The latest is recognition that the original Egyptians probably migrated from the Sahel to the Nile Valley when it started to dry up (and before then, the Nile flooding and swampy conditions would have discouraged settlement in the Nile valleys).
And apparently, even in the times of the early pharoahs, there was a lot of trade through the western deserts, thanks to the presence of oases...the practice of trade may be one of the reasons why the Southern Kingdom of Egypt developed first, not the Delta which bordered on the sea.
Atlas Obscura today is about the Acacus mountains in the Libyan desert and the rockpaintings.
Visitors and scientists alike flock to one of Libya’s most remote corners for the numerous pictographs that are found all over the mountains. These images are found seemingly everywhere – at the base of the mountains, under overhanging rocks, in mountain caves, and in the many canyons of the Acacus Mountains.
The pictographs depict animals, hunting scenes, and social gatherings. However, they are not merely prehistoric paintings. The date of their origin can roughly be put into four different time periods.
The oldest images, from the so-called Wild Fauna Period (12,000 – 6000 BC), were created when the Sahara was covered in a plentiful savannah, with Elephants and Giraffes roaming the wide plains. During this period, carvings depicting those animals were scrawled across the desert cave walls.
The Round Head Period (8000 – 6000 BC), named after the images of rather formless bodies in the depictions of humans, forms a transition period between the age of Hunter-Gatherers and the creation of permanent settlements. The Pastoral Period (5500 – 2000 BC) followed, during which the climate of the Sahara grew much more arid. Human figures dominating and taming the forces of nature were painted during this period, including depictions of domesticated cattle and social festivities.
Horse and chariot depictions majorly date from the Horse Period (1000 BC – AD 1), during which means of transport made a leap forward, allowing the beginning of large Trans-Continental trade routes in Africa. The final period is called the Camel Period (200 BC – present), during which the Sahara finally became the arid desert that it is today.
more HERE.
and it's not the only area with rock paintings, of course. Similar paintings are found all over the desert.
When I worked in Zimbabwe, one of the priests who had done a study of local rock paintings, took me to one: It was a huge granite boulder that had split, and sure enough, in the crack protected by the overhand were red paintings of men. Example HERE.
In Zimbabwe, we also visited the Zimbabwe ruins, but what fascinated me even more was the hill fort ruins in Umtali, and the fact that entire sides of steep mountains had been terraced with stones. some stuff HERE and HERE.
and HERe, but not on line, only if you are rich enough to buy them or live near a university.
When I was recovering from an illness, I spent a week at a mission within walking distance of a mountainside completely terraced, using rocks...each terrace was about 3 feet wide, and usually about two feet high. They didn't really look like the Great Zimbabwe, whose rocks were flat bricklike structures, but if I remember the stones were more rounded and filled with mud.
We know how the stones of Zimbabwe were made because the technique was still being used. You go to a flat rock and put wood on it and start a fire. After it has burned for awhile you remove the wood and put water on the hot rock, which then cracks to the depth of the heat. (the domelike rocks are layered so maybe they are shale or limestone and not granite...I am not really good at geology). For one huge boulder in the way of our hospital extention in one of our missions, they kept the fire going several days before adding water, and the stone cracked makinig it easier to remove.
There are a lot of college lectures on these subjects, some on youtube, and the impressive thing is that people got around in those days...and a lot of history, especially in East Asia and Africa, will have to be rewritten.
when one guy wrote about African influences on Egypt (and thence to Greece) he was laughed at, but actually there seems to be a lot of people moving around in those days, so even the fact of Memnon and his Ethiopians in Troy might be true.
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