17,000–15,000 BCE: (The Microburin Technique in the Silsilian Culture of Upper Egypt — The Microburin Technique Having Already Been Applied in Upper Egypt in…

17,000–15,000 BCE: (The Microburin Technique in the Silsilian Culture of Upper Egypt — The Microburin Technique Having Already Been Applied in Upper Egypt in the Silsilian Culture of the Period 17,000–15,000 BCE, Subsequently Becoming Part of the Afian and Later Egyptian Tool Kits, This Predating the Arrival of the Mushabian Culture in the Levant and Countering Arguments That the Technique Was Independently Present East of the Jordan River, the African Priority of This Lithic Innovation Establishing That the Technological Traffic from Africa to the Levant Was Not Limited to the Mushabian Migration): The microburin technique had already been applied in Upper Egypt in the Silsilian culture of the period 17,000–15,000 BCE and subsequently became part of the Afian and later Egyptian tool kits. This detail, buried in a footnote, has significant implications. While the main text discusses the Mushabian migration as the vector carrying African lithic traditions into the Levant around the seventeenth millennium BCE, this note reveals that the microburin technique — a sophisticated method of snapping microliths to produce geometrically shaped tools — was in use in Upper Egypt even earlier than the Mushabian migration. The Silsilian culture of the Nile Valley, dating to 17,000–15,000 BCE, was already employing this technique two thousand years before it appeared in the Levant. The African priority is clear: the microburin technique was an African innovation that traveled northward, not a Levantine technique that traveled south.