6000–4000 BCE: (The Emergence of New Positions of Authority — One Global Consequence of Demographic Growth Being the Emergence of Inherited Ritual and Politi…

6000–4000 BCE: (The Emergence of New Positions of Authority — One Global Consequence of Demographic Growth Being the Emergence of Inherited Ritual and Political Positions Passed Down in Particular Families, in Africa the Distinctive Type of Sacral Chiefship and Kingship Present in Upper Egypt in the Later Fourth Millennium BCE Originating Centuries Earlier in Nubia and the Middle Nile Basin Among Nilo-Saharan-Speaking Peoples, Most Probably Emerging Possibly Even Before the Middle Holocene Among the Aquatic Communities of the Green Sahara Rather Than Among the Herding and Cultivating Nilo-Saharans): One global consequence of this age of demographic growth was the emergence of new positions of authority in many parts of the world, notably inherited ritual and political positions passed down in particular families. In Africa, the distinctive type of especially sacral chiefship and kingship, present in the later fourth millennium BCE in Upper Egypt — and, from the archaeological and comparative ethnographic indications, originating centuries earlier in Nubia and the Middle Nile basin south of Egypt, a kind of kingship that continued to thrive in later ages in a wide array of states in the Sahara and Sudan belt — had its roots among Nilo-Saharan-speaking peoples. Ehret has proposed that this institution most probably emerged, possibly even before the middle Holocene, among the communities that exploited the aquatic resources of the green Sahara rather than among the herding and cultivating Nilo-Saharan speakers. The origin of sacral kingship among the Aquatic communities is a finding of extraordinary significance. It means that the institution of divine kingship — the idea that a ruler holds both temporal and spiritual authority, that the king is the conduit between the human and the divine — was not born in the palace of a pharaoh or the temple of a Mesopotamian city-state. It was born among fishermen. The communities that harvested Nile perch from Lake Mega-Chad and hunted hippopotamus along the waterways of the green Sahara developed, in their aquatic prosperity, the social stratification and ritual authority structures that would eventually produce the institution of sacred kingship. When the pastoral Nilo-Saharans absorbed these Aquatic communities, they absorbed the institution along with the people — and from that point it traveled southward into the Sudan belt and northward into the Middle Nile Culture Area, where it would become the template for pharaonic rule. The divine right of kings is an African invention, and its inventors were fishermen in a desert that was once a sea.