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期至中期从黎凡特到埃及的粮食生产扩散。它试图根据最佳觅食理论，利基建设理论和创新扩散来解释埃及粮食生产的扩散和采用是如何发生的。楷模。它驳斥了一个古老的论点，即西南亚的驯养物出现在埃及的后期，在其居民的生存中仅扮演了次要的角色。主要关注点是埃及北部的Fayum，在埃及发现了最早的西南亚驯化谷物残骸，以及与耕作有关的工具和设施。间接证据表明，在Fayum开展粮食生产的时间没有以前想象的那么晚，随后粮食生产的发展应被视为对人口增长和有限的野生粮食资源之间日益不平衡的一种反应。在中全新世。