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Badarian culture

Coordinates: 27°00′N 31°25′E / 27.000°N 31.417°E / 27.000; 31.417
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Badarian culture
Geographical rangeEgypt
PeriodNeolithic
Datescirca 5,000 B.C.[1]circa 4,000 B.C.
Type siteEl-Badari
CharacteristicsContemporary with Tasian culture, Merimde culture
Preceded byFaiyum A culture
Followed byAmratian culture

The Badarian culture provides the earliest direct evidence of agriculture in Upper Egypt during the Predynastic Era.[2] It flourished between 4400 and 4000 BC,[3] and might have already emerged by 5000 BC.[1]

Location and excavation

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Ancient Badarian mortuary figurine of a woman, held at the Louvre

Badari culture is so named because of its discovery at El-Badari (Arabic: البداري), an area in the Asyut Governorate in Upper Egypt. It is located between Matmar and Qau, approximately 200 km (120 mi) northwest of present-day Luxor (ancient Thebes). El-Badari includes numerous Predynastic cemeteries (notably Mostagedda, Deir Tasa and the cemetery of el-Badari itself), as well as at least one early Predynastic settlement at Hammamia. The area stretches for 30 km (19 mi) along the east bank of the Nile. Some Badarian sites also show evidence of later predynastic use.[4]

It was first excavated by Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson between 1922 and 1931.[5][2] About forty settlements and six hundred graves have been located.

Cultural features

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The Badarian economy was based mostly on agriculture, fishing and animal husbandry. Populations in the Badari culture planted wheat, barley, lentils and tubers. Pits that have been found may have served as granaries. They kept cattle, sheep, and goats; their livestock, as well as dogs, were given ceremonial burial. They used boomerangs,[6] fished from the Nile and hunted gazelle.

Little is known of their buildings, although remains of wooden stumps have been found at one site and may have been associated with a hut or shelter of unknown construction.

The deceased were wrapped in reed matting or animal skins and buried in pits with their heads usually laid to the south, looking west.[6] This seems contiguous with the later dynastic traditions regarding the west as the land of the dead. They were sometimes accompanied by female mortuary figures carved from ivory,[6] or with personal items such as shells, flint tools, amulets in the shape of animals like the antelope and hippopotamus,[6] and jewelry[6] made of ivory, quartz or copper. Green malachite ore has also been detected on stone palettes, perhaps for personal decoration. Tools included end-scrapers, axes, bifacial sickles and concave-base arrowheads. Social stratification has been inferred from the burying of more prosperous members of the community in a different part of the cemetery. Black-topped pottery has been discovered in these cemeteries. These works with their distinctive rippled pattern are considered the most characteristic element of the Badarian culture.

Trade

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Basalt vases found at Badari sites were most likely traded up the river from the Delta region or from the northwest. Shells came in quantities from the Red Sea. Turquoise possibly came from Sinai. A Syrian connection is suggested for a four-handled pot of hard pink ware. The black pottery, with white incised designs, may have come directly from the West, or from the South. The porphyry slabs are like the later ones in Nubia, but the material could have come from the Red Sea Mountains. The glazed steatite beads were not made locally. These all suggest that the Badarians were not an isolated tribe, but were in contact with the cultures on all sides of them. Nor were they nomadic, having pots of such size and fragility that would have been unsuitable for use by wanderers.[7]

Physical anthropology

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A Badarian burial. 4500–3850 BC

The Badarian culture seems to have had multiple sources, of which the Western Desert was probably the most influential. The Badari culture was likely not solely restricted to the Badari region, since related finds have been made farther to the south at Mahgar Dendera, Armant, Elkab and Nekhen (named Hierakonpolis by the Greeks), as well as to the east in the Wadi Hammamat.

Older and modern scholarship have characterised the Badarians as an indigenous, Northeast African population that was rooted in a localised, context.[8][9] Egyptologist Frank Yurco considered the Badarians as exhibiting a "mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits", and referenced older analysis of skeletal remains which "showed tropical African elements in the population of the earliest Badarian culture".[10] Recent archaeological evidence has suggested that the Tasian and Badarian Nile Valley sites were a peripheral network of earlier Northeast African cultures that featured the movement of Badarian, Saharan, Nubian and Nilotic populations.[11]

Cranial traits

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In 1971, Eugene Strouhal came to the conclusion that the distribution of the Badarian skulls extends from the "Europoid" to "Negroid" range. Of the total 117 skulls, the majority of 94 skulls showed mixed Europoid-Negroid features. The share of both components was nearly the same, with some overweight to the Europoid side. Even though the share of 'pure' Negroes is small (6-8%), being half that of the Europoid forms (12.9%), the high majority of mixed forms (80.3%) suggests a long-lasting dispersion of African genes in the population.[12] Additionally, in some of the Badarian crania hair was preserved, in the first series they were curly in 6 cases, wavy in 33 cases and straight in 10 cases. They were black in 16 samples, dark brown in 11, brown in 12, light brown in 1, and grey in 11 cases.[12] In 2007, Strouhal would characterize the physical features of ancient A-Group Nubians as being "Caucasoid" which were "not distinguishable from the contemporary Predynastic Upper Egyptians of the Badarian and Naqadian cultures", based in reference to previous anthropological studies from 1975 and 1985. According to Strouhal, the Predynastic Egyptians seemed to be similar to the Capsian culture of North Africa and to Berbers.[13]

A 1993 craniofacial study performed by the anthropologist C. Loring Brace reached the view that: "The Predynastic of Upper Egypt and the Late Dynastic of Lower Egypt are more closely related to each other than to any other population. As a whole, they show ties with the European Neolithic, North Africa, modern Europe, and, more remotely, India, but not at all with sub-Saharan Africa, eastern Asia, Oceania, or the New World."[14]

Kanya Godde in a 2009 study evaluated population relationships by comparing cranial traits in twelve Nubian and Egyptian groups which included skeletal remains from the Badarian period. The results showed small biological distance between the groups, which indicate there may have been some sort of gene flow between these groups of Nubians and Egyptians or a common adaptation to similar environments. Godde further specified that the Badarians, Naqadans and Kerma Nubian samples clustered closely in spite of the timescale differences. She also cited previous anthropological studies and archaeological evidence which indicated close affinities between the Badarians and other southernly, African populations.[15] In 2020, Godde analysed a series of crania which included two Egyptian (predynastic Badarian and Naqada series), a series of A-Group Nubians, and a Bronze Age series from Lachish, Palestine. The two pre-dynastic series had strongest affinities, followed by closeness between the Naqada and the Nubian series. Further, the Nubian A-Group plotted nearer to the Egyptians and the Lachish sample placed more closely to Naqada than Badari. According to Godde the spatial-temporal model applied to the pattern of biological distances explains the more distant relationship of Badari to Lachish than Naqada to Lachish as gene flow will cause populations to become more similar over time. Overall, both Egyptian samples were more similar to the Nubian series than to the Lachish series.[16]

Dental traits

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Joel D. Irish and Lyle Konigsberg (2007) re-examined the findings of a 1955 study in light of recent archaeological and dental morphological data. They stated that re-inspection of the craniometric samples "indicate a Badarian affiliation to North Africans, not sub-Saharan samples".[17]

Dental trait analysis of Badarian fossils conducted in a thesis study found that they were closely related to other Afroasiatic-speaking populations inhabiting Northeast Africa and the Maghreb. Among the ancient populations, the Badarians were nearest to other ancient Egyptians (Naqada, Hierakonpolis, Abydos and Kharga in Upper Egypt; Hawara in Lower Egypt), and C-Group and Pharaonic era skeletons excavated in Lower Nubia, followed by the A-Group culture bearers of Lower Nubia, the Kerma and Kush populations in Upper Nubia, the Meroitic, X-Group and Christian period inhabitants of Lower Nubia, and the Kellis population in the Dakhla Oasis.[18]: 219–20  Among the recent groups, the Badari markers were morphologically closest to the Shawia and Kabyle Berber populations of Algeria as well as Bedouin groups in Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, followed by other Afroasiatic-speaking populations in the Horn of Africa.[18]: 222–4  The Late Roman era Badarian skeletons from Kellis were also phenotypically distinct from those belonging to other populations in Sub-Saharan Africa.[18]: 231–2 

Limb proportions

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Sonia Zakrzewski (2003), found that samples from the Badarian to the Middle Kingdom in Upper Egypt had "tropical body plans", but that their proportions were actually "super-negroid" (i.e. the limb indices are relatively longer than in many "African" populations). She proposed that the apparent development of an increasingly African body plan over time may also be due to Nubian mercenaries being included in the Middle Kingdom sample. Although, she noted that in spite of the differences in tibae lengths among the Badarian and Early Dynastic samples, that "all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." Zakrzewski concluded that the "results must remain provisional due to the relatively small sample sizes and the lack of skeletal material that cross-cuts all social and economic groups within each time period".[19]

In 2011, Michelle Raxter examined the changes in limb proportions and body sizes in ancient Egyptians in a worldwide and regional comparative thesis study. The study featured 92 males and 528 female samples which included skeletal remains from the Badarian period. The Egyptian body sizes were compared with Nubian samples, as well as to modern Egyptian samples and other higher and lower latitude populations. Overall, the study found that "Ancient Egyptians have more tropically adapted limbs in comparison to body breadths, which tend to be intermediate when plotted against higher and lower latitude populations. These results may reflect the greater plasticity of limb lengths compared to body breadth. The results might also suggest early Mediterranean and/or Near Eastern influence in Northeast Africa". Raxter also acknowledged that a larger sample collection from the early and late predynastic groups would have enabled "closer examination of biological changes in the transition to agriculture".[20]

Genetic data on the Badarian remains

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Keita and Boyce (1996) noted that DNA studies had not been conducted on the southern predynastic Egyptian skeletons.[21] Several scholars have highlighted a number of methodological limitations with the application of DNA studies to Egyptian mummified remains.[22][23][24] According to historian William Stiebling and archaeologist Susan N. Helft, conflicting DNA analysis on Egyptian mummies has led to a lack of consensus on the genetic makeup of the ancient Egyptians and their geographic origins.[25]

Although no remains of pre-dynastic material has been sequenced, various DNA studies have found Christian-era and modern Nubians, along with modern Afro-Asiatic speaking populations in the Horn of Africa to be descended from a mix of West Eurasian and African populations.[26][27][28][29]

Relative chronology

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Watterson, Barbara (1998). The Egyptians. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 31. ISBN 0-631-21195-0.
  2. ^ a b Holmes, D., & Friedman, R. (1994). Survey and Test Excavations in the Badari Region, Egypt. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 60(1), 105-142. doi:10.1017/S0079497X0000342X
  3. ^ Shaw, Ian, ed. (2000). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press. pp. 479. ISBN 0-19-815034-2.
  4. ^ Bard, Kathryn, ed. (2005). Encyclopaedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge. ISBN 0415185890.
  5. ^ Brunton, Guy; Caton-Thompson, Gertrude (1928). The Badarian Civilisation and Predynastic Remains near Badari. British School of Archaeology in Egypt. ISBN 9780404166250.
  6. ^ a b c d e Smith, Homer W. (2015) [1952]. Man and His Gods. p. 16.
  7. ^ Brunton, Guy; Caton-Thompson, Gertrude (1928). The Badarian Civilisation and Predynastic Remains near Badari. British School of Archaeology in Egypt. ISBN 9780404166250.
  8. ^ Shaw, Thurston (1976). African studies since 1945 : a tribute to Basil Davidson : proceedings of a seminar in honour of Basil Davidson's sixtieth birthday at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh under the chairmanship of George Shepperson. London: Longman. pp. 156–68. ISBN 0582642086.
  9. ^ "Some have argued that various early Egyptians like the Badarians probably migrated northward from Nubia, while others see a wide-ranging movement of peoples across the breadth of the Sahara before the onset of desiccation. Whatever may be the origins of any particular people or civilization, however, it seems reasonably certain that the predynastic communities of the Nile valley were essentially indigenous in culture, drawing little inspiration from sources outside the continent during the several centuries directly preceding the onset of historical times..." July, Robert William (1975). Precolonial Africa : an economic and social history. New York: Scribner. pp. 60–61. ISBN 9780684143187.
  10. ^ Yurco, Frank (1996). "An Egyptological Review". In Lefkowitz, Mary R.; Rogers, Guy MacLean (eds.). Black Athena Revisited. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 65–67. ISBN 978-0807845554.
  11. ^ Egypt in its African context : proceedings of the conference held at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, 2-4 October 2009. Oxford: Archaeopress. 2011. pp. 43–54. ISBN 978-1407307602.
  12. ^ a b Strouhal, Eugen (1971). "Evidence of the Early Penetration of Negroes into Prehistoric Egypt". The Journal of African History. 12 (1): 1–9. doi:10.1017/S0021853700000037. ISSN 0021-8537. JSTOR 180563. S2CID 162274020.
  13. ^ Strohaul, Eugene. "Anthropology of the Egyptian Nubian Men - Strouhal - 2007 - ANTHROPOLOGIE" (PDF). Puvodni.MZM.cz: 115.
  14. ^ Brace, C. Loring; Tracer, David P.; Yaroch, Lucia Allen; Robb, John; Brandt, Kari; Nelson, A. Russell (1993). "Clines and clusters versus "Race:" a test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 36 (S17): 1–31. doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330360603. S2CID 84425807.
  15. ^ "On this basis, many have postulated that the Badarians are relatives to South African populations (Morant, 1935 G. Morant, A study of predynastic Egyptian skulls from Badari based on measurements taken by Miss BN Stoessiger and Professor DE Derry, Biometrika 27 (1935), pp. 293–309.Morant, 1935; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Irish and Konigsberg, 2007). The archaeological evidence points to this relationship as well. (Hassan, 1986) and (Hassan, 1988) noted similarities between Badarian pottery and the Neolithic Khartoum type, indicating an archaeological affinity among Badarians and Africans from more southern regions. Furthermore, like the Badarians, Naqada has also been classified with other African groups, namely the Teita (Crichton, 1996; Keita, 1990), while the Gizeh sample clustered with the Maghreb and Sedment (Dynasty IX Egyptians) (Keita, 1990). Nutter (1958) noted affinities between the Badarian and Naqada samples, a feature that Strouhal (1971) attributed to their skulls possessing "Negroid" traits. Keita (1992), using craniometrics, discovered that the Badarian series is distinctly different from the later Egyptian series, a conclusion that is mostly confirmed here. In the current analysis, the Badari sample more closely clusters with the Naqada sample and the Kerma sample". Godde, K. (2009). "An examination of Nubian and Egyptian biological distances: support for biological diffusion or in situ development?". Homo: Internationale Zeitschrift Fur die Vergleichende Forschung Am Menschen. 60 (5): 389–404. doi:10.1016/j.jchb.2009.08.003. ISSN 1618-1301. PMID 19766993.
  16. ^ Godde, Kane. "A biological perspective of the relationship between Egypt, Nubia, and the Near East during the Predynastic period (2020)". Retrieved 16 March 2022.
  17. ^ "However, there is also one major difference; Mukherjee and associates placed their Badarian Egyptian sample within the sub-Saharan cluster, while puzzling over this unexpected affinity (Mukherjee et al., 1955: 86). Inspection of the original D 2 matrix (their Table 5.6: 84) does, in reality, indicate a Badarian affiliation to North Africans, not sub-Saharan samples. It is therefore likely that an error was made in construction of their original figure when converting inter-sample distances to x- and y-coordinates". Irish, J. D.; Konigsberg, L. (March 2007). "The ancient inhabitants of Jebel Moya redux: measures of population affinity based on dental morphology". International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. 17 (2): 138–156. doi:10.1002/oa.868.
  18. ^ a b c Haddow, Scott Donald (January 2012). "Dental Morphological Analysis of Roman Era Burials from the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt". Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  19. ^ Zakrzewski, Sonia R. (July 2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 121 (3): 219–229. doi:10.1002/ajpa.10223. ISSN 0002-9483. PMID 12772210. S2CID 9848529.
  20. ^ Raxter, Michelle (2011). Egyptian Body Size: A Regional and Worldwide Comparison (PhD dissertation). University of South Florida.
  21. ^ Celenko, Theodore (1996). "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians" In Egypt in Africa. Indianapolis, Ind.: Indianapolis Museum of Art. pp. 20–33. ISBN 0936260645.
  22. ^ Eltis, David; Bradley, Keith R.; Perry, Craig; Engerman, Stanley L.; Cartledge, Paul; Richardson, David (12 August 2021). The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500-AD 1420. Cambridge University Press. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-521-84067-5.
  23. ^ Danielle, Candelora (31 August 2022). Candelora, Danielle; Ben-Marzouk, Nadia; Cooney, Kathyln (eds.). Ancient Egyptian society : challenging assumptions, exploring approaches. Abingdon, Oxon. pp. 101–122. ISBN 9780367434632.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  24. ^ Ehret, Christopher (20 June 2023). Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 83–85. ISBN 978-0-691-24409-9.
  25. ^ Jr, William H. Stiebing; Helft, Susan N. (3 July 2023). Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture. Taylor & Francis. pp. 209–212. ISBN 978-1-000-88066-3.
  26. ^ Sirak, K.A. (2021). "Social stratification without genetic differentiation at the site of Kulubnarti in Christian Period Nubia". Nature Communications. 12 (1): 7283. Bibcode:2021NatCo..12.7283S. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-27356-8. PMC 8671435. PMID 34907168. We find that the Kulubnarti Nubians were admixed with ~43% Nilotic related ancestry on average (individual proportions varied between ~36-54%) and the remaining ancestry reflecting a West Eurasian-related gene pool ultimately deriving from an ancestry pool like that found in the Bronze and Iron Age Levant. ... The Kulubnarti Nubians on average are shifted slightly toward present-day West Eurasians relative to present-day Nubians, who are estimated to have ~40% West Eurasian-related ancestry.
  27. ^ Hollfelder, Nina (2017). "Northeast African genomic variation shaped by the continuity of indigenous groups and Eurasian migrations". PLOS Genetics. 13 (8): e1006976. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1006976. PMC 5587336. PMID 28837655. All the populations that inhabit the Northeast of Sudan today, including the Nubian, Arab, and Beja groups showed admixture with Eurasian sources and the admixture fractions were very similar. ...Nubians are an admixed group with gene-flow from outside of Africa ... The strongest signal of admixture into Nubian populations came from Eurasian populations and was likely quite extensive: 39.41%-47.73%. ... Nubians can be seen as a group with substantial genetic material relating to Nilotes that later have received much gene-flow from Eurasians.
  28. ^ Haber, Marc (2017). "Chad Genetic Diversity Reveals an African History Marked by Multiple Holocene Eurasian Migrations". American Journal of Human Genetics. 99 (6): 1316–1324. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2016.10.012. PMC 5142112. PMID 27889059. We found that most Ethiopians are a mixture of Africans and Eurasians. ... Eurasian ancestry in Ethiopians ranges from 11%–12% in the Gumuz to 53%–57% in the Amhara.
  29. ^ Ali, A. A. (2020). "Genome-wide analyses disclose the distinctive HLA architecture and the pharmacogenetic landscape of the Somali population". Scientific Reports. 10 (6): 1316–1324. Bibcode:2020NatSR..10.5652A. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-62645-0. PMC 5142112. PMID 27889059. Principal component analysis showed approximately 60% East African and 40% West Eurasian genes in the Somali population, with a close relation to the Cushitic and Semitic speaking Ethiopian populations.
  30. ^ "Artifact". www.metmuseum.org.

Sources

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  • Petrie, Flinders. "34. The Badarian Civilisation." Man, vol. 26, 1926, pp. 64–64. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2787955. Accessed 2 Jun. 2022.
  • Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson: The Badarian Civilisation and Predynastic Remains near Badari, London: British School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1928.
  • Castillos, J. J. (1982). Analysis of Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic Cemeteries. Final Conclusions. Journal (The) of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, 12(1), 29-53.
  • Holmes, D. L. (1989). The Predynastic lithic industries of Upper Egypt/1. The Predynastic lithic industries of Upper Egypt a comparative study of the lithic traditions of Badari, Nagada and Hierakonpolis.
  • Friedman, R. F. (1994). Predynastic settlement ceramics of Upper Egypt: A comparative study of the ceramics of Hemamieh, Nagada, and Hierakonpolis (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley).
  • Holmes, D., & Friedman, R. (1994). Survey and Test Excavations in the Badari Region, Egypt. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 60(1), 105-142. doi:10.1017/S0079497X0000342X
  • Reid, Donald Malcolm (2003). Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520240698.
  • Savage, S. (2001). Towards an AMS Radiocarbon Chronology of Predynastic Egyptian Ceramics. Radiocarbon, 43(3), 1255-1277. doi:10.1017/S0033822200038534
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27°00′N 31°25′E / 27.000°N 31.417°E / 27.000; 31.417