Egyptian research team reveals traces of life in Egypt 2M years ago

CAIRO – 27 July 2020: In a new Egyptian scientific finding, an Egyptian research team tracked the oldest human activity on Egyptian soil, and found it spans back to more than 2 million years.

This was revealed in the research that was recently published in the African Archeology magazine, an international peer-reviewed journal specializing in African archeology research.

The research was titled "The Oldowan in the Egyptian Nile Valley”. The research team consists of Professor of Archeology and History of the Ancient Near East, Faculty of Arts, Kuwait University Ahmed Saeed; Pre-history professor at the Faculty of Archeology, Cairo University Abul-Hassan Bakry; and Doa Sayed Ibrahim, researcher and specialist in prehistoric sciences at the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The team was able to track archaeological evidence and stone tools to that early primitive stone industry in four locations in the Nile Valley and Wahat region in Egypt.

They also included in the research information about a set of primary tools that were collected during the work of previous missions from several other Egyptian sites and are now preserved in the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir.

It is mentioned that the oldest stone industry is the "non-chemical" industry that was found in Kenya and dates back to about 3.3 million years ago, whereas the ancient Oldowan industry is the second oldest known stone industry in the ancient world, and its oldest sites in East Africa date back to more than 2.5 million years ago.

Oldowan is derived from the site of the "Oldfy" gully in Tanzania, where this industry's tools were first sighted in its oldest archaeological layers.

Many researchers believed that this industry did not exist in the Egyptian land, and human life in Egypt, which represents the northeastern corner of the African continent, took place only in the next stage of the Lower Stone Age. It is the stage of the stone industry "Acholi" or "handmade axe" industry.

Some of the traditional Oldowan tools used in Egypt's Nile Valley 2 million years ago - ET

However, this research paper suggests that the oldest human activity on Egyptian soil dates back to more than 2 million years ago.

In fact, it is more likely that the Nile Valley and its deserts were used as a major and effective land crossing for the very early human migrations that exited the heart of East Africa towards the rest of the ancient world, especially since the sites of this industry have been monitored and registered in all regions of the Levant [now Syria], the Arabian Peninsula and the rest of North Africa.

It is worth noting that the idea of ​​preparing this research came during the preparation of a doctoral thesis entitled "The Lower Old Stone Age in the Nile Valley, the Levant and the Arab Peninsula" supervised by Ahmed Saeed and Abul-Hassan Bakry and prepared by Doa Sayed Ibrahim.

The thesis examined the Nile Valley region during the study of the aforementioned period. The research team noticed the presence of archaeological evidence on that industry, which is denied by many researchers, prompting the team to re-examine and categorize the stone tools that were found by previous missions at the Egyptian sites and using these tools to support the research.