Cattle nomads in the prehistoric Sahara
Some sadly brief pieces about the excellent work carried out by Dr Kropelin and his colleagues in the eastern Sahara, including the Gilf Kebir. There's a bit more on the above page, but not much.
http://tinyurl.com/el7et (latimes.com)
"A 3,200-year interlude of tropical rains once transformed the eastern Sahara into a verdant savanna where seminomadic people thrived amid elephants, cattle and more than 30 species of fish, according to German researchers.After collecting more than 500 radiocarbon dates at 150 sites in an area larger than Western Europe, University of Cologne researchers found that the sudden climate change 10,500 years ago coaxed thousands of people to move into the now desolate expanse. The researchers based their dates on bone, charcoal and human artifacts found in the area.The prehistoric settlements show evidence of the first attempts in Africa at raising cattle and fashioning ceramic pottery, said geo-archeologist Stefan Kroepelin, one of the authors of the paper, published Friday in the journal Science."
http://tinyurl.com/p7meh (science.monstersandcritics.com)
"An archaeologist who has spent decades studying sites in the Sahara says nomads who roamed the area millennia ago were the first to domesticate cattle. At the time, what is now desert was a vast savannah with a humid climate, Dr. Stefan Kropelin of the University of Cologne told the BBC. When the climate changed and the area became one of the driest places on Earth, its inhabitants moved into the Nile Valley."
See the above pages for some more details (particularly the first one). The original article was published in the journal Science (subscription required):
http://www.sciencemag.org/index.dtl
- Online: Late Neolithic Megalithic Structures At Nabta Playa (sahara), Southwestern Egypt.
The Comparative Archaeology website Added March 1998. Updated November 26, 2000. Late Neolithic megalithic structures at Nabta Playa (Sahara), southwestern Egypt. By Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild Introduction Located 100 km west of Abu Simbel, in southernmost...
- More Re Out Of Africa Via Wet Sahara
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- Once Lush Sahara Dried Up Over Millennia
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- More Re Science Feature On Saharan Prehistory
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/07/060720-sahara.htmlThanks very much to Mark Morgan for pointing out this rather more comprehensive insight into the Science article featuring the work of Stefan Kropelin and Rudolph Kuper in the Western Desert....
- Prehistoric Sahara Teeming With Life
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/earth_sciences/report-54055.htmlThis may be of interest to anyone interested in the prehistory of the Western Desert of Egypt, with many of the same conclusions being drawn here for Libya, as have been drawn...