16,000–15,000 BCE: (The Red Sea Rainfall Corridor and the Afrasian Spread to Egypt — During the Oldest Dryas Period in the Sixteenth Millennium BCE an Increa…

16,000–15,000 BCE: (The Red Sea Rainfall Corridor and the Afrasian Spread to Egypt — During the Oldest Dryas Period in the Sixteenth Millennium BCE an Increase in Rainfall Along the Red Sea Opening an Environmental Corridor for the Spread of Wild-Grain-Collecting Afrasian Speakers North from the Horn of Africa to Upper Egypt, This Development Marked in the Archaeology by the Arrival Around 15,000 BCE of the Afian-Qadan Cultural Complex Along the Egyptian Nile): In the sixteenth millennium BCE, during the Oldest Dryas period, an opposite climatic shift occurred along the Red Sea — an increase in rainfall that opened an environmental corridor for the spread of wild-grain-collecting Afrasian speakers northward from the Horn of Africa to Upper Egypt. This development is marked in the archaeology by the arrival around 15,000 BCE of the Afian-Qadan cultural complex along the Egyptian Nile. The climate giveth and the climate taketh away — but sometimes, in the taking from one region, it giveth to another. The Oldest Dryas brought colder, drier conditions to much of the world, but along the Red Sea Hills it brought rain, and that rain opened a path. The Afrasian grain harvesters of the Ethiopian highlands did not need to cross a desert to reach the Nile Valley. They followed the green — the corridor of increased rainfall that ran northward along the Red Sea coast, a corridor that existed for a geological instant, long enough for a population of grain collectors to walk from the Horn to Egypt and bring their language, their economy, and their culture with them. The Afian-Qadan cultural complex is the archaeological signature of that walk — the material evidence of an African people carrying an African subsistence economy along an African corridor to establish the deepest foundations of what would become the most celebrated civilization on the African continent.