THE KISE OP MAN — BREASTED 



415 



torn of this gravel bed they found stone implements wrought by 

 the hands of man and marking for us the advent of man in Egypt. 

 The age of these implements must be Plio-Pleistocene — that is, in 

 terms of European geologi- 

 cal history at the beginning 

 of the European Ice Age, 

 although there was of 

 course no Ice Age in North 

 Africa. These implements 

 are therefore the oldest 

 human artifacts ever yet 

 found in the Near East, 

 and may date anj'^where 

 from several hundred thou- 

 sand to a million years ago. 



DISCOVERY OF THE DATE OF 

 THE DESICCATION OF 

 NORTH AFRICA AND THE 

 AGE OF THE SAHARA 



Even more important 

 than this new observation 

 is a group of very instruc- 

 tive discoveries made by 

 the Prehistoric Survey in 

 the Faiyum Lake depres- 

 sion in the Sahara Plateau 

 on the west side of the Nile, 

 60 miles above Cairo. 

 Here a series of lake ter- 

 races, discovered by the 

 survey, were linked up in 

 age with those in the Nile 

 Valley. As many as 10 of 

 these lake terraces were 

 found lying in a series one 

 below another. As the 

 high level of the prehis- 

 toric lake, 112 feet above 

 the sea, gradually sank age 

 by age to its present level 

 below the sea, the waters stopped long enough at successive levels 

 to leave these terraces. The lake was shrinking as a result of the 

 desiccation of North Africa, and these terraces, like the sinking sand 



Figure 2. — Sketch map of Egypt, sliowiug the area 

 thus far included in the Prehistoric Survey 



