6000–4000 BCE: (The Direction of Cultural Flow — More Often Than Not the New Features of Culture Had Their Origins in the Southerly Areas Among Nilo-Saharan-…

6000–4000 BCE: (The Direction of Cultural Flow — More Often Than Not the New Features of Culture Had Their Origins in the Southerly Areas Among Nilo-Saharan-Speaking Peoples, Ceramic Styles Evolving Out of Styles Initiated Farther South, Béatrix Midant-Reynes Noting That the Ceramics of the Fifth and Fourth Millennia Were Foreshadowed in the Sixth-Millennium Ceramics of the Nilo-Saharan-Speaking Areas Around the Confluence of the Abbai and White Nile Rivers, Black Burnished Wares Appearing First in Southern Sites Such as Shaheinab in Sudan): More often than not, the archaeology tells us, the new features of culture had their origins in the southerly areas, among people who would have spoken languages of the Eastern Sahelian branch of the Nilo-Saharan family. Ceramic styles, for example, evolved out of styles initiated farther south. To use the terminology of the eminent French archaeologist Béatrix Midant-Reynes, the ceramics of the fifth and fourth millennia were foreshadowed in the sixth-millennium ceramics of the Nilo-Saharan-speaking areas around the confluence of the Abbai (Blue Nile) and White Nile Rivers. The black burnished wares appear first in southern sites — such as Shaheinab in Sudan — with black-and-red burnished pots and jars then becoming common both in Sudan and in Upper and Middle Egypt. The direction of flow is unambiguous. South to north. Sudan to Egypt. Nilo-Saharan speakers to proto-Egyptian speakers. The ceramic traditions that would become hallmarks of predynastic Egyptian material culture — the black-topped pottery, the burnished red ware that museum visitors admire in cases labeled “Predynastic Egypt” — did not originate in Egypt. They originated in Sudan, among Nilo-Saharan-speaking communities living around the Nile confluence, and they traveled northward along the same cultural corridor that had been connecting these regions for millennia. The pots in the Egyptian galleries of the world’s great museums are Sudanese in origin. The civilization they are used to illustrate was built on cultural foundations that came from the south.