While studying nomads camped some 600 miles south of Cairo about 20 years ago, Fred Wendorf noticed groups of large stones near the camp. He thought the stones were bedrock outcrops and didn't take much interest in them. Only in 1990, on a return trip, did he take a closer look. Then he realized that the stones lay on the site of an ancient lake bed and must have been brought there. Curious, he began excavating. Eight years and much digging and surveying later, Wendorf, an anthropologist at Southern Methodist University, announced that the stone slabs he had unearthed--some standing nine feet tall--are among the oldest astronomical alignments of megaliths in the world. Erected 7,300 to 6,800 years ago, they predate Stonehenge by more than 1,000 years and may have been built by a nomadic society that later settled and gave rise to early Egyptian civilization.
At the site--called Nabta ...
