33,000-yr old chert mining site and related Homo in the Egyptian Nile Valley

Abstract

The Nazlet Khater 4 site (Nile Valley, Upper Egypt) is located on one of the small wadi- interfluves in the lower desert near the steep cliffs bordering the western Nile Valley edge (Fig. 1). We have previously reported the excavation of an early Upper Palaeolithic blade industry at this site, although blade industries in the Nile Valley had only been known to occur since 18,000 yr ago. The 1982 excavation reported here confirms that Nazlet Khater 4 is a chert mining site with a complex extraction strategy, going back 33,000 yr. A nearby grave contained a skeleton of a man in the extended position. We show that the cranial morphology is anatomically modern with archaic characteristics such as a very robust mandible. There is evidence that the skeleton has a similar age to that of the mining site.

Late Pleistocene human population bottlenecks, volcanic winter, and differentiation of modern humans

“…Most MP sites in the Sahara and North Africa appear to date to the last interglacial (Wendorf & Schild, 1992). Only one early UP site is known to date to between 40 and 30 ka in the Nile Valley (Vermeersch et al, 1984). Sodmein Cave, in the Red Sea Mountains of Egypt, also has sparse last glacial MP and early UP horizons (Van Peer et al, 1996).…”

Ohalo II H2: A 19,000‐year‐old skeleton from a water‐logged site at the Sea of Galilee, Israel

“…The early Upper Paleolithic skeleton from Nazlet Khater (Vermeersch et al, 1984) in Upper Egypt is probably the key to the understanding of the possible biological rela-tionship between Levantine and African populations and their terminal Pleistocene development. The skeleton, described by Thoma (1984) as representing modern man with archaic features, shares many features with the Epipaleolithic skeletons from Nubia.…”

The use of stone at Ohalo II, a 23,000 year old site in the Jordan Valley, Israel

“…Some well-shaped similar specimens, termed bifacial axes, were found at Nazlet Khater 4, an Upper Palaeolithic site in Egypt (Vermeersch et al 1984;1990). In the southern Levant, pebbles with a pair of opposed notches appear again in the Natufian site of Eynan, though the specimens are smaller than those found at Ohalo II (Valla et al 1999).…”