12 HISTORY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF SCIENCE 



Africa during glacial times. The Sahara appears to have 

 been a habitable region and to have possessed a temperate 

 climate, at least during the earlier periods of European 

 glaciation. With the close of the Ice- Age and the advent of 

 the present climate, the southern shores of the Mediter- 



Fig. 1. Map of Egypt. Showing outline of the great fault-rift, 

 which produced the Nile Valley, and of the former coast 

 line. (Adapted from Blanckenhorn.) 



ranean were populated by peoples whose cultural level was 

 similar to that attained in southwestern Europe only in later 

 times. It is not improbable that similar conditions had long 

 prevailed and hence that a truly human culture emerged in 

 northern Africa far earlier than in Europe. Egypt, in partic- 

 ular, exhibits not only the record of an indigenous civiliza- 

 tion, but also evidences of antecedent neolithic and palseo- 



