This article discusses the diffusion of food production from the Levant to Egypt in the Early–Middle Holocene. It attempts to explain how the diffusion and adoption of food production occurred in Egypt in light of optimal foraging theory, niche construction theory and innovation diffusion models. It disputes an old argument that Southwest Asian domesticates appeared late in Egypt and played only a minor role in its inhabitants’ subsistence. The primary focus is on the Fayum in northern Egypt, where the earliest-dated Southwest Asian domesticated cereal remains in Egypt were found together with cultivation-related tools and facilities. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the beginning of food production in the Fayum was not as late as previously thought, and that the subsequent development of food production should be seen as a response to the increasing imbalance between the growing human population and the limited wild food resources available in the Middle Holocene. Lithic evidence strongly indicates that people in the Fayum exerted every possible effort to make food production feasible and efficient with the aid of technology in the course of a millennium, starting in the early-to-mid 6th millennium BC.

本文讨论了全新世早中期粮食生产从黎凡特向埃及的扩散。它试图根据最佳觅食理论、生态位构建理论和创新扩散模型来解释埃及粮食生产的扩散和采用是如何发生的。它对一个古老的论点提出了质疑，即西南亚驯化动物在埃及出现较晚，并且在埃及居民的生存中只发挥了次要作用。主要关注点是埃及北部的法尤姆，在那里发现了埃及最早的西南亚驯化谷物遗迹以及与耕作相关的工具和设施。间接证据表明，法尤姆地区粮食生产的开始并不像以前认为的那么晚，随后粮食生产的发展应被视为对不断增长的人口与有限的野生食物资源之间日益不平衡的反应。在全新世中期。石器证据有力地表明，从公元前六世纪上旬到中期开始，法尤姆人民在长达一千年的时间里，尽一切努力在技术的帮助下使粮食生产变得可行和高效。