Nabta-Playa

Nabta Playa, is a former alluvial basin about 100 kilometers west of Abu Simbel and 800 km south of Cairo, with numerous archaeological sites from the Neolithic period in the Nubian Desert. The millennia -lasting importance is also due to the fact that an ancient caravan track from Abu Simbel to the oasis Bir Kseiba (22 ° 41 'N, 29 ° 54' O22.68611111111129.904166666667 ) and, moreover, led to Central Africa by the Nabta -Playa.

History

In the Pleistocene, about 25,000 years ago the climate in the Nubian Desert was dry, and the grasslands turned into a dry desert landscape, the people did not offer habitat. With the transition to the Holocene and the displacement of the monsoon zone to the north the climate was much wetter. Due to the increased rainfall also lowlands as the Fayyum, the Nabta floodplain and the oasis Bir Kseiba could be colonized. This negroid population had migrated down the Nile and had settled from there since the 10th millennium BC, the eastern Sahara.

Since the 7th millennium there are large settlements with a high degree of organization. In Nabta Playa - pottery is also demonstrated since about 6000 BC. This ornate with complex colored patterns similar to ceramic pottery styles in the Nile Valley in Khartoum. The archaeological evidence suggests that the social organization level was higher than in the settlements in the Nile Valley.

In the 6th millennium, a prehistoric religion or a cult with sacrifices of cattle, who were buried in stone -covered chambers developed. Whether this cult has influenced the later ancient Egyptian Hathor cult, is actively discussed.

Prehistoric Observatory

In Nabta Playa, located near a dry lake with the oldest archäoastronomische Monument. Around the same time with the circular grave system of Goseck, but 1000 years older than Stonehenge, the inhabitants built a megalithic system for calendar purposes to determine the summer solstice. Archaeological finds suggest that the region was inhabited only seasonally, probably in the summer, when the lake water introduced. The determination of the solstice, therefore, was an important indication of the time to change into winter quarters.

Further hypotheses of the American astrophysicist Thomas G. Brophy as knowledge of the distance to the nearest stars are assessed as highly speculative.