Predynastic Period – Circa 5300–3000 BCE

Areas of North Africa along the south coast of the Mediterranean Sea began to become attractive for settlement after the end of the last Ice Age (around 10,000 BCE), especially where there was an available supply of fresh water. The Nile River and the small but fertile areas around its banks were particularly appealing to the peoples who were just beginning to emerge from a nomadic lifestyle and starting to seek hospitable locations in which to settle. From 10,000 to about 5000 BCE there is little preserved evidence of advancement in lifestyles from those of the Late Paleolithic (Old Stone Age). The evidence for these first dwellers in the Nile valley consists mainly of stone tools of types recognized in other parts of the world during the prehistoric period, primarily implements developed for chopping, pounding, and scraping. There is only some scattered evidence of art as it is known in other areas of the prehistoric world. There is a small number of examples of images and designs scratched on the rock outcroppings in desert areas, but there are also petroglyphs preserved in the Nile valley itself.

The beginnings of more advanced cultural directions can be documented by physical evidence during the period between roughly 5000 and 4500 BCE. This is the start of an age that Egyptologists term the Predynastic Period, literally the time before the recorded dynasties (groups of hereditary rulers). The approximately fifteen hundred years (4500 to around 3000 BCE) that make up the last phase of the Predynastic Period were a time of rapid change and development. The practices of agriculture, including the cultivation of emmer wheat, barley, and flax, and the domestication of animals, especially sheep, goats, and pigs, became central to life as villages and towns expanded and were organized to accommodate larger groups of people who chose to live together for mutual aid and protection. The rapid advancement in agriculture implies that the early dwellers also began to design and use more complex tools in the process.