Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

Finally, to our relief, the light from the growing dawn was strong enough for us to spot in the distance the first
megaliths of Complex Structure A. The inspector beamed at us, and with a broad gesture of his hand to express his
excitement and approval, he seemed to tell us that all the previous animosity toward us was quickly forgotten. We had at
long last arrived at Nabta Playa, but our work was only just beginning. We estimated it would take all morning and
several more kilometers of fast walking in this vast complex to get all the GPS readings and photographs needed for our
purpose. Slowly and diligently, we recorded the GPS of all the megaliths, and we also had enough time before noon to
investigate a mysterious feature beneath the largest megalith at Nabta Playa—labeled X-1—that had shown up on the
Quickbird satellite image. The day was now becoming seriously hot, but we pressed on to visit the Calendar Circle and
took some photographs for our own use. When we were satisfied that we had all the information and photographs we
wanted, we rendezvoused with the jeeps, and after a quick sandwich break and refreshments, we headed south to connect
with the new tarmac road that would take us to the city of Aswan on the Nile.
Back home in California, we carefully analyzed our GPS field measurements and compared the results to those
obtained from the Quickbird image and found them to be in agreement (although we had to make a small correction for
the very slight error in the satellite’s pointing vector from space). We now had multiple corroborating coordinate
readings for all the megaliths, and, armed with this data, we were able to determine their exact alignments, satisfied that
at last we could do this with certainty. We found that the 2001 CPE report included raw GPS coordinates for the
megaliths that were fairly accurate, but azimuth calculations derived from them were incorrect. Correcting this error
yielded a completely new set of dates for the stellar alignments of the six rows of megaliths. Most significant was the
alignment to the rising of Sirius. Malville and Wendorf had proposed that one of the megalith lines, C1, was directed
toward the rising of Sirius in about 4820 BCE, but our calculations showed a much earlier date of around 6090 BCE. At
this point we sought the support from a close colleague, Paul Rosen, from our previous interplanetary robotic space
mission work, who was now a leader in spacecraft radar remote sensing technology. Together in June 2005 we published
the new results for the Nabta Playa megalith alignments in a peer-reviewed academic journal. 10 Because our results
showed that the megalith alignments given by Malville and Wendorf were substantially in error, we proposed a new set of
dates for around 6200 BCE for the stellar targets that fit the corrected data. *14
Although we were pleased to see that in 2007 Wendorf and Malville (with Schild and Brenmer of the CPE) formally
acknowledged their errors and accepted our corrected calculations for the azimuths of the six lines of megaliths, they
nonetheless rejected our earlier date of circa 6200 BCE, because, they point out, some of the megaliths in the alignments
were on top of playa sediment that was dated to approximately 5100 BCE, and also 6200 BCE is “about 1500 years
earlier than our best estimates for the Terminal Neolithic.” *15
Even though we do accept that some of the megaliths were placed after the sedimentation of the playa’s basin, we
also note that in their 2007 article Wendorf, Malville, and their coauthors suggested (as we also did earlier) that the
original part of Complex Structure A, which is the center of all the megalith alignments and is part of the bedrock
beneath the playa sediments, was “part of the symbolic landscape of the Middle Neolithic and became significant before
the establishment of the complex ceremonial centre. Perhaps their locations had been marked by rock cairns before
gradual burial by playa sediments.” 11 This indicates that there was much activity at Nabta Playa during earlier epochs,
which is in any case confirmed by many radiocarbon dates, with most clustered around 6000 BCE. 12 On this basis, and
also on the dating of circa 6200 BCE obtained from the corrected calculations, we reject the notion that none of the
megaliths at Nabta Playa could have predated terminal Neolithic time, because most of the field evidence shows that
parts of the ceremonial complex were indeed created before the terminal Neolithic.
SIRIUS, THE CIRCUMPOLAR STARS, AND ORION
We now felt that we were in a good position to integrate our and the CPE’s field findings and derive from them the most
robust interpretation that fits the context of Nabta Playa. The findings that emerge from this integrated analysis are:
1. There are at least nine megaliths that form the three lines—A1, A2, and A3—that point north. These track the star
Dubhe in the Big Dipper over a considerable period of time.
2. There are at least six megaliths that form lines B1 and B2 pointing southeast. These track the bright star Sirius at
two epochs.