Egypt
New Scientist (Jeff Hecht)
- Fish Swam The Sahara, Bolstering Out Of Africa Theory
Live Science (Charles Q. Choi) Fish may have once swum across the Sahara, a finding that could shed light on how humanity made its way out of Africa, researchers said. The cradle of humanity lies south of the Sahara, which begs the question as to how...
- More Re Greening Of The Sahara - The Full Article
PNAS Available free of charge in PDF format. Wet phases in the Sahara/Sahel region and human migration patterns in North Africa Isla S. Castañedaa, Stefan Mulitzab, Enno Schefußb, Raquel A. Lopes dos Santosa, Jaap S. Sinninghe Damstéa and Stefan Schoutena...
- News: More On Greening Of Sahara Influencing Early Migrations
Science Daily A team of scientists from the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of Bremen (Germany) has determined that a major change in the climate of the Sahara and Sahel region of North Africa facilitated early human...
- Out Of Africa - A New Route?
Science Daily The widely held belief that the Nile valley was the most likely route out of sub-Saharan Africa for early modern humans 120,000 year ago is challenged in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A team led by the...
- Migration Of Early Humans Aided By Wet Weather
Science Daily The African origin of early modern humans 200,000--150,000 years ago is now well documented, with archaeological data suggesting that a major migration from tropical east Africa to the Levant took place between 130,000 and 100,000 years...
Egypt
News: Stone Age humans crossed Sahara in the rain
New Scientist (Jeff Hecht)
Wet spells in the Sahara may have opened the door for early human migration. According to new evidence, water-dependent trees and shrubs grew there between 120,000 and 45,000 years ago. This suggests that changes in the weather helped early humans cross the desert on their way out of Africa.
The Sahara would have been a formidable barrier during the Stone Age, making it hard to understand how humans made it to Europe from eastern Africa, where the earliest remains of our hominin ancestors are found.
Isla Castañeda of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and colleagues studied land plant hydrocarbons in Saharan dust that has settled on the sea floor off west Africa over the past 192,000 years. From the ratio of carbon isotopes in the hydrocarbons they can work out which types of plants were present at different times.
While about 40 per cent of hydrocarbons in today's dust come from water-dependent plants, this rose to 60 per cent, first between 120,000 and 110,000 ago and again from 50,000 to 45,000 years ago. So the region seemed to be in the grip of unusually wet spells at the time.
That may have been enough to allow sub-Saharan Stone Age Homo sapiens to migrate north: the first fossils of modern humans outside Africa date from 93,000 year ago in Israel.
- Fish Swam The Sahara, Bolstering Out Of Africa Theory
Live Science (Charles Q. Choi) Fish may have once swum across the Sahara, a finding that could shed light on how humanity made its way out of Africa, researchers said. The cradle of humanity lies south of the Sahara, which begs the question as to how...
- More Re Greening Of The Sahara - The Full Article
PNAS Available free of charge in PDF format. Wet phases in the Sahara/Sahel region and human migration patterns in North Africa Isla S. Castañedaa, Stefan Mulitzab, Enno Schefußb, Raquel A. Lopes dos Santosa, Jaap S. Sinninghe Damstéa and Stefan Schoutena...
- News: More On Greening Of Sahara Influencing Early Migrations
Science Daily A team of scientists from the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of Bremen (Germany) has determined that a major change in the climate of the Sahara and Sahel region of North Africa facilitated early human...
- Out Of Africa - A New Route?
Science Daily The widely held belief that the Nile valley was the most likely route out of sub-Saharan Africa for early modern humans 120,000 year ago is challenged in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A team led by the...
- Migration Of Early Humans Aided By Wet Weather
Science Daily The African origin of early modern humans 200,000--150,000 years ago is now well documented, with archaeological data suggesting that a major migration from tropical east Africa to the Levant took place between 130,000 and 100,000 years...