The Predynastic of Egypt

The Predynastic of Egypt, spanning an interval from ca. 4000 to 3050 B.C., was an eventful period. After the inception of food production in the Nile Valley at least a millennium before, it was the time when the identity of Egyptian society was forged. Egypt was settled by refugees from the deserts of the eastern Sahara and the southern Levant, fleeing from mid-Holocene droughts, and became a melting pot of indigenous Nilotes and desert herders, part-time cultivators, and hunters. Within a millennium, an increasing dependence on agriculture led to sedentary life and, in some cases, to the development of sizable communities. By 4000 B.C., the settled communities had also developed a distinct division of labor between men and women and ritual and religious beliefs in which women, grain, fertility, and death were salient and interrelated elements. The Predynastic communities were also faced by the most destabilizing factor of agricultural economy, namely, fluctuations of yield. Attempts to dampen the fluctuations through interregional integration led to the emergence of community representatives and eventually chiefs. Legitimation of the status of chiefs through affiliation with the traditional and supernatural power associated with women, fertility, and death and the acquisition of exotic goods stimulated trade and an industry in funerary goods. Enlargement of economic units through alliances, with occasional incidences of fighting, especially after 3600 B.C., led to the rise of a state society governed by supreme rulers. The wedding of the funerary cult of Late Predynastic Egypt with political power and military might was the basis for the most fascinating aspects of Ancient Egypt—religion and kingship.     

Landlord Villages of Iran as Landscapes of Hierarchy and Control

This paper analyses the walled landlord villages of the Tehran Plain in terms of hierarchy and control, and how these structures are created and expressed through the spatial landscape of the villages. Drawing on original fieldwork, the ways in which landlords used the physicality of the villages to maintain and reinforce control over farmers is explored. We suggest that the “success” or at least longevity of the land tenure system in Iran prior to the later twentieth century can be attributed at least in part to the buildings and spaces of the villages themselves.     

Health Care in Rural Texas

The purpose of this article is to assess the quality of health and health care services available to rural Texans. Specifically, we seek to answer two related questions. First, do people living in rural areas of Texas generally suffer from poorer health than people living in urban Texas? One undoubtedly would think so, given frequent references to the low quality of personal services in general for rural America. Moreover, the persistence of the congressional Rural Health Care Caucus over the past two decades points to a rural health care crisis. Second, to what extent are these differences in health conditions explained by differences in access to health care enjoyed by people living in the two different regions? Access certainly appears to be the problem alluded to above. Rural people apparently lack physician care. In addition to providing answers to these questions, we also examine the difference in the health conditions and access to care enjoyed by minority and non‐minority rural Texans. Is this a part of the rural health care problem given the high incidence of non‐whites in rural Texas? If so this may be minority rather than rural neglect. We briefly conclude the article with some recommendations for improving the problems we identify.     

Differentiation between Seizure and Hysteria in a Tenth-Century Persian Text: Hidāyat of al-Akhawayni (d. 983 AD)

Although hysteria is associated largely with the nineteenth century, we find the subject treated in a tenth-century Persian medical text, the Hidayat al-Muta`allemin Fi al-Tibb [A Guide to Medical Learners] by al-Akhawayni Bukhari (d. 983 AD), a prominent physician in the Persian history of medicine. In this article, we discuss al-Akhawayni’s views on seizure and hysteria and his differentiation between the two conditions, and we place it in a historical context.     

Desert environment and origins of agriculture in Egypt

Examination of paleoclimatological and archaeological data from the Egyptian Sahara and the Nile Valley strongly suggests that management of animals and supplementary fanning appeared in the southern part of the Western Desert during the early Holocene under subarid conditions. Excessive annual and short‐term variability in rainfall, associated with pronounced temporal and spatial unpredictability of water and food resources, is considered one of the key factors stimulating the initiation of domestication. The onset of marked desertification during the 7th millennium bp motivated an eastward movement into the Nile Valley attested to by an almost simultaneous appearance of ‘Neolithic’ sites from the Delta to the central Sudan.     

First record of Homoctenus (Tentaculitoidea,Homoctenida) from the Late Devonian of northwest Peninsular Malaysia

Meor, H.A.H., Yong, A.M., Zakaria, M.Z.Z. & Ghani, A.A., 2.6.2015. First record of Homoctenus (Tentaculitoidea, Homoctenida) from the Late Devonian of northwest Peninsular Malaysia. Alcheringa 39, 550–558. ISSN 0311-5518.

The homoctenid tentaculitoid genus Homoctenus is reported for the first time from Peninsular Malaysia. The fossils derive from the Upper Devonian Sanai Limestone, exposed in the state of Perlis, northwest Peninsular Malaysia. The fossils are closely related to Homoctenus tenuicinctus tenuicinctus and are described as Homoctenus sp. cf. H. tenuicinctus. The homoctenids were recovered from an interval containing a rich conodont assemblage, indicating a Frasnian age (Palmatolepis linguiformis Zone).

Meor Hakif Amir Hassan [meorhakif@um.edu.my], Yong Adilah Mustafa [yongadilah@gmail.com], Mohamad Z.Z. Zakaria [zulhafiszariq@siswa.um.edu.my], Azman A. Ghani [azmangeo@um.edu.my], Geology Department, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Received 12.4.2015; revised 27.5.2015; accepted 2.6.2015.     

The Development Impact of NGO Activities in the Red Sea Province of Sudan: A Critique

This article examines the results of, and the prospects for, the declared shift of NGOs from relief operations to development activities in the Red Sea Province of eastern Sudan. Statistical and qualitative information contained in the reports of NGOs themselves provides the main data source on which the analysis is based. Although NGOs have been successful in conducting massive relief operations in the area, the article asserts that they have not yet and are not expected to achieve any tangible results on the development front. The main reason for this is the apparent misconception of development on the part of the NGOs as an isolated, localized activity which they can perform; another is the NGOs' failure to recognize the difference in the methods, means and prerequisites necessary for relief and for development; a third is the failure of NGOs to equip local institutions to absorb and/or sustain any achieved ‘development’, since most NGOs operate in complete isolation from governmental and traditional Beja institutions.     

Palestinian Water: Resources,Use, Conservation,Climate Change,and Land Use

This article addresses the future of freshwater resources in the Palestinian West Bank through a discussion of contemporary issues that each plays a vital role in determining the long‐term sustainability of freshwater reserves, such as water resource availability, trans‐boundary water issues, water reuse and conservation, changes in land use, and the potential impact of climate change on long‐term water management. Climate change and changing land use patterns are already altering this region's water resources. Future predictions regarding the long‐term effects of these changes are complex and therefore inherently uncertain. However, the consensus among most studies on this subject indicates that currently water‐poor regions such as the Middle East will experience even greater water stress in the future. Nearly all of the freshwater consumed in the West Bank is obtained from local groundwater supplies that are suffering overdraft as well as decreasing water quality. Climate change will exacerbate water stress by increasing overall temperatures, decreasing and fluctuating precipitation, and reducing overall aquifer replenishment. Expanding urbanization will continue to strain freshwater supplies by negatively impacting the quality and quantity of available freshwater. Water management in the West Bank is further complicated by total Israeli control over water resources, which often causes water delivery to Palestinians in this region to be marginalized. This article finds that Palestinian and Israeli water managers must plan for future water crises, which will likely be a result of the combined effects of increasing urbanization and climate change coupled with exponential population growth.