16,000–15,000 BCE: (The Climatic Window That Opened the Route — An Amelioration of the Extremely Dry Glacial Maximum Climate Between 16,000 and 15,000 BCE In…

16,000–15,000 BCE: (The Climatic Window That Opened the Route — An Amelioration of the Extremely Dry Glacial Maximum Climate Between 16,000 and 15,000 BCE Increasing Rainfall Along the Red Sea Region, the Red Sea Hills on the African Side Supporting an Expansion of Grassy Areas Including Wild Grains Such as Pearl Millet, Allowing Grain-Harvesting Communities to Spread Northward to Egypt Along This Chain of Tall Hills and Middling Mountains): What might explain the timing of the northward spread? Between around 16,000 and 15,000 BCE, an amelioration of the extremely dry climate of the Glacial Maximum period took place. During that millennium, rainfall increased all along the Red Sea region. On the African side of the sea — in the Red Sea Hills — the increase in rainfall would have supported an expansion of grassy areas along this chain of tall hills and middling mountains stretching between the Horn of Africa and Egypt. The emerging grasslands would have included African wild grains, such as pearl millet and other species, that the wild-grass-harvesting communities could now begin to exploit, allowing them to spread with their economy northward to Egypt. The route reveals itself with the inevitability of a geographic logic: the Red Sea Hills, running roughly parallel to the coast, formed a natural corridor of highland moisture in an otherwise arid landscape. As the climate softened and the rains returned, grasslands crept northward along this corridor, and the grain-harvesting peoples followed. They were not exploring. They were farming their way north, moving into newly habitable zones as the grasses advanced, carrying their subsistence knowledge and their language with them. The Red Sea Hills were the highway, the returning rains were the signal, and the grain was both the motive and the means. Geography, climate, and human ingenuity conspired to open a window — a single millennium of climatic grace — through which the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians walked into history.