Tombs in the north at Meroe of kings who ruled ca. 300-200 B.C. Temple of Naqa, southwest of Meroe
Courtesy Robert O. Collins

Tombs in the north at Meroe of kings who ruled ca. 300-200 B.C. Temple of Naqa, southwest of Meroe
Courtesy Robert O. Collins

Archaeological excavation of sites on the Nile above Aswan has confirmed human habitation in the river valley during the Paleolithic period that spanned more than 60,000 years of Sudanese history. By the eighth millennium B.C., people of a Neolithic culture had settled into a sedentary way of life there in fortified mud-brick villages, where they supplemented hunting and fishing on the Nile with grain gathering and cattle herding. Contact with Egypt probably occurred at a formative stage in the culture's development because of the steady movement of population along the Nile River. Skeletal remains suggest a blending of negroid and Mediterranean populations during the Neolithic period (eighth to third millenia B.C.) that has remained relatively stable until the present, despite gradual infiltration by other elements.

Data as of June 1991