Update on the 7000-year-old city in Faiyum
From National Geographic:
Archaeologists working at the site of a 7,000-year-old village in Egypt’s Faiyum depression excavate clay floors and hearths.
The site is the earliest farm settlement yet found in Egypt, providing a major breakthrough in understanding the enigmatic people of the late Stone Age who lived long before the appearance of the Egyptian pharaohs, experts say.
The discoveries were made by a joint U.S.-Dutch team of scientists digging deeper into a previously excavated mound of sand some 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Cairo.
The remains of domesticated wheat, barley, pigs, sheep, and goats—all imported from the Middle East or Turkey—were also found, potentially adding a new chapter to the history of Egypt’s contact with foreign cultures in pre-pharaonic times.
“It’s a missing link, filling in a very important and poorly known phase of the development of agricultural systems, which led to the Pyramids and later civilizations,” said Bruce Smith, an archaeobiologist and a member of National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration.
Read the story in full at National Geographic
Tags: faiyum
