ANCIENT LIFE ON NILE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 177, 28 July 1928, Page 16 (Supplement)

ANCIENT LIFE ON NILE.

REMARKABLE NEW FINDS. FULL CKMKTEKIES. Discoveries throwing light on the oldest known civilisation in the Nile Valley are reported in a communique issued by the British School of Archaeology, which is continuing its researches in Asyut province under the auspices of the British Museum. The excavators discovered small scattered settlements at the top of precipitous spurs bordering cultivated land. Attached to the settlements were closely-packed cemeteries containing remains of 2.~«0 burials, dating to the oldest period yet known in the Nile Valley. To this period the party has given the name "Badarian," from the town of El Badaril. near to where the remains we.ro lirst noticed. The people who lia\e been given the name Badarians not only used stone and bone for making implements, arms and vases, but they also knew how to work with copper. As, however, this metal was then rare robbers very soon stole almost all the copper t hat was in the graves. The discovery of grains of cereals proves that agriculture was already practised by the Badarians. Whether at that period the Nile Valltv, covered with marshes and reeds, was cultivated is doubtful, but what is to-day desert may have been less dry at that time, and therefore capable of cultivation.

The Badarians seem ha\c li\ed at a lime when there wa- abundance of rain in Northern At'ru -i. which seems to correspond with the mial Ice age in Europe.