Egypt's oldest farming site discovered

[Judi Lynn]

Feb. 12, 2008, 11:27PM
Egypt's oldest farming site discovered

Los Angeles Times

Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known farming village in Egypt, a 7,000-year-old site whose residents grew wheat and barley and raised sheep, goats and pigs.

Farming probably occurred much earlier in Egypt, experts agree, but those first settlements most likely would have been along the banks of the Nile River and would have been obliterated by the periodic flooding and course changes of the river.

The new discovery, in the Faiyum Oasis about 50 miles southwest of Cairo, was protected from such damage. The discovery by the University of California-Los Angeles, and Dutch archaeologists was announced Monday by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.

The site has been heavily studied, beginning in the 1920s by one of the first female archaeologists, Gertrude Caton-Thompson. But there's no evidence of habitation, leading some researchers to speculate that it might have been a summering grounds for nomads.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5536850.html



Photos of the area:
http://images.google.com/images?q=Faiyum+Oasis&ndsp=20&hl=en&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-37,GGLD:en&start=0&sa=N