The peoples of predynastic Egypt were the successors of the paleolithic inhabitants of north eastern Africa, who had spread over much of its area; during wet phases they had left remains in regions as inhospitable as the Great Sand Sea. The final desiccation of the Sahara was not complete until the end of the third millennium BC; over thousands years people must have migrated from there to the Nile valley, the environment of which improved as it dried out. In this process, the decisive change from the nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life of Paleolithic times to settled agriculture had not been so far identified. Some time after 5000 BC the raising of crops was introduced, probably on a horticultural scale, in small, local cultures that seem to have penetrated southward through Egypt into the oases and the Sudan. Several of the basic food plants that were grown are native to the Near East, so the new techniques probably spread from there. No large scale migration need have been involved, and the cultures were at first largely self-contained. The preserved evidence, for them is unrepresentative, because it comes from the low desert, where relatively few people lived; as later, most people probably settled in the Valley and Delta.
The earliest known Neolithic cultures in Egypt have been found at Marimda Bani Salama, on the southwest edge of the Delta, and farther to the southwest, in the Fayyum. The site at Marimda Bani Salama, which dates to the 6th-5th millennia BC, gives evidence of settlement and shows that cereals were grown. In the Fayyum, where evidence dates to the 5th millennium BC, the settlers were near to the shore of Lake Qarun, and the settlers engaged in fishing. Marimda is a very large site that was occupied for many centuries. The inhabitants lived in lightly-built huts; they may have buried their dead within their houses, but areas where burials have been found may not have been occupied by dwellings at the same time. Pottery was used in both cultures, others have been identified in the Western Desert, in the Second Cayeract are, north of Khartoum. Some of these are as early as the Egyptian ones, while others overlapped with the succeeding Egyptian predynastic cultures.
In upper Egypt, between Asyut and Luxor, have been found the Tasian culture (named after Dayr Tasa) and the Badarian culture (named after al-Badari); these date from the late 5th millennium BC. Most of the evidence for them comes from cemeteries, where the burials included fine black-topped red pottery, ornaments, some copper objects, and gauzed steatite beads. The most characteristic predynistic luxury objects, slate palettes for grinding cosmetics, occur for the first time in this period. The burials show little differentiation of wealth and status and seem to belong to a peasant culture without central political organization.
Probably comtempory with both predynastic and dynastic times are thousands of rock drawings of a wide range of motifs, including boats, found throughout the Eastern Desert, in Lower Nubia, and as far west as Mount ‘Unwaynat, which stands near modern Egypt’s borders with Libya and The Sudan in the southwest. The drawings show that nomads were common throughout the desert, probably down to the late 3rd millenium BC, but they cannot be dated precisely; they may all have been produced by nomads, or inhabitants of the Nile Valley may often have penetrated the desert and made drawings.
Naqadah I, named after the major site of Naqadah but also called Amratian after al-’Amirah, is a distinct phase that succeeded Badarian and has been found as far south as Kawm al-Amirah (Hierakonpolis; ancient Egyption Nekhen), near the sandstone barrier of Jabal al-Silsila, which was the cultural boundary of Egypt in predynastic times. Naquadah I differs from the Badarian in its denisty of settlement and the typology of its material culture, but hardly at all the social organisation inplied by finds. Burials were in shallow pits in which the bodies faced the west, like those of the later Egyptians. Notable types of material found in grave are fine pottery decorated with reprosentational designs in white o red, figurines of men and woman, and hardstone mace-heads that are precursors of important late predynastic objects.
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