Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

the distant past. Around ten thousand years from now, Earth will be closest to the sun in midsummer, as it was about ten
thousand years ago. This approximate twenty thousand–year perihelion cycle is caused essentially by the precession of the
equinox cycle, and it is shortened somewhat by the change in the eccentricity cycle.
This brings us back to Peter deMenocal, for while studying the sediment layers of the eastern Atlantic Ocean bed, he
found that specifically in the Sahara region the climate had switched from wet to dry every twenty thousand years or so
over hundreds of thousands of years, and that such switches had taken place quite suddenly. Searching for the causes of
these sudden switches, it occurred to deMenocal that the Milankovitch Cycle matched very well the wet-dry cycle. 9
DeMenocal found that the most recent switch from wet to dry occurred around 3500 BCE 10 in a time frame that could
be “felt within one lifetime.” 11 Let us immediately highlight the fact that 3500 BC is when, according to anthropologists,
the prehistoric people of Nabta Playa abandoned their ceremonial site and departed from the Sahara . . . and also when,
according to Egyptologists the predynastic phase of the ancient Egyptian civilization is supposed to have begun.
TRACKING THE STARS
Living all their lives in the open desert under the clear, cloudless sky, the prehistoric people of the Sahara were highly
tuned to changes in the position of the celestial bodies, and the evidence at Nabta Playa shows that they were not only
aware of the long-term motion of precession but also that they must have placed great importance on this stellar cycle,
because it seemed to affect the climate of the Sahara and, consequently, their ability to survive in this region that
depended so much on suitable seasonal wet conditions.
We are fully aware, of course, that scholars and historians of astronomy attribute the knowledge of precession—and
even the awareness of it—not to ancient cultures, but rather to the Greeks when Hipparchus of Nicaea supposedly
discovered this phenomenon in 120 BCE. As we will see in chapter 6, however, this consensus no longer stands to close
scrutiny, and the new evidence shows, if not proves, that the ancient pre-Hellenic cultures were aware of precession and
may even have recorded its long effect in the astronomical alignments of their megalithic monuments. To put it more
bluntly, Hipparchus did not discover precession; he rediscovered it. It is now a fact and not a theory that humid periods
occurred every twenty thousand years or so during the past two hundred thousand years, which directly affected the
movements and the culture of the people living in the Egyptian Sahara region. It is also a fact and not a theory that these
humid periods were directly linked to precession and the apparent displacement of the stars during these twenty thousand
years or so. In addition, it is a fact that the Sahara in Egypt is now generally regarded by paleoanthropologists as one of
the crucibles, indeed if not the principal crucible, of civilization.
Is it possible, then, that the ancient megalith builders of Nabta Playa somehow knew that there was a correlation
between the cycle of the climate and the cycle of the stars? It may seem to us that this is entirely possible for a people that
lived for millennia in a region where the conditions forced them to perform daily and nightly observations of the sun and
stars and develop a great knowledge of the celestial cycles and, eventually, incorporate this knowledge into the
ceremonial complexes at Nabta Playa.
TEXTUAL EVIDENCE?
A curious verse from the Qur’an speaks of a primeval mind coping with climate changes over the millennia: “And [in]
the variation of the night and the day, and [in] what Allah sends down of sustenance from the cloud, then gives life
thereby to the earth after its death, and [in] the changing of the winds, there are signs for a people who understand
(45:5).” 12
Although we cannot assume that ancient religious scriptures such as the one cited here can be taken as evidence of
knowledge of precession and climatic changes by ancient people, they may be faint echoes of ancient memories that
eventually found their way into religious records in this same region of the world. Another such example comes from the
Russian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff, whose esoteric teachings attracted a wide following in Europe in the early part of the
twentieth century. Gurdjieff journeyed extensively in Egypt, and he claimed that much of the inspiration for his teachings
came from what he saw on a secret and very ancient map of “pre-sands Egypt” that he discovered in a remote Asian
monastery. This map showed that the Egyptian Sahara was a lush and humid environment in very remote times. 13 Of
course, such stories cannot be used to bolster the scientific argument for ancient knowledge of precession and cyclical
climate changes in the Sahara, but perhaps we are now able to corroborate such stories with modern science. This is,