Early Neolithic- Predynastic Egypt
During the Late Paleolithic (35,000 B.C.E), the Qadan culture, which practiced farming along the Nile during the beginning of the Sahaba Daru nile phase, when desiccation in the Sahara caused residents of the Lybian oases to retreat into the Nile valley. Another culture of hunters, fishers and gathering peoples using stone tools replaced them. The Samara culture was an eneolithic (copper age) culture of the early 5th millennium B.C. at the Samara bend and the forest-steppe terrain region of the middle Volga. The Volga drains most of Western Russia. The Eneolithic culture of the region is a proper name, referring to the Samara culture, the subsequent Khvalynsk culture and the still later early Yamna culture.
In Egypt pre-dynastic farming communities emerged after 8000 BC, as farming was introduced from the Levant. Two cultures emerged; one in the Upper Nile Region and one in the Lower Nile Region. In southeast Europe agrarian societies first appeared by ca. 7000 BC, and in Central Europe by ca. 5500 BC. Naqada stands near the site of a necropolis from the prehistoric, pre-dynastic period around 4400-3000 BCE. The pharaohs were known as the rulers of the Two Kingdoms, viz. upper and lower Egypt. The two cultures' terminology derives from the flow of the Nile from the highlands of East Africa (upstream) to the Mediterranean Sea (downstream). Lower Egypt (Ta-Mehu) is to the north and is that part where the Nile Delta drains into the Mediterranean Sea. To the Pharaohs, Lower Egypt which means "land of papyrus" as the place was mostly undeveloped scrubland where there were twenty nomes and the first of these was at Memphis.
The Tasian Culture- technically part of the Stone Age, was the next to begin in Upper Egypt. The Badarian culture of chalcolithic settlements provides the earliest direct evidence of agriculture in the land of the reed as Upper Egypt (Ta Shemau). By then agricultural Egyptian Neolithic cultures had a long tradition of their own.
Lower Egypt is the northern-most section of Egypt stretching from just south of modern-day Cairo to the Nile Delta at Alexandria. They traded with countries such as Cyprus, Crete, Greece, Syro-Palestine, Punt, and Nubia. The predynastic period is generally divided into cultural periods named after the places where a certain type of Egyptian settlement was first located. It is only with the Naqada II (3500–3200 BCE) and III (3200–3000 BCE) periods in southern Egypt that any evidence of incursions of people from South West Asia can be distinguished. Although earlier links can be shown to have existed between Badarian and the Western Desert, and even with Merimde and the Fayyum, there are no clear early links back into Palestine or Syria.
The Gerzean Culture (Naqada II 3200–3000 BCE) , named after the site of Gerza, was the next stage in Egyptian cultural development. Gerzean culture is largely an unbroken development out of Amratian Culture, starting in the delta and moving south through upper Egypt, however failing to dislodge Amratian Culture in Nubia. It was in this time that Egyptian city dwellers stopped building out of reeds, and used the mudbrick, which was developed in the Amratian Period, en masse to build their cities. Significant amounts of Mesopotamian influences worked their way into Egypt during the Gerzean which were interpreted in previous years as evidence of a Mesopotamian ruling class, the so called Dynastic Race- who then conquered both Upper and Lower Egypt and founded the First Dynasty between the Elamite Period of Ur and the arrival of Amorites to Mesopotamia from the Akkadian kingdom of Sumer. The Neolithic traditions spread west and northwards to reach northwestern Europe by around 4500 BC; the Ubaid culture of Alluvial plains of Sumer and Elam lived with little Rainfall, and necessary irrigation systems. Linearbandkeramik sites along the Rhine and inter-group entities from Pre-Classic sites in Britain later developed into the chiefdoms of the European Early Bronze Age.
| In the New world, the Iroquois, Pueblo people, Maya civilization and in Oceania the Maori are all examples of stone-tool-dependent cultures with complex social and political systems. Naqada II ended when the Neolithic period ended. Sumerians establish cities and invent the wheel. |  |
The Neolithic in Africa did not develop as a result of immigrants from the Middle East speaking a new Afroasiatic language. Rather it developed out of a deep tradition of Egyptian Epi-Paleolithic (Mesolithic) cultures undergoing a long-process of Neolithicisation, with a full Neolithic tradition emerging with the Badarian (and possibly Tasian), about 5,000 - 4,500 BCE. The period began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch around 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and ended with the introduction of farming from Mesopotamia around 8,000 years ago and settlements at Akure in present-day southwest Nigeria are established. The Indus has formed a natural boundary between the Indian hinterland and its frontier crossed by the armies of Alexander the Great into the plains under the domination of the Persian empire and the Kushan empire. The ultimate source of the Indus River is in Tibet. Around 8000 BC, Alaska was still connected to Siberia with the landbridge, located in the current Bering Strait.
By 6000 B.C. predynastic Egyptians in the southwestern corner of Egypt were herding cattle and constructing large buildings. ( The Sahara and The Cattle Period ) . Mortar (masonry) was in use by 4000 BC. The Predynastic Period continues through this time, variously held to begin with the Naqada culture. Some authorities however place the start of the Predynastic Period earlier, in the Lower Paleolithic. Proto-Afro-Asiatic flourished between 4400 to 4000 BCE, and might have already existed as far back as 5000 BCE. It was first identified in Badari, near Sohag.