3400 BCE: (The Climatic Catastrophe That Created Pharaonic Egypt — Around the Thirty-Fourth Century BCE a Further Major Climatic Decline Shifting Large Parts…

3400 BCE: (The Climatic Catastrophe That Created Pharaonic Egypt — Around the Thirty-Fourth Century BCE a Further Major Climatic Decline Shifting Large Parts of the Eastern Sahara to Extremely Arid Conditions, Changing the Landscape from Steppe and Semidesert Grassland to Desert, the Immediate Consequence Being the Movement of Pastoralists Out of the Emerging Desert and Their Resettlement Among Communities Along the Nile Itself): Then, around the thirty-fourth century BCE, a further major climatic decline took hold across these regions. Large parts of the eastern Sahara shifted over to the extremely arid climate it has today, changing much of its landscape from steppe and semidesert grassland to desert, although apparently also with remaining areas of desert grassland still able to support marginal livestock raising down to as late as around 2000 BCE. One immediate, direct consequence was the movement of pastoralists out of the emerging desert and their resettlement among the communities along the Nile itself. This is the climatic event that created the Egypt of the textbooks — the narrow ribbon of green along the Nile, the gift of the river, the civilization dependent on the annual flood. Before 3400 BCE, Egypt was a culture area of open steppe and mobile pastoralists. After 3400 BCE, the steppe died and the people were compressed onto the river. The population concentration that the desiccation produced — thousands of pastoralists and their herds crowding onto the narrow floodplain — created the demographic density, the competition for resources, and the political pressure that would drive the formation of larger and larger polities, culminating in the unification of Egypt around 3100 BCE. Pharaonic civilization was not created by the Nile. It was created by the death of the grasslands that had sustained its predecessor culture. The people who built Egypt were refugees from a climate catastrophe, carrying with them the cultural, religious, and political traditions of the Middle Nile Culture Area — traditions forged over three millennia of interaction between Afrasian-speaking and Nilo-Saharan-speaking communities across a landscape that no longer exists.