Who were the Egyptians?

Egypt lies in the extreme north-east of Africa. The river Nile flows right through the country and into the Mediterranean Sea through the Delta, making a long, fertile valley. People have lived in the area since the Stone  Age, and modern humans arrived about 60,000 years ago. Around 8000 BC, the climate of Northern Africa began  to change. The landscape became more arid, and the climate less hospitable. In contrast, the Nile River Valley was  an area abundant in food and water. The Khartoum people arrived in Egypt around 6000 BC. They were the  first to domesticate cattle and grow crops in the Nile Valley. Some of their spectacular rock-carvings can be seen  in the Nubian Museum, Aswan. Around 5000 BC, a series of civilizations began to develop across the world,  centered on major river valleys – the Indus in India, the Tigris-Euphrates in the Middle East, the Yellow River in  China and the Nile in Egypt. The first settlers in ancient Egypt had probably migrated from other parts of Africa  such as Libya and Nubia, and also from Palestine and Syria. They would have lived in simple mud huts on the banks of the Nile. These settlers were joined 2000 years later by people from escaping from the arid conditions of  modern south Iraq. They would also have been attracted by the fertile soils, regular water supply and plentiful  wildlife that were features of ancient Egypt. The period of time from the founding of these settlements until the beginning of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt in 3100 BC is known as the Predynastic era. Historians are  not sure how the end of the Predynastic era came about. It may have been caused by an invasion from Asia, but it is more likely that internal factors caused a gradual unification of Egypt.