6000–3100 BCE: (Linguistic Evidence of South-to-North Cultural Flow — Words in Early Egyptian for a Number of Important Cultural Items Borrowed from Nilo-Sah…

6000–3100 BCE: (Linguistic Evidence of South-to-North Cultural Flow — Words in Early Egyptian for a Number of Important Cultural Items Borrowed from Nilo-Saharan Languages, the Evidence of Word Histories Providing Still Another Window into the Material Cultural Influences That Flowed from Sudan to Egypt, the Direction of Borrowing Confirming What the Archaeology Already Shows): The evidence of word histories provides still another window into the material cultural influences that flowed from south to north. The words in early Egyptian for a number of important cultural items were borrowed from Nilo-Saharan languages — the languages spoken by the communities to the south who were the originators of many of the cultural features that spread northward into Egypt during the period of cultural convergence. This linguistic evidence is the complement to the archaeological evidence, and the two tell the same story. When Egyptian borrowed a word from Nilo-Saharan, it was borrowing more than a sound: it was borrowing the concept, the practice, the technology that the word described. Each loanword is a record of a cultural transaction — a moment when the proto-Egyptian-speaking communities of the northern part of the culture area adopted something from their Nilo-Saharan-speaking neighbors to the south and adopted the word for it along with the thing itself. The direction of linguistic borrowing confirms what the archaeology of ceramics, maceheads, and burial practices already shows: the cultural foundations of ancient Egypt were built substantially from materials that originated in the south, among the Nilo-Saharan-speaking peoples of Sudan and Nubia. Egypt did not civilize Nubia. Nubia — along with Sudan — helped civilize Egypt.