Herding then farming in the Nile Delta

The Nile Delta in Egypt represents a valuable location to study the history of human societal development and agricultural advancement. However, the livelihood patterns of the earliest settlers – whether they were farmers or herders – remains poorly understood. Here we use non-pollen palynomorphs and pollen grains from a sediment core taken at Sais, one of the earliest archaeological sites in the west-central Nile Delta, to investigate the livelihood patterns and transition of early settlers there. We find that animal microfossils (dung and hair) occur in substantial quantities from around 7,000 years ago in our high-resolution-dated non-pollen palynomorphs spectrum, while domesticated cereals emerge in the spectrum around 300 years later. We also identify evidence of fire-enhanced land exploitation after this time. We interpret our microfossil evidence to indicate that the earliest settlers in the Nile Delta were herders and that this then developed into a combination of herding and farming.

Xiaoshuang Zhao, Yan Liu, Ian Thomas, Alaa Salem, Yanna Wang, Said E. Alassal, Feng Jiang, Qianli Sun, Jing Chen, Brian Finlayson, Penelope Wilson, Zhongyuan Chen