Issue No.588
Home news
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
30 May - 5 June 2002 Issue No.588 Home news |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Not the "oldest skeleton"
The human skeleton reported in Al-Ahram Weekly on 16 May to have been found in the Taramsa region in Qena province does not appear to be the first recorded find of human remains of this age. Although this new discovery is of great significance, it is difficult to describe it as the "oldest skeleton found in Egypt". An equally older skeleton, and in a far better state of preservation and reliable association, was found by the same Belgian expedition and in the same general area in the early 1980s.
The earlier find was dubbed the "Nazlet Khater man", and was reported to the scientific community in the journals Human Evolution and Nature in 1984.
The Nazlet Khater man was dated from between 35,000 and 30,000 years ago. The burial was of a young man of 17-20 years old, whose skeleton lay in a 160cm- long narrow ditch aligned from east to west. The head, which was slightly turned to the left, was on the west side of the ditch. The legs were in aslant rising position. The right arm was stretched along the body, while the left was folded so that the hand rested upon the lower part of the pelvis. The covering consisted of several boulders, some more than 40cms in diameter. A flint tool, which was laid carefully on the bottom of the grave, dates the burial as contemporaneous with a nearby flint quarry.
The man seemed to have been worked to death in that quarry and may have represented, according to one interpretation, a very early record of slavery.
* Rushdi Said is former head of the Egyptian Geological Survey Authority.
|
 |
| |||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
