern Egypt, 3 drawn up possibly by low pressure over the
collapsing ice sheets in the distant north. 4 This ended a protracted dry period and brought in a humid period congenial to
human and animal existence. Not surprisingly, soon thereafter the earliest human artifacts appear in the sediments at
Nabta Playa. These sediments, which archaeologists are still digging through today, lie in and around the ancient playa,
or seasonal lake (now permanently dry), and on top of much more ancient bedrock.