There are numerous mentions of the Ur Nile on a search but most of these are not considered dependable geological sources. Even geologists don't know the exact route of this river. It's hard for me to obtain good maps even at the library now days (they're all rand mcnally), so the exact route of the river is speculative.
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^ Dumb Muktaba fails to understand that first of all, the implications show that the majority of West African ancestors DON'T COME FROM JUNGLES but from grasslands that once existed in NORTH AFRICA before it became desert!! Second of all, even Africans in the jungles created ancient civilizations!
^ Look at all those civilizations built right in the jungles. About a dozen. Where are all the great civilizations of Syrian and Arabian deserts where muktaba's ancestors dwelt??
I suggest the muktaba saqaliba wipe his mouth with toilet paper after he speaks, if you know what I mean. Posts: 26513 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Ethiopian lake sediments reveal history of African droughts
A new survey of Lake Tana in Ethiopia – the source of the Blue Nile – suggests that drought may have contributed to the demise of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, around 4200 years ago.
A team led by the University of Aberystwyth used seismic surveys and sediment cores to work out how the lake's water levels has varied over the past 17,000 years and linked this to evidence for global climate change.
Understanding how and why rainfall patterns change is particularly important for sub-Saharan Africa, where prolonged droughts have such serious social and economic consequences.
The climate here is dominated by the African-Asian monsoon and the movements of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). This is an area of erratic weather patterns, where winds from the northern and southern hemispheres meet close to the equator: sailors know it as the Doldrums.
Seasonal movements of the ITCZ can affect the strength of the monsoon. A strong monsoon leads to higher lake levels, and this can be traced in ancient lake sediments. Lake Tana is particularly good for this kind of research because it's close to the northern limit of the ITCZ so even slight a southward movement of the ITCZ is reflected in the lake's geological history.
Fleshing out the detail of the region's rainfall history and linking it to past climate change can improve predictions of future rainfall. The detail enables scientists to check the ability of their climate models to accurately 'predict' past climate change; this fine tuning means they can be more confident of the models' accuracy when predicting future events.
There was already strong evidence for an abrupt drought in Africa around 16,500 years ago, linked to changes in the Earth's climate. The researchers wanted to understand the region's subsequent climate history, including finding any evidence for a dry period around 4200 years ago, when the Egyptian Old Kingdom declined.
"We were looking for evidence for long-term drought events to provide a historical context to data modellers," says Dr. Michael Marshall from Aberystwyth University, a lead author of the research paper published in Global and Planetary Change. "We wanted to find out when and how quickly drought has come about in the past."
The researchers used seismic (sound) survey and cores taken through the bottom of the lake, to get a picture of the stratigraphy or layers of sediment that have been carried into the lake by 17,000 years of rainfall.
They then used chemical and magnetic analysis to determine the conditions under which the sediments were deposited, giving them a picture of periods of relatively dry or wet weather. By carbon dating the layers the researchers then tied these wet/dry phases to existing evidence for climate change events – like movements in the ITCZ.
This let them align periods of sub-Saharan drought to periods of global climate change.
The Blue Nile is the main tributary of Egypt's Nile river and it delivers most of the sediment to the Nile's floodplain. These fertile soils were the bedrock of ancient Egyptian civilisation, so long-term changes in the flow of the Nile would have had a profound effect on Egyptian society.
"Finding a distinct dry period around the time of decline of the Old Kingdom is complicated by the fact that the climate was becoming drier overall during that time anyway," explains Marshall.
Nevertheless, the researchers' analysis of the sediments did reveal a distinct dry episode around 4200 years ago. This would have lowered water levels in Lake Tana and reduced the flow of the Nile, interrupting the regular supply of fertile sediment to the Nile delta. Archaeological evidence shows that the Old Kingdom was already beginning to wane; reduced Nile flow could have contributed to its demise.
This story is republished courtesy of Planet Earth online, a free, companion website to the award-winning magazine Planet Earth published and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
More information: Late Pleistocene and Holocene drought events at Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile. Michael H
Marshall, et al. doi: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2011.06.004
Posts: 22249 | From: Omni | Registered: Nov 2010
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Late Pleistocene and Holocene drought events at Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile
Michael H. Marshall et al.
Abstract Magnetic and geochemical core data spanning the last 17,000 years are correlated with new seismic stratigraphy from Lake Tana, Ethiopia, to infer past lake-level change and hence effective precipitation. The data confirm that low lake-level coincides with Heinrich Event 1 (H1) in the North Atlantic, as previously shown from diatom and pollen evidence (Lamb et al., 2007). The lake deepened at 15.3 cal kyr BP and abruptly returned to freshwater conditions, when the lake overflowed into the Blue Nile. Low runoff and lake levels and therefore rainfall are inferred between 13.0 and 12.5 cal kyr BP and may represent southerly suppression of the ITCZ and the associated monsoon front at the time of the Younger Dryas. Two drought episodes occurred at 8.4 and 7.5 cal kyr BP, and are also interpreted as a southward shift in the monsoon front. The first of these events appears to have preceded and been more significant than the 8.2 cal kyr BP. Precipitation declined after 6.8 cal kyr BP, although we do not see an abrupt end to the African Humid Period. This period culminated in a dry episode at ~ 4.2 cal kyr BP, supporting the view that reduced Nile flow was a contributing factor to the demise of the Egyptian Old Kingdom.
Highlights ► 17,000 years of climate change at the source of the Blue Nile, Lake Tana, Ethiopia. ► Southerly suppression of the ITCZ and monsoon front at the time of the Younger Dryas. ► Drought at 8.4 cal kyr BP preceded and was more significant than the “8.2 event”. ► No abrupt end to the so-called African Humid Period. ► Drought at Nile source a factor in the demise of the Egyptian Old Kingdom.
quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol: Ethiopian lake sediments reveal history of African droughts
A new survey of Lake Tana in Ethiopia – the source of the Blue Nile – suggests that drought may have contributed to the demise of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, around 4200 years ago.
A team led by the University of Aberystwyth used seismic surveys and sediment cores to work out how the lake's water levels has varied over the past 17,000 years and linked this to evidence for global climate change.
Understanding how and why rainfall patterns change is particularly important for sub-Saharan Africa, where prolonged droughts have such serious social and economic consequences.
The climate here is dominated by the African-Asian monsoon and the movements of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). This is an area of erratic weather patterns, where winds from the northern and southern hemispheres meet close to the equator: sailors know it as the Doldrums.
Seasonal movements of the ITCZ can affect the strength of the monsoon. A strong monsoon leads to higher lake levels, and this can be traced in ancient lake sediments. Lake Tana is particularly good for this kind of research because it's close to the northern limit of the ITCZ so even slight a southward movement of the ITCZ is reflected in the lake's geological history.
Fleshing out the detail of the region's rainfall history and linking it to past climate change can improve predictions of future rainfall. The detail enables scientists to check the ability of their climate models to accurately 'predict' past climate change; this fine tuning means they can be more confident of the models' accuracy when predicting future events.
There was already strong evidence for an abrupt drought in Africa around 16,500 years ago, linked to changes in the Earth's climate. The researchers wanted to understand the region's subsequent climate history, including finding any evidence for a dry period around 4200 years ago, when the Egyptian Old Kingdom declined.
"We were looking for evidence for long-term drought events to provide a historical context to data modellers," says Dr. Michael Marshall from Aberystwyth University, a lead author of the research paper published in Global and Planetary Change. "We wanted to find out when and how quickly drought has come about in the past."
The researchers used seismic (sound) survey and cores taken through the bottom of the lake, to get a picture of the stratigraphy or layers of sediment that have been carried into the lake by 17,000 years of rainfall.
They then used chemical and magnetic analysis to determine the conditions under which the sediments were deposited, giving them a picture of periods of relatively dry or wet weather. By carbon dating the layers the researchers then tied these wet/dry phases to existing evidence for climate change events – like movements in the ITCZ.
This let them align periods of sub-Saharan drought to periods of global climate change.
The Blue Nile is the main tributary of Egypt's Nile river and it delivers most of the sediment to the Nile's floodplain. These fertile soils were the bedrock of ancient Egyptian civilisation, so long-term changes in the flow of the Nile would have had a profound effect on Egyptian society.
"Finding a distinct dry period around the time of decline of the Old Kingdom is complicated by the fact that the climate was becoming drier overall during that time anyway," explains Marshall.
Nevertheless, the researchers' analysis of the sediments did reveal a distinct dry episode around 4200 years ago. This would have lowered water levels in Lake Tana and reduced the flow of the Nile, interrupting the regular supply of fertile sediment to the Nile delta. Archaeological evidence shows that the Old Kingdom was already beginning to wane; reduced Nile flow could have contributed to its demise.
This story is republished courtesy of Planet Earth online, a free, companion website to the award-winning magazine Planet Earth published and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
More information: Late Pleistocene and Holocene drought events at Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile. Michael H
Marshall, et al. doi: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2011.06.004
This drought event in east Africa was explained in the Discovery program Why Ancient Egypt Fell. By 'Ancient Egypt' they really mean the Old Kingdom.
Posts: 26513 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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From Hunters to Farmers. Edited by J. Desmond Clark and Steven A. Brandt. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1984. Pp. xi + 433. £44. Roland Olivera1
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Domestication Processes and Morphological Change Through the Lens of the Donkey and African Pastoralism Fiona Marshall and Lior Weissbrod
Fiona Marshall is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Washington University, Saint Louis (1 Brooking Drive, Saint Louis, Missouri 63130, U.S.A. [fmarshal@artsci.wustl.edu]). Lior Weissbrod is a postdoctoral researcher at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa (Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel [lweissbr@research.haifa.ac.il]).
Little is known about the beginnings and spread of food production in the tropics, but recent research suggests that definitions that depend on morphological change may hamper recognition of early farming in these regions. The earliest form of food production in Africa developed in arid tropical grasslands. Animals were the earliest domesticates, and the mobility of early herders shaped the development of social and economic systems. Genetic data indicate that cattle were domesticated in North Africa and suggest domestication of two different African wild asses, in the Sahara and in the Horn. Cowpeas and pearl millet were domesticated several thousand years later, but some intensively used African plants have never undergone morphological change. Morphological, genetic, ethnoarchaeological, and behavioral research reveals relationships between management, animal behavior, selection, and domestication of the donkey. Donkeys eventually showed phenotypic and morphological changes distinctive of domestication, but the process was slow. This African research on domestication of the donkey and the development of pastoralism raises questions regarding how we conceptualize hunter-gatherer versus food-producer land use. It also suggests that we should focus more intently on the methods used to recognize management, agropastoral systems, and domestication events.
This paper was submitted 13 XI 09, accepted 02 XII 10, and electronically published 08 VI 11.
The question of whether understanding of the beginnings of food production is being constrained by definitions and methods of detection that focus on morphological change rather than management is becoming a major theme in studies of the origins of agriculture. Recent research in the humid tropics of southeastern Asia and the Pacific suggests that definitions that depend on morphological change hamper recognition of early farming in these areas (Bayliss-Smith 2007; Denham 2007, 2011). This perspective has so far centered on plants of the humid tropics that have a history of long-term cultivation in agricultural systems but lack morphological change (Denham 2007; Kahlheber and Neumann 2007; Yen 1989). Another feature of both humid and arid tropical agricultural practices that has strained conceptions of early agricultural systems is the variety of economic activities—including fishing, gathering, hunting, cultivation, and herding—that may be combined in complex and diverse subsistence systems (Kahlheber and Neumann 2007; Marshall and Hildebrand 2002; for North America, Smith 2001, 2011).
In their approach to definitions and the question of whether morphological change is an effective marker of domestication, Jones and Brown (2007) focus on selection processes and timing rather than on region. They contend that under certain circumstances, practices of cultivation and protective tending could have resulted in stable long-term systems of food production that depended on plants and animals lacking distinctively domestic morphological and genetic characteristics. Reproductive isolation and morphological change, Jones and Brown (2007) go on to suggest, are linked with later stages of agricultural development, when human populations expanded and people removed plants and animals from their wild ranges.
There is a growing appreciation, however, of differences among species in time elapsed before domestication processes are readily detectable and of variability in the sensitivity of methods that can be brought to bear on any given taxon. In a detailed study of the domestication of goats in western Asia, Zeder (Zeder 2008; Zeder and Hesse 2000) used regional and age- and sex-based variability in animal size to document early herd management, which was followed by diminution in size. In the absence of clear morphological indicators, evidence for management—culling, corralling, and milking—has also been key to a better understanding of early phases of domestication of the horse (Outram et al. 2009). The discovery by Rossel et al. (2008) that donkeys used by Egyptian pharaohs for transport at approximately 5000 cal BP (historic date 3000 BC; table 1) remained morphologically wild 1,000 years after they were thought to have been first domesticated further emphasizes possibilities for underestimating the timing of domestication of large mammals and draws attention to species-specific pathways to domestication (see also Zeder 2011).
Table 1. Key African animal and plant domesticates, with summaries of sites, date ranges, and arguments for management or domestication processes
In the light of these different emphases on global, regional, and taxon-specific impacts of late morphological change on general understanding of early food production, we evaluate current perspectives on the beginnings of food production in Africa, a continent that represents the world’s largest tropical landmass. We reexamine evidence of early animal and plant domesticates and employ ethnoarchaeological data on donkey management and breeding behavior to examine species-specific domesticatory practices that influenced selection and the likelihood of morphological change. These analyses allow us to return to the larger question of Africa’s contribution to understanding variability in early agricultural systems worldwide. In most of Africa, pastoralism is considered the earliest form of agriculture, followed by plant cultivation and adoption of mixed herding-cultivation systems.
Early Food Production in AfricaJump To Section...
Africanists have built up a picture of the beginnings of food production in which early dependence on domestic animals and increasing reliance on mobility guided the development of social and economic systems of the Early Holocene and resulted in late domestication of African plants. Specific themes that have emerged include locally and socially contingent responses to large-scale climatic change, domestication of cattle for food and donkeys for transport, intensive hunting and possible management of Barbary sheep, long-term reliance on a broad range of wild plants and animals, and late domestication of African plants.
In this review of the African evidence, we see domestication as a microevolutionary process that transformed animal and plant communities and human societies (see Clutton-Brock 1992), but we examine rather than assume relationships between domestication and long-term genetic and morphological change (see also Vigne et al. 2011). We follow Zeder (2009, 2011; Rindos 1984) in emphasizing long-term coevolutionary relations between people, animals, and plants, but unlike Rindos (1984), we also highlight the intentional role that individuals played in selection (Hildebrand 2003b; Marshall and Hildebrand 2002). Pastoralism is also an important concept for discussions of the beginnings of food production in Africa, and this, we argue, differs from herding or simple keeping of animals because pastoralists rely on moving livestock to pasture and emphasize the social and symbolic role of domestic animals (Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson 1980; Smith 2005; Spear and Waller 1993). This does not necessarily imply, however, a diet heavily based on domestic animals. Historically, African pastoralists prioritized the needs of their herds in scheduling activities and locating settlements (McCabe 2004; Western and Dunne 1979), but they usually relied on a broad range of complementary subsistence strategies ranging from seasonal cultivation, fishing, hunting, and gathering to food exchange or trade (Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson 1980; Evans-Pritchard 1940; Schneider 1979). As a result, it is overly simplistic to rely on high proportions of domestic animal bones to differentiate pastoral from hunter-gatherer or farming sites. Multiple lines of evidence are necessary, including households oriented to mobility—with slope, soil, and vegetation characteristics organized around the needs of domestic herds (Western and Dunne 1979)—animal pens, dung deposits (Shahack-Gross, Marshall, and Weiner 2003; Shahack-Gross, Simons, and Ambrose 2008), milk residues (see Evershed et al. 2008), livestock-focused rock art, and ritual livestock burials (di Lernia 2006).
Domesticatory Settings: Climatic and Social Variability and Subsistence Intensification
Large-scale climate change forms the backdrop to the beginnings of food production in northeastern Africa (Kröpelin et al. 2008). Hunter-gatherer communities deserted most of the northern interior of the continent during the arid glacial maximum and took refuge along the North African coast, the Nile Valley, and the southern fringes of the Sahara (Barich and Garcea 2008; Garcea 2006; Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). During the subsequent Early Holocene African humid phase, from the mid-eleventh to the early ninth millennium cal BP, ceramic-using hunter-gatherers took advantage of more favorable savanna conditions to resettle much of northeastern Africa (Holl 2005; Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). Evidence of domestic animals first appeared in sites in the Western Desert of Egypt, the Khartoum region of the Nile, northern Niger, the Acacus Mountains of Libya, and Wadi Howar (Garcea 2004, 2006; Pöllath and Peters 2007; fig. 1).
During the Early and mid-Holocene, diverse hunter-gatherer groups lived close to permanent water in widely separated regions of northeastern Africa, from the Acacus to Lake Victoria (Caneva 1988; Garcea 2006; Holl 2005; Prendergast and Lane 2010). Ethnoarchaeological research suggests that this social and economic variability played a significant role in pathways to food production in Africa. Recent hunter-gatherers with long-term investment in hive and trap construction and delayed-return social systems and limited sharing have historically been able to accommodate more easily property-rights issues arising out of time investment in agriculture than have those with highly egalitarian norms (Brooks, Gelburd, and Yellen 1984; Dale, Marshall, and Pilgram 2004; Marshall 2000; Smith 1998; Woodburn 1982). Moreover, cattle herding requires significantly greater commitment than cultivation because foragers can tend crops intermittently and accommodate them into flexible hunter-gatherer schedules, whereas animal herds require protection against predators and constant attention (Dale, Marshall, and Pilgram 2004; Marshall 2000). As a result, Africanists have hypothesized that domestication of cattle is more likely to have been undertaken and pastoralism adopted in regions of northeastern Africa that were occupied by complex rather than highly mobile egalitarian hunter-gatherers (Marshall and Hildebrand 2002).
Arguments that complex or delayed-return systems of social organization existed in the Acacus, the Sudanese Nile Valley, and some other regions of the African Early to mid-Holocene are based on elaboration of material culture, including manufacture of ceramics and storage facilities in these areas and highly patterned use of rock-shelter sites and local landscapes (Barich 1987; di Lernia 1999, 2001; Garcea 2004; McDonald 2008). Significant investment in living spaces and limited movement are indicated by hut construction at Nabta Playa in the Acacus Mountains and the northern Sudanese Nile Valley and by isotopic analyses at Gobero in Niger and Acacus sites (Barich 1987; Garcea 2006; Sereno et al. 2008; Tafuri et al. 2006). In the central Sahara, the Sudanese Nile Valley, and the Acacus, human burials are common (Caneva 1988; Honegger 2004; Sereno et al. 2008). Garcea (2004) and di Lernia (1999, 2001) argue that their presence in the Late Acacus phase (ca. 10,250–9600 to 9890–9440 cal BP) may relate to group identities and rights to land.
North African hunter-gatherers of the Early and mid-Holocene employed highly diverse subsistence as well as social systems. Wild cattle (Bos primigenius) were hunted along the Mediterranean coast and the Nile Valley, and small numbers of wild ass (Equus africanus) were also present in many sites (Alhaique and Marshall 2009; Gautier 1987a; Marshall 2007). Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) were the most common animal hunted across North Africa at this time (di Lernia 2001; Gautier 1987a; Saxon et al. 1974). In the Late Acacus sites of Ti-n-Torah, Uan Tabu, and Uan Afuda, intensive exploitation of wild cereals (e.g., Echinochloa, Panicum, Setaria, Digitaria, and Pennisetum) is associated with heavy grindstone use (di Lernia 1999; Garcea 2001; Mercuri 2001; fig. 1). A similar set of wild grass seeds were harvested, processed, and stored in the eastern Sahara during the late tenth and early ninth millennia at Nabta Playa, site E-75-6 (Wasylikowa et al. 1993; Wendorf and Schild 1998; for radiocarbon dates, see table 2). Along the Sudanese Nile, a variety of wild mammals were hunted in conjunction with fishing for large deepwater fish and intensive grindstone use (Caneva 1988; Haaland 1987).
There has been a recurrent suggestion that some North Africans penned and culled Barbary sheep herds during early phases of the Holocene (di Lernia 1998, 2001; Garcea 2006; Saxon et al. 1974; table 1). Earlier arguments for management without morphological change were based on young male–dominated culling profiles from the sites of Tamar Hat and Haua Fteah on the Mediterranean coast (Saxon et al. 1974; Smith 2008; fig. 1). More recent evidence is based on the presence of dung accumulations in the rear of rock-shelter sites occupied by complex hunter-gatherers during the tenth and early ninth millennia cal BP in the Libyan Acacus at Uan Afuda, Uan Tabu, and Fozzigiaren (Cremaschi and Trombino 2001; di Lernia 2001; Garcea 2006). Di Lernia (2001) argues that dense dung deposits in these rock shelters differ from natural dung accumulations characterized by loose and scattered pellet matrices and result instead from use of shelters for corralling animals. Micromorphological analyses of the “dung layer” sediments suggest trampling and indicate the presence of spherulites common in caprine dung, and studies of the plant remains indicate a selected range of plant species suggestive of foddering (Castelletti et al. 1999; di Lernia 2001; Mercuri 1999). Interestingly, Livingstone Smith (2001) notes that hunter-gatherer pottery of Late Acacus levels at Uan Afuda is dung tempered, a characteristic of later pastoral ceramics. The number of Barbary sheep remains declines in later sites, however, and there are no dung deposits that suggest subsequent emphasis on Barbary sheep (di Lernia 1999; Garcea 2001, 2004). Taken together, the micromorphological and archaeological evidence for dung accumulation resulting from penning of Barbary sheep in the Late Acacus rock shelters is suggestive, but additional faunal data and dung deposits are needed from open-air sites.
Domestication of African cattle?
The evidence for taming of wild cattle during the Early Holocene provides an interesting parallel to that for management of Barbary sheep. Wendorf and colleagues (Gautier 1987b; Wendorf and Królik 2001; Wendorf and Schild 1998; Wendorf, Schild, and Close 1984) have argued that seasonally settled hunter-gatherers of the Nabta Playa region (fig. 1) domesticated African cattle in the Western Desert of Egypt during the eleventh to tenth millennium cal BP (reviews of arguments in Gifford-Gonzalez 2005; table 2). Domestic sheep and goats, on the other hand, were introduced to Africa from southwestern Asia during the early eighth millennium cal BP and postdate the appearance of cattle at all sites except Uan Muhaggiag (Gautier 2001; Linseele 2010; Linseele et al. 2010). The independent domestication of African cattle has been tied to arid episodes, the desire of hunter-gatherers for increased short-term predictability in food resources, and the difficulty of intensifying plant foods under these conditions (Marshall and Hildebrand 2002). Bos remains are ubiquitous in sites of the Nabta and Bir Kiseiba regions (fig. 1) from the eleventh to the tenth millennium cal BP (table 2) but in very small numbers, precluding detailed analyses of morphometric change or reconstruction of culling profiles (Gautier 2001). Linseele (2004) has demonstrated, however, that size decrease is not a useful indicator of domestication in northeastern Africa because the size of African Bos primigenius varied regionally and temporally and because ancient Egyptian longhorn cattle overlapped in size with some wild cattle populations.
Close and Wendorf (1992) and Gautier (1984b, 1987b) also argued, largely on the basis of a well and a watering basin at site E-75-6, that the repeated presence of water-dependent North African B. primigenius in Western Desert sites during the tenth and ninth millennia cal BP (table 2) reflected range extension facilitated by management and watering of cattle (table 1). Bos cranial remains in a human grave at El Barga in northern Sudan further support the presence of cattle in the region during the early ninth millennium cal BP (Honegger 2005:247–248). The earliest evidence of small domestic cattle from the central Sahara dates, however, to the eighth millennium BP (at Ti-n-Torha and Uan Muhaggiag; Gautier 1987b; fig. 1).
To date, the strongest evidence for domestication of cattle in Africa comes from a series of major studies of the genetic characteristics and biodiversity of contemporary cattle breeds. Changing genetic approaches are reviewed by Larson (2011). Initial analyses of maternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) showed that African cattle shared a distinctively higher frequency of the T1 mitochondrial haplogroup than is common in other regions and a large proportion of unique haplotypes (Bradley et al. 1996). These findings are consistent with an independent African domestication, although the possibility of a demographic expansion of Near Eastern cattle in Africa could not be ruled out (Bradley and Magee 2006; but see Achilli et al. 2008). Recent analysis of single-nucleotide polymorphisms from whole-genome sequences derived from small numbers of cattle demonstrate that African breeds diverged early from the European taurine cattle (Decker et al. 2009). New analyses of high-resolution interspersed multilocus microsatellites on the male-specific region of the Y chromosome demonstrate the existence of an African subfamily in taurine cattle of the Y2 haplogroup (Pérez-Pardal et al. 2009). Associated analyses also indicate that neither the genetic diversity in the African mtDNA T1 haplogroup nor the diversity in the Y2 haplogroup is consistent with the bottleneck that would have been required to fix these haplotypes from Near Eastern taurine cattle (Pérez-Pardal et al. 2010; see also Bovine HapMap Consortium 2009). Taken together with data on variation in autosomal microsatellites (rapidly evolving regions of the nuclear genome) and other data on Y-chromosome variability in African cattle breeds (Bradley and Magee 2006; Hanotte et al. 2002), the genetic data as a whole point strongly to an independent African domestication of cattle (Pérez-Pardal et al. 2009, 2010).
Ethnographic studies suggest, however, that genetic and phenotypic change may have been slow in early northeastern-African cattle and that neither morphological nor genetic studies are likely to detect the early phases of this process. Given recurrent cycles of drought and disease, contemporary African pastoralists manage their herds for maximum growth by keeping a high proportion of females in herds (Dahl and Hjort 1976). However, the main intentional selective processes acting on African cattle are culling and castration, which affect males rather than females (Dahl and Hjort 1976; Ryan et al. 2000). Natural selection in the form of drought and disease often play a larger role in mortality than culling (Mutundu 2005), multiple bulls are common in herds, offtake is low (4%–8%), and culling often takes place after sexual maturity (Ryan et al. 2000). Such processes, together with some introgression with wild bulls, are likely to have worked against rapid morphological change in early pastoral herds and to have resulted in a postmanagement lag in morphological change.
Domestication of the donkey.
It has long been suggested that ancient Egyptians domesticated the donkey (Equus asinus), although the Near East has also been considered a possible area of origin. Egyptian Predynastic sites have yielded the earliest potential domestic donkeys, which date to the mid-seventh millennium cal BP (historic date 4600–4400 BC; Boessneck and von den Driesch 1990; table 1). Some faunal elements from these sites, zooarchaeologists argue, exhibit size decrease relative to the wild ass (Boessneck and von den Driesch 1990), but widespread morphological change was slow to develop in ancient Egypt. Evidence of bone pathologies from early dynastic donkey burials at Abydos (fig. 1) demonstrates that by approximately 5000 cal BP (historic date 3000 BC), First Dynasty Egyptian kings were using donkeys to carry heavy loads (Rossel et al. 2008). Rossel et al. (2008) show, however, that these animals were not yet morphologically distinguishable from the African wild ass.
Recent studies of genetic variability in modern donkeys suggest that prehistoric pastoralists may have domesticated donkeys on the fringes of the Sahara. Beja-Pereira and colleagues (2004; also Vilá, Leonard, and Beja-Pereira 2006) document the existence of two different haplogroups or clades of domestic donkeys. Their genetic-diversity data suggest two domestication events, both in northeastern Africa. Kimura et al.’s (2010) recent analysis of ancient DNA from the Nubian donkey (Equus africanus africanus) and the Somali wild ass (Equus africanus somaliensis) demonstrates that the Nubian wild ass was the ancestor of modern donkey Clade I but that the ancestor of donkeys of Clade II is currently unknown. This research also documents the ancient distribution of the Nubian wild ass and Clade I donkeys from the Atbara River and Red Sea Hills in Sudan and northern Eritrea across the Sahara to Libya, a geographic distribution that suggests that prehistoric pastoralists domesticated Clade I donkeys (Kimura et al. 2010). However, domestication by pastoralists or farmers of the northern Nile Valley during late prehistoric/early Predynastic times is also a possibility.
The Herding-Hunting Mosaic and the Spread of Pastoralism
In the central Sahara, cattle became common in the eighth to sixth millennium cal BP at sites such as Ti-n-Torha, Uan Muhaggiag, Uan Telocat, Adrar Bous, Gobero, Enneri Bardagué, and Wadi Howar (Clark et al. 2008; di Lernia 2006; Garcea 2004; Gautier 1987b; Jesse et al. 2007; Roset 1987; Sereno et al. 2008; fig. 1). The main advantages for hunter-gatherers of herding cattle over intensification of plant resources or reliance on hunting and gathering are thought to have been decreased reliance on local rainfall and increased predictability in daily access to cattle herds for blood, meat, and ceremonial purposes (Jesse et al. 2007; Marshall and Hildebrand 2002). Foraging continued, but the intensity of the new human-animal relationship would have required ownership patterns and schedules oriented to animal care and transformation of hunter-gatherer societies. Dependence on wild calories could have been somewhat reduced, however, by milking, a practice that archaeologists have tended to assume was adopted after herding for blood and meat and with some difficulty (but see Linseele 2010).
Different genetic bases for lactase persistence in Europe and Africa show coevolution between people and cattle and the strong selective advantage conferred by drinking milk (Tishkoff et al. 2006). Interestingly, recent research has documented lactase persistence among some contemporary African hunter-gatherers. Tishkoff et al. (2006, supplementary information) note that lactase persistence could be selected for by delaying weaning of infants and, moreover, that the trait is also adaptive for digestion of certain roots and barks. This suggests several pathways to lactase persistence among hunter-gatherers and raises the question of whether African herders milked their cattle earlier and incorporated dairy products into their diets with fewer digestive difficulties than previously thought. However, milking scenes depicted in prehistoric African rock art and in Saharan ceramics have so far not produced dates or residues that bear on the antiquity of milking in Africa (Jesse et al. 2007; Marshall 2000).
Oscillating periods of aridity and humidity resulted in periods of increased mobility and occasional depopulation of the Sahara (di Lernia 2002; Garcea 2004; Kröpelin et al. 2008). In the eighth to seventh millennia cal BP, herders combined livestock keeping with hunting and collection of wild grain in regions such as the Acacus Mountains (Gautier 1987b). At Adrar Bous and other sites near lowland lakes, herders also fished and collected shellfish (Gifford-Gonzalez 2005; Smith 1992; fig. 1). Cattle-focused rock art attests to the symbolic importance of cattle for Saharan herders (Holl 2004; Smith 1992, 2005). Hunter-gatherers also flourished during this period at sites such as Dakleh Oasis (McDonald 2008) and Amekni (Camps 1969; fig. 1), creating a mosaic of hunters and herders across northeastern Africa (fig. 1).
Through the mid-Holocene, grasslands became more arid, precipitation became increasingly unpredictable, and desert regions of the Sahara expanded. Northeastern Africans responded to these pressures by heightening mobility, relying on introduced sheep and goats, and decreasing use of wild cereals (Barich 2002; di Lernia 2002; Garcea 2004; Gautier 1987a). It was during this period that the donkey was domesticated (Rossel et al. 2008). Their use would have made increased residential mobility and dispersal of settlements from water possible and would have facilitated long-distance migrations (Marshall 2007).
Significant expansion of the geographic distribution of the dotted-wavy-line ceramic motif and distinctive human mortuary practices in the early seventh millennium cal BP reflect the southward movement of pastoralists, long-distance contacts among Saharan groups, and elaboration of pastoralist ideologies (Jesse et al. 2007; Keding, Lenssen-Erz, and Pastoors 2007; Smith 1992; Wendorf and Królik 2001). Just as in the Mediterranean and western Europe, however, the trajectories of small immigrant groups may have varied greatly (Özdoğan 2011; Rowley-Conwy 2011). Domestic stock appear to the south in the Sudanese Sahel by the early seventh millennium cal BP at Esh Shaheinab and Kadero (Gautier 1984a, 1984b) and by the mid-fifth millennium cal BP in Kenya (Marshall and Hildebrand 2002). Similarly, Saharan lithics and other traces of Saharan herders are first found in the West African Sahel by approximately 4500 cal BP (Jousse et al. 2008; Linseele 2010; Smith 1992). Di Lernia (2006) argues that the widespread ritual burial of cattle across the Sahara at the end of the seventh millennium BP represents a social response to rapid aridification. Cattle burials and associated ritual activity are a prominent feature of site E-96-1 at Nabta (Wendorf and Królik 2001). At Djabarona 84/13, in the middle of Wadi Howar from the beginning of the sixth millennium cal BP, more than a thousand pits are filled with cattle bones and relatively complete ceramic pots (Jesse et al. 2007; fig. 1). As far south as Kenya by the middle of the fifth millennium cal BP, large stone circles such as those at Jarigole were constructed as centers for human burial rituals by southward-migrating herders (Marshall, Grillo, and Arco 2011; Nelson 1995). Hunter-gatherers, however, continued to flourish after the movement of herders into these regions (Lane et al. 2007; Lesur, Vigne, and Gutherz 2007).
Domestication of African Plants
The earliest evidence for domestication of indigenous African plants with morphological change dates only to the beginnings of the fourth millennium cal BP (table 1). Although many Holocene hunter-gatherers of northeastern Africa relied heavily on wild Saharan cereals, high mobility and repeated abandonment of the region seem to have impeded long-term directional selection and morphological and genetic change. Instead, selection processes culminated in morphological change once Saharan herders settled in the southern reaches of the Sahara and more humid Sahelian regions and established more permanent settlements in areas that were still within or close to the edge of the wild range of Saharan species.
Sahelian herders—who also hunted, gathered, and fished—integrated cultivation of domestic pearl millet Pennisetum glaucum into their subsistence economies in one or two domestication events documented at or after 3898–3640 cal BP at sites west of Lake Chad, including Karkarichinkat Nord (KN05), Dhar Tichitt, Birimi, and Gajiganna (D’Andrea, Klee, and Casey 2001; Fuller 2007; Kahlheber and Neumann 2007; Manning et al. 2011; fig. 1, table 1). Morphologically, this is evidenced by changes in seed shedding and shape, although increases in seed size were delayed (D’Andrea, Klee, and Casey 2001). Fuller (2007) argues that the appearance of domestic pearl millet in India in the mid-fourth millennium cal BP indicates a somewhat earlier African domestication and rapid dispersal. Recent research has also shown that the cow pea Vigna unguiculata was also an early-fourth-millennium morphological domesticate, dating to ca. 3898–3475 cal BP at the Kintampo B-sites in the grasslands of central Ghana (D’Andrea et al. 2007; table 2). By contrast, African rice Oryza glaberrima was domesticated in the inland Niger delta of the Niger bend region by the early second millennium cal BP. On the eastern side of the continent, domestic teff Eagrostis tef and finger millet Eleusine coracana were cultivated by Aksumite populations in the Ethiopian highlands by the beginnings of the second millennium cal BP (historic date AD 150–350; D’Andrea 2008). The oil-seed noog Guizotia abyssinica is also present in Late Aksumite contexts (D’Andrea 2008). D’Andrea (2008) points out, however, that morphological change is difficult to identify in the small-seeded cereal teff, which was selected for reliable production under arid conditions rather than for increased seed size. In humid forested southwestern Ethiopia, Hildebrand (2003a, 2003b, 2007) has documented varied selection processes leading to domestication of yams Dioscorea cayenensis and ensete Ensete ventricosum. In these and other areas of Africa, domestic plants are thought to have been advantageous to pastoral hunter-fishers for risk minimization and greater predictability (D’Andrea et al. 2007; Kahlheber and Neumann 2007; Marshall and Hildebrand 2002).
Although morphological change occurred in a range of domesticated African plant taxa, it has been suggested that a number of African savanna plants were cultivated or intensively managed over the long term in ways that did not lead to morphological domestication (reviews in Marshall and Hildebrand 2002; Neumann 2005). Haaland (1999) and Abdel-Magid (1989) argued, largely on the basis of the ∼30,000 grindstones that were unearthed at the site of Um Direiwa, for cultivation of sorghum Sorghum bicolor in Sudanese sites dating to the seventh millennium cal BP (table 1). Mechanisms that they suggested for late morphological change include continued outcrossing between cultivated and wild populations and harvesting through beating into baskets or uprooting. This has led to arguments that sorghum was not morphologically domesticated until it was removed from its wild African range (Haaland 1999; but see Fuller 2003). Although mechanisms exist that may have caused late morphological change in African cereals and harvesting of wild grains was at times intensive, there is no macrobotanical evidence or indication of landscape modification that supports claims for cultivation of African grains before the early fourth millennium cal BP.
In the wetter tropical regions, there is evidence of long-term use of a number of forest taxa without morphological change. Long-term use of oil palm Elaeis guineensis and incense trees Canarium schweinfurthii has been documented across the humid tropics of Africa (D’Andrea, Logan, and Watson 2006; Mercader et al. 2006). This pattern is not confined to forests, however. D’Andrea, Logan, and Watson (2006:216–217) argue that Kintampo people living in the grasslands of central Ghana employed a system of arboriculture that did not rely on management strategies that would result in morphological change. Kahlheber and Neumann (2007) also note that a number of west African park savanna species, such as baobab Adsonia digitata and the shea-butter tree Vitellaria paradoxa, were protected and encouraged but never domesticated. Other wild plants that are still protected and sometimes actively sown in many different African environments include weedy green species ranging in status from crops to semidomesticated or wild (Kahlheber and Neumann 2007; Marshall 2001). Kahlheber and Neumann (2007:333) point out that in the West Africa Sahel, reliance on morphologically wild park savanna species became more evident when economies diversified and populations concentrated close to water 2,000 years ago. In many regions of Africa, Iron Age agriculturalists relied on a particularly broad range of resources, and farmers incorporated diverse domestic crops and managed plants, cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, and donkeys into their agricultural systems and fished and hunted a wide range of wild-animal foods (Casey 2005; Neumann 2005; Plug and Voigt 1985; van Neer 2000).
This brings to the fore the question raised at the outset of whether such diverse subsistence strategies fit current conceptions of agricultural systems. Kahlheber and Neumann (2007:339) are doubtful whether “farming” is an appropriate term for some of these ways of life. Smith’s (2001, 2011) term “low-level food production” has been used in the region, but it does not fully capture the complexities of African settings. The question of whether the Kintampo should be considered “foragers,” “farmers,” or something else has also been reviewed by Casey (2005) and by D’Andrea and colleagues (D’Andrea, Logan, and Watson 2006:216–218; D’Andrea et al. 2007), who argue that although there are clear-cut cases of foragers or farmers in Africa, there are many others that defy simple categorization. Hildebrand’s (2003a) ethnographic research among the Sheko of southwestern Ethiopia and the literature on use of weedy greens in Africa (Etkin 1994; Fleuret 1979; Marshall 2001 and references therein) provide ample evidence that such subsistence strategies have long-term trajectories in many parts of Africa and cannot be dismissed as transitory.
Ethnoarchaeological Insight into Management, Selection Processes, and Domestication of the DonkeyJump To Section...
One approach to better addressing conceptual problems presented by questions of late morphological change and the diversity of economic systems in Africa is to consider pathways to domestication for particular species in light of the potential for morphological change, or lack thereof, in specific social and environmental contexts. The question that we address here is how the behavior of the African wild ass and management of donkeys by herders and small-scale farmers in Africa contribute to selection processes and the likelihood of development of archaeological signatures of domestication in the donkey. This analysis focuses on aspects of the biology and behavior of the donkey and its use as a transport animal that influence management practices in extensive pastoral and agricultural systems and are relevant (sensu Wylie 2002) to ancient settings for domestication. It is often argued, for instance, that sociability and the presence of a dominance hierarchy are desirable characteristics for potential domesticatability (Clutton-Brock 1992; Diamond 1997). African wild ass do not, however, fit this profile. The extant Somali wild ass, or dibokali, is solitary or forms groups with weak short-term associations. It also lacks a pronounced dominance hierarchy (Klingel 1974; Moehlman 2002). This social system profoundly influences donkey behavior under human management.
Recent ethnoarchaeologial research on donkey use and management among Maasai households in Kajiado District of southern Kenya provides the first detailed information on selection processes in a pastoral social and economic context. During 2006, Lior Weissbrod lived in Maasai communities in the study area and collected interview and participant observation data from 26 women from eight households spread among six different pastoral settlements (table 3). The study focused on use and daily management, herd composition, mortality, and breeding behavior. After a 2-year period of severe drought (2004–2006), the donkey holdings of households participating in the study were reduced but still totaled 65.
Donkeys were not regarded as food. They were considered women’s animals, important for transport but without the symbolic status of cattle. Women were the caretakers of donkeys and used them to carry household goods during residential moves, to collect water, and to take intermittent trips to trading centers. Donkeys also carried meat, firewood, and water for large ceremonies. During the dry season, women went long distances for water every other day, returning with a typical load of 50 L per donkey. Children herded household donkeys with the calves, but during the wet season, donkeys were free ranging. Many families penned donkeys within the settlement thorn fence or in calf enclosures at night for protection against predators.
Our data show that the use of donkeys in Kajiado enhanced the flexibility and stability of local herding systems (see also Marshall 2007; Marshall and Weissbrod 2009). Families in the study area who did not own donkeys could not move as a whole away from permanent sources of water and were unable to make optimum use of available grazing. Donkeys were, nevertheless, managed less than other livestock. Marshall (2007) previously noted that the ability of donkeys to dig for water and to protect themselves from predators more successfully than other livestock was associated with low levels of management, which might result in low levels of selection. Our data show that behavior was a factor but that the level of use of donkeys in the study area ultimately determined the degree to which donkeys were herded and penned.
In addition to management practices, we also collected information on reproduction and desired characteristics of donkeys that might be selected for through strategic breeding. Women that we talked to particularly valued strength and calmness in a donkey. Some also mentioned the importance of disease and drought resistance, although they noted that donkeys were less vulnerable to these hazards than other livestock. We found, however, that participants in the study made no attempt at all to influence mate choice among donkeys or to breed for particular characteristics. The ancestry of a particular donkey was unknown except for the female parent. By contrast, research on cattle genealogies shows that Maasai herders memorize these in great detail for several generations (Ryan et al. 2000). The lack of strategic breeding of donkeys is influenced by donkey behavior and herd compositions but is also related, at least in part, to the fact that Maasai herders do not use donkeys as symbols of social transactions in the same way that they do cattle or value color distinctions ideologically.
The dynamics of wild ass mating systems, based on short-lived associations that occur when females move through male territories, influence donkey breeding in the domesticated environment. Maasai women stressed their concern with the aggressive behavior of jacks during mating. Even when they wanted to keep a female from breeding with an especially aggressive jack, women said that they found it impossible to keep the male away. They also noted that estrus jennies might go astray without warning in search of males. They are often lost this way, and we documented a number of cases in which wandering females, as well as males, were cared over a long term by women in distant settlements. Lack of selection because of the difficulty of controlling donkey breeding is, therefore, likely wherever a premium is placed on “wild” characteristics of the donkey, such as strength, rather than on docility and productivity for food. The relatively high proportion of males in herds (one male∶two females) is another factor that makes control over breeding logistically difficult. Because donkey owners kept small herds specifically for transport, they weighed the breeding advantages of females against the superior transport potential of males. The strength of males was greatly favored, and so was their consistent availability for transport use.
Herd growth and mortality patterns also contributed to patterns of selection in domestic donkey herds. Pastoral Maasai donkeys had, on average, a foal every 2 years. Mortality resulted from predation by hyenas, disease, and drought. Herds grew relatively slowly, and additional animals were recruited to herds through gifts, loans, and purchase. Socially based loans or exchanges of cattle are deeply woven into the fabric of Maasai society (Ryan et al. 2000). To a lesser extent, this system is also used for donkeys, and social exchange is a mechanism of selection and gene flow. Animals entering or leaving a herd through loans were carefully selected and predominantly female. In some cases, however, exchanges were involuntary, resulting from donkeys running away.
In the wet season, herds of donkeys made up of animals from different settlements in the same neighborhoods range freely. This practice and the system of intentional and unintentional loans maintain gene flow among settlements. Purchases were rarer than loans also but recruited animals to slow-growing herds and maintained intentional selection on an interregional scale. Men purchased animals when visiting markets, and the strength and price of the donkey were major considerations affecting purchases. Young male donkeys were cheaper than others, and purchases were one male∶two females. There was no intentional culling of donkeys, and donkeys were not eaten, but small, slow-growing, or aggressive males were removed from the breeding pool through castration. We recorded six castrated males (40% of the males studied), and castration of male donkeys was a more important factor affecting the direction of intentional selection than culling or selective breeding.
Very few studies of donkey management and selection have been conducted in settled agricultural villages. Mohammed’s (1991) and Wilson’s (1991) Ethiopian research can, however, be used for comparison with the Maasai pastoral study. They focused on Ethiopian farmers of the central and southern highlands who used donkeys to transport grain to market and for hauling household firewood and water. Most families in the study areas kept one to two donkeys, usually female (Mohammed 1991; Wilson 1991). Donkeys were also loaned to family and friends. In the Awassa region, males were rare (100 females∶1 male); in other regions the number of males was higher (73 females∶27 males). Where males were more common, they were usually less than 4 years old. Mohammed (1991) notes that male donkeys were not castrated. We infer that low proportions of males in herds indicated male culling, although donkey eating was not discussed. People in Awassa did not supervise donkeys when they were not using them, and Mohammed (1991) documents minimal donkey management and poor animal nutrition in this area. Because of the danger presented by hyenas, however, people often brought donkeys inside their houses at night. There was no intentional control over breeding, however. Mohammed mentions that copulation might occur anywhere and was actively discouraged in the market center (Mohammed 1991).
Overview of management and selection.
In order to consider patterns of directional selection, it is useful to examine factors that affect the likelihood of genetic drift, intentional selection, and reproductive isolation in donkeys managed by pastoralists and small-scale farmers. Culling of male donkeys by Ethiopian villagers and castration of male donkeys by Maasai pastoralists were important factors affecting selection. These practices ensured that males with desired traits, such as strength or size, remained in the breeding pool. Females, on the other hand, were never culled, and management of donkeys was minimal. None of the donkey owners that we studied tried to ensure a diverse set of breeding males, to breed select females or males, or to keep records of parentage. We argue that these management practices are influenced by wild ass and donkey courtship and breeding behavior and have significant consequences for long-term directional selection and domesticatory processes. The data also indicate that different sets of functional and symbolic considerations affect Maasai practices of cattle and donkey management and are associated with differing levels of selective pressure and control of gene flow. In our study area, people also bred or obtained cattle for ideal coat colors and conformation, and it is possible that without this additional symbolic motivation, functional reasons for breeding donkeys were not enough to overcome significant practical difficulties. As research on mammals such as the fur fox (Belyaev 1979; Trut 1999) and the guinea pig (Künzl et al. 2003) has shown, without selective breeding, retention of individual animals with desired traits and culling of others, directional selection may be very slow or fail to occur even in the absence of gene flow from wild populations.
From a wider perspective, there are related issues that work against genetic drift as a major factor driving genetic and morphological change in donkeys. In both the Maasai and Ethiopian Arsi cases, donkeys from numerous households grazed unsupervised in mixed herds, allowing uncontrolled genetic exchange among neighborhood populations. Donkeys were loaned among broad social networks in both regions, and the frequency with which donkeys were taken to market in Ethiopia also provided a wider setting for interbreeding among donkeys from different areas. We argue, however, that in both the pastoral Maasai and Arsi farmer cases, low levels of formal management and lack of intentional selective breeding are linked to donkey biology and behavior, the use of donkeys for transport, and the fact that donkeys are not often eaten. Male culling plays a significantly greater role in animals that are primarily managed for meat—including cattle, sheep, and goat—than it does in donkeys. Although culling and castration affect donkey selection, they are outweighed by lack of directional selection in breeding and consistent gene flow among donkeys over significant distances.
The data for Maasai pastoralists and Ethiopian Arsi farmers also suggest that the potential for gene flow from the wild is likely in both settings but marginally less so in agricultural villages. The Maasai villages studied lie outside the historic range of the wild ass. But it is easy to see that had they not, the runaway tendencies of estrus females would have made the prevention of introgression difficult. Like contemporary herders valuing strength and endurance in their donkeys, historic Beja pastoralists of Sudan and Eritrea intentionally encouraged interbreeding among donkeys from domesticated and wild settings (Baker 1867; Murray 1935). During the 1950s, Nicolaisen (1963) also recorded capture and taming of wild or feral animals by Tuareg pastoralists of the central Sahara.
It is possible, therefore, to begin to identify separate contexts for the domestication process of donkeys in Africa. We predict that ancient Saharan pastoralists reduced the number of breeding males in herds through culling and castration in order to cope with practical difficulties resulting from courtship and breeding behavior in donkeys. Isolation from wild ancestors would have been possible in some pastoral settings as a result of mid-to-Late Holocene climate change, range fragmentation, and pastoral settlement in island or marginal ecosystems. Wild asses may also have been removed from their wild range by pastoral dispersals into the high-altitude Ethiopian highlands and other regions, such as southern Sudan and northern Kenya, outside the historic range of the wild ass.
Selection for morphological change would have been slow until donkeys were removed from close proximity to the wild ass and interbreeding between local donkey populations was restricted. It would appear that reproductive isolation of captive wild asses from free-living populations is somewhat more likely to have occurred in ancient urban settings such as the Predynastic and Dynastic Egyptian towns of the Nile Valley, with permanent walls and high densities of protected agricultural land. Gene flow would still have been possible, however, given the narrowness of the Nile agricultural belt and the mobility of pack donkeys. An appreciation for the advantages of strong animals may also have made interbreeding between captive and wild asses desirable for both villagers and pastoralists.
The lack of morphological change evident in the Abydos donkeys as late as 5000 cal BP (3000 BC; Rossel et al. 2008) demonstrates that size decrease was not generally established until well after this period. It is also conceivable that morphological change did not occur until donkeys were taken across the Red Sea to Yemen or other regions of Asia. Whichever the case, donkeys are a classic example of a species that was used to carry loads for millennia as a domesticate but with late morphological change. We conclude that slow morphological change in domesticated donkeys can be explained by low levels of selection, high potential for interbreeding between founder populations, and potential for introgression with the wild.
Do Holocene Pastoralists in Africa Fit Conceptions of Early Agricultural Systems in Other Regions?
After examining evidence for the beginnings and spread of food production in Africa and analysis of the way that management and behavioral factors affect the likelihood of morphological change in one large mammal—the donkey—we return to consideration of whether African pastoralism fits current conceptions of early agricultural systems developed for other regions. We start by considering the question of whether recognition of early food production in tropical regions of Africa has been hampered by concepts of domestication that rely on morphological change by focusing on donkeys, cattle, Barbary sheep, African cereals, and West African tropical tree crops.
Some evidence suggests that complex hunter-gathers may have attempted to manage cattle in the northeastern Sahara and, for a time, Barbary sheep in the Libyan Acacus. There is no doubt that short-term participation in domesticatory relations are difficult to recognize archaeologically, but nevertheless evidence for management of Barbary sheep is suggestive rather than conclusive. In contrast, genetic data offer a measure of support for the hypothesis of cattle domestication in Africa. The sociality of wild Bovini, however, and the expectation that wild cattle were used mainly for food suggests strong selection and a pathway to domestication—characterized by a postmanagement lag rather than late morphological change and fewer problems with identification of early domesticates—different from that discussed for the donkey.
Ethnoarchaeological data on the donkey reveal relations among selection processes and slow genetic and morphological change and illuminate conditions under which biology and human management influenced domestication and the likelihood of late morphological change. The biological and behavioral reality of donkeys in current domesticatory settings in Africa is that females actively seek out mates, territorial males are reproductively aggressive, and high proportions of males are advantageous for transport use. These factors interact to make reproduction difficult to control and gene flow likely among donkeys of different households and villages, along trade routes, and between tame animals and wild asses.
Archaeological and genetic data suggest that pastoral societies of the Sahara or the Horn of Africa played an important role in the early development of stable and long-term systems of management of morphologically wild donkeys. Morphological change was late, and mechanisms for this probably included creation of built environments of the Nile Valley, late agriculturally modified landscapes, the high mobility of Saharan pastoralists, and ecological fragmentation created by climatic changes of the mid-Holocene.
Although an appreciation of the likelihood of delayed morphological change and biases against identification of domestic donkeys is novel, Africanists have long discussed the question of whether the lack of morphological change resulted in bias against recognition of cultivation of early cereal crops. There is mounting evidence for long periods of intensive use of wild cereal grasses by Early Holocene hunter-gatherers and early herders of the Sahara without evidence of domestic traits. This has been related to a lack of continuous directional selection as a result of increased aridity and pastoral mobility. Morphological changes in well-known African cereals such as pearl millet and pulses such as cowpeas occur relatively late and in conjunction with pastoral sedentization in better-watered locales within the semiarid Sahel and in the more humid West African woodlands after the fourth millennium cal BP. Recent research in more humid regions of West Africa has revealed, however, a number of tended and managed tree crops, such as incense, baobab, and the shea-butter tree, that were heavily used during the Holocene but remain morphologically wild to this day. This is typical of tropical tree crops worldwide and common in weedy greens.
It is worth reiterating at this point that identification of management of plants and animals before genetic or morphological change is inherently problematic, and the longer the period before morphological change occurs in a particular plant, animal, or setting, the greater the difficulties that arise. It is clear that there are at least three axes of variability in morphological responses of plants and animals to selection during coevolutionary relations with humans. We have found it useful here to conceive of this temporal and spatial variation in terms of a “postmanagement lag” before morphological change, as opposed to “late morphological change” or “regionally clustered variability.”
Our review suggests that all these forms of variability exist in Africa. The available data appear to accord with Jones and Brown’s (2007) suggestion that a long, stable period of management without morphological change or a normal “morphological lag” is common to many domesticates worldwide. In Africa, however, it is not clear that their corollary—that population expansion leads to removal of plants and animals from their wild range and morphological change—holds true. Instead, heightened mobility related to climatic changes and increased aridity ultimately led to the movement of some species out of their wild ranges. Furthermore, early African cereals appear to have been domesticated within their wild ranges and intensified on the edge of these regions. Increasingly settled pastoral communities and management practices that maintained directional selection seem to have been more important factors affecting domestication of these crops than reproductive isolation.
We focused above on the possibility of biases against the recognition of early agriculture in tropical regions. We do not, however, see a cluster of taxa subject to late morphological change in the arid or high-altitude subtropics of Africa; here, species-specific analyses of the likelihood of late morphological change are crucial. We agree with Denham (2007), however, that the biology of many species of the African humid tropics increases the likelihood of a lack or significant delay of morphological change and the potential for interpretive bias. These data are strongest with regard to African tree crops. Despite this, however, there is little evidence that archaeologists have ignored early agriculture in the humid tropics of Africa. There is, in fact, no archaeological evidence that the humid tropical forests were heavily populated by African hunter-gatherers during the Early Holocene, and there are few traces of intensification in these regions until after they were settled by food producers (see D’Andrea, Logan, and Watson 2006; D’Andrea et al. 2007; Mercader et al. 2006 and references therein). Nevertheless, as Africanist paleoethnobotanists have pointed out, much work remains to be done on the nature of agricultural systems dating to the past several thousand years in the humid tropics (D’Andrea, Logan, and Watson 2006; Hildebrand 2007; Kahlheber and Neumann 2007).
We conclude that there is no indication of significant regional-scale biases that would have affected current interpretations of the sequence of plant and animal domestication in Africa or geographic patterns of the timing and spread of food production. The larger patterns, as we see them, are that some complex hunter-gatherers of the Early Holocene in North Africa successfully managed cattle, developed pastoral social and subsistence systems, and spread over vast areas of the Sahara. Other such groups in North Africa may have experimented with management of Barbary sheep, but this was short-lived. Later, during the mid-Holocene, there is evidence that donkeys were domesticated by African pastoralists in the Sahara and the Horn of Africa and possibly by Predynastic Egyptians in towns along the Nile. These animals remained morphologically wild for long periods. The earliest plant domesticates in Africa are associated with decreased mobility as pastoralists moved into better-watered locales within the semiarid Sahel and into West Africa. It can also be shown, however, that in some humid tropical regions of Africa, clusters of species existed with a long history of cultivation or tending by established agricultural communities and with biological traits amenable to management but no traces of morphological domestication.
African patterns of food production were distinctive. Animals were domesticated before plants, herding populations became more mobile than their forager ancestors, the subsistence system was characterized by a few morphologically wild domesticates (e.g., the donkey), a wide range of wild resources in ecodiverse combinations continued in use, and mosaics of hunter-gatherers and herders occupied varied regions. Pastoralism developed early in the arid topics, whereas the beginning of farming based on domesticated plants was late.
These African data are informed by and provide perspectives on pathways to food production in other regions. In discussions at the Wenner-Gren conference in Temozón in 2009, Meadow (2009) and Fuller (2009; also see Fuller 2006) argued that South Indian patterns of early pastoralism and subsequent domestication of local millets and pulses are reminiscent of Africa. Similarly, pastoralism has long been considered an early phenomenon in the Andes (Aldenderfer 2003; Browman 1974; Mengoni-Goñalons and Yacobaccio 2006) and the Zagros (Abdi 2003; Hole 1996). Mobile pastoralism is also a major theme in data emerging on the beginnings of food production in central Asia (Frachetti and Benecke 2009; Outram et al. 2009). In addition, Belfer-Cohen and Goring-Morris (2011) and Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen (2011) document African-like mosaics of hunter-gatherer and early-food-producer settlement in the Levant during the Early Holocene. Evidence is also mounting that shows continued reliance on wild resources and ecodiverse strategies pursued by small-scale food producers or low-level farmers of the Americas and subtropical and tropical regions (Denham 2011; Fritz 2007; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Smith 2001, 2011) and perhaps even temperate regions of Asia (Crawford 2011; Lee 2011; Zhao 2011). Understanding ways in which specific strands such as these contribute to larger similarities and differences in the warp and weft of data on the beginnings of agriculture requires attention to methods of detection of early phases of domestication, information on specific social contexts, and regionally focused and temporarily expansive research. These kinds of data are only just beginning to emerge from Africa, which, as this summary demonstrates, has much to contribute to unraveling patterns of variability in global pathways to food production.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Ofer Bar-Yosef, Douglas Price, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and our companions in Temozón for the genesis of this paper and for challenging and enriching our views about domestication and the spread of food production. The donkey ethnoarchaeological research could not have been conducted without the expert knowledge and gracious support of the people of Kajiado. We are also grateful to the Kenya National Museums and Dr. Purity Kiura for their support and to the government of Kenya for permission to undertake research. This paper has benefited greatly from the thoughtful comments of reviewers. Research was supported by National Science Foundation grants BCS-0447369 and BCS-0536507.
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When the Sahara Turned from Green to Brown: Post-glacial Climate Change and Human Settlement in Central Sahara, 12,000 - 2,500 BC. Abstract: For decades, archeologists have been aware of evidence suggesting that the Sahara Desert was much wetter and greener thousands of years ago. It is now possible to characterize these locations, in terms of both aquatic and terrestrial biota, but by also providing some data on the human inhabitants of these ecotomes. This thesis focused primarily on the features of human settlement in the central Sahara, looking at lifestyles of the people and examining factors favoring a wetlands economy. Finally, as the once-favorable conditions began disappearing, analysis of the destiny of these Saharan peoples is made.
The Holocene followed the last glacial age, about 12,000 BC. The temperatures in the Sahara became appreciably warmer and the climate demonstrated a lower evapotranspiration rate. The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), the line along which north and south weather fronts converge, seems to have moved several hundred miles to the north. Since, in general, African rainfall north of the equator increases as one heads south, the shift of the ICTZ resulted in Saharan and sahelian zones receiving increased rainfall.
In addition to more temperate plant and animal species moving into the Sahara, the increased moisture resulted in lakes and rivers filling far beyond their prior capacity. In some cases, rivers breached their normal watershed, connecting with other systems. This allowed a broader distribution of aquatic species. In some areas, there were widespread wetlands. The earliest such sites, when associated with human habitation, date from ~7000 BC (with harpoons) and 6000 BC (wavy-line pottery). Because they used pottery, these cultures were originally considered some kind of Aquatic Neolithic.
JEG Sutton, in a 1974 article, called them the "Aquatic Civilization of Middle Africa". Although they did little stonework, he saw their bone work as very sophisticated. He suspected that much of their material culture, made of perishable materials, would not have survived. He thought them "victims" of stone-oriented scholars. Based on geographic distribution. he thought that the ancestors of Saharan, Songhai and Chari-Nile-speakers were these same "Middle Africans".
After the initial Holocene (postglacial) wet phase (12,000-7000 BC), conditions became drier for 500-1000 years. This was fol- lowed by a lesser wet phase of 2000 years. From then until 2500 BC, there was a gradual increase in dryness. After that time, weather conditions have been largely unchanged until the present. How did the human economies change with the climate?
The early harpoon-fishers availed themselves of large riverine and lake species, such as the Nile perch (known to exceed six feet). Whether they were fully-settled or did some amount of yearly travel isn't known. Undoubtedly, as water-tables dropped, the people needed to augment their aquatic diet with other foods. Initially, these would be available plant and animal foods which could be gathered.
Christopher Ehret's work touched on Sutton's language hypothesis--that these early fishers were NiloSaharan speakers. In the process of generating protolanguages for these speakers, he created an initial vocabulary for both NiloSaharan, proto-Saharan and proto-Sahelian. The words that he developed do not include fish or fishing terms (line, net, hook, harpoon). This early vocabulary does have herding terms and words for 'goat', 'young goat', 'cow', 'corral' and such. No other writers dealt with this topic.
The Central Sahara is punctuated by large stone outcrops--massifs--that create their own microclimate. In some cases, they represent a refuge for rare species, extinct everywhere else. Work by Henri Lhote in the 1950's documented the varied and colorful rockpaintings found in the massifs. Grouped into 23 styles, they are grouped as 1. Bubalus (extinct buffalo) hunters, early Neo- lithic; 2. 'Bovidian' pastoralists (considered Neolithic); 3. Equine phase, involving pastoralists with chariots and cavalry; 4. Phase of the camel, 1 AD. These groupings are disputed, but the images show us a wild-animal phase, then so-called 'Roundhead' figures. These appear to be multi-ethnic, including a 'Negroid' population.
The pastoralist period involved humpless cattle with large curved horns, similar to the ancient Egyptian Longhorn. Features of the people's life resemble activities of the Peul/Fulani, a contemporary West African pastoral group. Some of the boat images re- semble those on Egyptian monuments, raising yet other possibilities. Pastoralism appeared about the time that weather condi- tions became considerably drier (7000 BC), suggesting that it was a selected response to changing conditions.
The equine phase and its suspected timing may represent the arrival of the "Peoples of the Sea", groups that left Crete about 1500 BC (around the time of the Trojan War) and migrated northeast, east and southeast. The Biblical Philistines are one such group. Cretans arrived in NE Africa about 1200 BC, joining with the Libyans and attacking Egypt. Similar groups may have moved in from the coast and entered the central Sahara via the caravan trails. If so, this movement is more a political one than a response to climate change in the central Sahara, although its outcome would affect the local population.
Although the rock art isn't datable, it nevertheless shows us several different worlds of the central Sahara. The earliest involves Africa's megafauna (lions, elephants, etc) and Negroid peoples. Another one shows herding people with cattle. Some features of these images recall West Africa, others, Egypt. The herders look more like Somali people, with narrow noses, thin lips, straight hair. Probable intruders with horses and chariots are seen and, finally, the camel makes its appearance. Are the earlier people migrants from North Africa, from Egypt or from elsewhere?
Dhar Tichitt in southern Mauritania has been instructive as showing the cultural response to a drier climate. Digging revealed eight phases, from hunting megafauna (2000 BC), to limited hunting, gathering and herding (1500-1100). Subsequent phases included significant milling. The involved plant went from cramcram, a spiny famine food, to millet and sorghum. Identification of the species showed that the people had switched from gathering wild grasses to planting them, in about 100 years. Such speed is unheard of under normal circumstances, and suggests that the people were somehow "presensitized" to cultivation, perhaps via a smaller outgroup that grew up with farming and then migrated here. Both herding and planting were presumably responses to unfavorable climate. The site was abandoned after horses and metal weapons arrived, possibly with the charioteers described above.
The future of the central Saharans was not always the same as at Dhar Tichitt. Evidence suggests that the people migrated, some southwest, some southeast, some perhaps north, following the drying riverbeds as they sought sites where they could sus- tain themselves. Since West Africa had not yet been favorable to settlement, due to its dense forests, the central Saharans may represent some of the early ancestors of some of these peoples.Posts: 26513 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: TP thanks for gathering such a wealth of information.
Thanks, you're welcome.
The oldest epigraphic and digital record of a king wearing the upper Egyptian crown has been relocated in Al-Kab archaeological site, north Aswan.
Following the relocation of the artefacts, a team from Yale University, the University of Bologna and the Provinciale Hogeschool Limburg, Belgium, has completed the first epigraphic and digital record of a site near Nag El-Hamdulab on the west bank of the Nile, north of Aswan. The site was discovered nearly half a century ago by the famous Egyptian Egyptologist Labib Habachi. Minister of State for Antiquities Zahi Hawass said this new and thorough study has brought to light a previously unknown Early Dynastic cycle of royal images and an early hieroglyphic inscription.
This work was carried out by the Aswan-Kom Ombo Archaeological Project (AKAP), which is a joint venture between Yale and University of Bologna, lead by Maria Carmela Gatto and Antonio Curci, with an international research team from various European and America countries as well as Egypt. Now in its seventh season, the project aims to survey and rescue the archaeology of the region between Aswan and Kom Ombo, in the southern part of Upper Egypt.
Gatto said that this group of images and the short inscription—carved around 3200 BCE, at the dawn of the dynastic period—record the earliest depiction of a royal Jubilee complete of all the elements known from later documents: an Egyptian ruler wearing a recognizable crown of Egypt; “the following of Horus”; and the royal court as known it is known to have been in Early Dynastic accounts such as the Palermo Stone.
She explained that the Nag El-Hamdulab scenes are unique, bridging the world of the ritual Predynastic Jubilee in which images of power—predominately boats and animals—are the chief elements, and the world of the royal pharaonic Jubilee, in which the image of the human ruler dominates events. The Nag El-Hamdulab cycle of images shows the emergence of the ruler as the supreme human priest the manifestation of both human power and the divine incarnate. The Nag El-Hamdulab cycle is the last of the old nautical Jubilee cycles of the Predyanstic Period, and the first of the pharaonic cycles over which the king presides in full regalia, here the oldest form of the White Crown. The Nag El-Hamdulab cycle is also the first such image with a hieroglyphic annotation. That text refers to a vessel of the “Following,” probably the “Following of Horus,” and may therefore be the earliest record of tax collection we have from Egypt, and the first expression of royal economic control over Egypt and most probably also Nubia.
Mohamed El-Beyali, the general director of Aswan and Nubia monuments, said that the Nag El-Hamdulab cycle of images probably dates back to about 3200 BCE, corresponding to the late Naqada period. In other words, it is from the time between King Scorpion (the owner of tomb Uj at Abydos), first king of Dynasty 0, and Narmer, first ruler of Dynasty 1.The discovery is so important that it already figures in a new documentary series from Germany (currently on air on the satellite TV channels ARTE and ZDF), which will soon be available worldwide.
Examination of African barbed bone points recovered from Holocene sites provides a context to interpret three Late
Pleistocene occurrences from Katanda and Ishango, Zaire, and White Paintings Shelter, Botswana. In sites dated to ca. 10,000 BP and younger, such artifacts are found widely distributed across the Sahara Desert, the Sahel, the Nile, and the East African Lakes.
They are present in both ceramic and aceramic contexts, sometimes associated with domesticates.
The almost-universal presence of fish remains indicates a subsistence adaptation which incorporates a riverine/lacustrine component. Typologically these points exhibit sufficient similarity in form and method of manufacture to be subsumed within a single African tradition. They are absent at Fayum, where a distinct Natufian form occurs. Specimens dating to ca. 20,000 BP at Ishango, possibly a similar age at White Paintings Shelter, and up to 90,000 BP at Katanda clearly fall within this same African tradition and thus indicate a very long-term continuity which crosses traditionally conceived sub-Saharan cultural boundaries.
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Troll Patrol - I don't know that you should give much credence to any of this. It smells like a hype job to me. 5000 years old scratch relief that was perfectly legible? Found and then Abandoned for 80 years with no thought of preservation? It makes me go Hmm, I wonder what those Turk mulattoes are up to now.
These were first identified and photographed in the 30s or so by an Egyptian Egyptologist, Labib Habachi.
The photos were stored in the Chicago House at Luxor. Maria Catto has been working at this site in Aswan and reconstructed the images because, since Habachi photographed them, some IDIOTS have scratched at them and almost destroyed them. Probably in a fit of religious piety, thinking they were an affront to god.
These scenes were carved into the rock a little over 5,000 years ago. They date to around 3500 BCE, to the time between the Scorpion King and Narmer, and they show a mixture of royal festival iconography that bridges the differences in the early examples of these scenes. The earliest focused on boats while slightly later ones focused on the king and beasts. This one has both. The king with a dog and retainers carrying flags and boats.
Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara How a dinosaur hunter uncovered the Sahara's strangest Stone Age graveyard
On October 13, 2000, a small team of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago clambered out of three battered Land Rovers, filled their water bottles, and scattered on foot across the toffee-colored sands of the Ténéré desert in northern Niger. The Ténéré, on the southern flank of the Sahara, easily ranks among the most desolate landscapes on Earth. The Tuareg, turbaned nomads who for centuries have ruled this barren realm, refer to it as a "desert within a desert"—a California-size ocean of sand and rock, where a single massive dune might stretch a hundred miles, and the combination of 120-degree heat and inexorable winds can wick the water from a human body in less than a day. The harsh conditions, combined with intermittent conflict between the Tuareg and the Niger government, have kept the region largely unexplored.
Sereno, a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence and one of the world's most prolific dinosaur hunters, had led his first expedition into the Ténéré five years earlier, after negotiating agreements with both the leader of a Tuareg rebel force and the Niger Ministry of Defense, allowing him safe passage to explore its fossil-rich deposits. That initial foray was followed by others, and each time his team emerged from the desert with the remains of exotic species, including Nigersaurus, a 500-toothed plant-eating dinosaur, and Sarcosuchus, an extinct crocodilian the size of a city bus. The 2000 expedition, however, was his most ambitious—three months scouring a 300-mile arc of the Ténéré, ending near Agadez, a medieval caravan town on the western lip of the desert. Already, his team members had excavated 20 tons of dinosaur bones and other prehistoric animals. But six weeks of hard labor in this brutal environment had worn them down. Most had mild cases of dysentery; several had lost so much weight they had to hitch up their trousers as they trudged over the soft sand; and everyone's nerves had been on edge since an encounter with armed bandits.
Mike Hettwer, a photographer accompanying the team, headed off by himself toward a trio of small dunes. He crested the first slope and stared in amazement. The dunes were spilling over with bones. He took a few shots with his digital camera and hurried back to the Land Rovers.
"I found some bones," Hettwer said, when the team had regrouped. "But they're not dinosaurs. They're human."
Heat, thirst, and, for the moment, dinosaurs were forgotten as the team members followed Hettwer back to the three dunes and began to gingerly survey their slopes. In just a few minutes they had counted dozens of human skeletons. Parts of skullcaps pushed up through the sand like upturned china bowls; jawbones clenched nearly full sets of teeth; a tiny hand, perhaps a child's, appeared to have floated up through the sand with all its finger bones intact. "It was as if the desert winds were pulling them from their final resting places," said Hettwer. Insinuated among the human bones was a profusion of clay potsherds, beads, and stone tools— finely worked arrowheads and axheads and well-worn grindstones. There were also hundreds of animal bones. In addition to antelope and giraffe, Sereno quickly recognized the remains of water-adapted creatures like crocodiles and hippos, then turtles, fish, and clams. "Everywhere you turned, there were bones belonging to animals that don't live in the desert," said Sereno. "I realized we were in the Green Sahara."
For much of the past 70,000 years, the Sahara has closely resembled the desert it is today. Some 12,000 years ago, however, a wobble in the Earth's axis and other factors caused Africa's seasonal monsoons to shift slightly north, bringing new rains to an area nearly the size of the contiguous United States. Lush watersheds stretched across the Sahara, from Egypt to Mauritania, drawing animal life and eventually people.
Archaeologists have inventoried the stone tools used by these early inhabitants and the patterns inscribed on their ceramics. They have also identified thousands of their rock engravings, which depict herds of ostriches, giraffes, and elephants. Some of the images suggest that along the way the people of the Green Sahara learned to domesticate cattle. But they remain veiled in mystery. Did they arrive here from the Mediterranean coast, central African jungles, or Nile Valley? Were they nomads, or did they stake out territories and build settlements? Did they trade with each other and intermarry, or did they wage war, or both? As the monsoons began to recede, how did they cope with a drying landscape? The only part of the story that then seems clear is that by some 3,500 years ago the desert had returned. The people vanished.
Seeking answers to such questions is normally the domain of anthropologists and archaeologists—not dinosaur hunters. But Sereno had become transfixed by the discovery. "There is something soul stirring about looking into the face of an ancient human skull and knowing this is my species," he said. Whenever he could steal a moment from his paleontological work, he pored through every scholarly publication he could find on the Green Saharans, tracked down the authors and badgered them with emails full of questions. Sometimes he would read all night before downing a cup of coffee and heading back to his lab. In 2003, during another dinosaur expedition in Niger, he took three days off to revisit the dunes and survey the site, counting at least 173 burials. To dig any deeper, however, would require more time, money, and expertise.
In the spring of 2005 Sereno contacted Elena Garcea, an archaeologist at the University of Cassino, in Italy, inviting her to accompany him on a return to the site. Garcea had spent three decades working digs along the Nile in Sudan and in the mountains of the Libyan Desert, and was well acquainted with the ancient peoples of the Sahara. But she had never heard of Paul Sereno. His claim to have found so many skeletons in one place seemed far-fetched, given that no other Neolithic cemetery contained more than a dozen or so. Some archaeologists would later be skeptical; one sniped that he was just a "moonlighting paleontologist." But Garcea was too intrigued to dismiss him as an interloper. She agreed to join him.
"I was impressed that he hadn't just ignored the burials and continued looking for dinosaurs," she told me.
They arrived at the site six months later. Clad in a salt-stained T-shirt and jeans, Sereno, vibrating with energy, powered up the first of the three dunes, identifying animal bones with nearly every stride—giraffe vertebra … hippo ulna … gazelle humerus. Garcea, a petite woman in unwrinkled chinos and a tennis hat, followed at a more measured pace, bending at the waist to scrutinize each item.
At the top, they surveyed a macabre scene. Around them lay dozens of human skeletons in various degrees of completeness, far more than Garcea had seen at all her other digs combined. Nonetheless, she seemed more interested in what looked to me like tiny gray chunks of gravel. "They're potsherds," she said, and held up one inscribed with a pointillistic pattern. She identified the markings as belonging to a people known to scholars as the Tenerian, a nomadic herding culture that lived during the latter part of the Green Sahara era, 6,500 to 4,500 years ago. Then she picked up another piece. She studied it for a moment, looking perplexed. Instead of little dots, this sherd was decorated with wavy lines. She picked up another like it, then another. "These are Kiffian," she said, her voice rising with excitement.
Garcea explained that the Kiffian were a fishing-based culture and lived during the earliest wet period, between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago. She held a Kiffian sherd next to a Tenerian one. "What is so amazing is that the people who made these two pots lived more than a thousand years apart."
Over the next three weeks, Sereno and Garcea—along with five American excavators, five Tuareg guides, and five soldiers from Niger's army, sent to protect the camp from bandits—made a detailed map of the site, which they dubbed Gobero, after the Tuareg name for the area. They exhumed eight burials and collected scores of artifacts from both cultures. In a dry lake bed adjacent to the dunes, they found dozens of fishhooks and harpoons carved from animal bone. Apparently the Kiffian fishermen weren't just going after small fry: Scattered near the dunes were the remains of Nile perch, a beast of a fish that can weigh nearly 300 pounds, as well as crocodile and hippo bones.
Garcea suspected that the Tenerian had made most of the stone tools. Nearly three-fourths of them were hewed from a strange green volcanic rock that bore a glasslike sheen and yielded razor-sharp edges when fractured. The abundance of green flakes on the dunes indicated that the Tenerian spent long periods of time at Gobero making and sharpening their tools. "But it's possible they lived part of the time at the place where they quarried the green rock," said Garcea. One of the Tuareg said he had seen big boulders of it in the Aïr mountains, some hundred miles to the northwest.
At dusk the heat gave way to the cool evening air, and the camp divided into three groups. The soldiers, dressed in threadbare fatigues and combat boots with no socks, gathered around their fire, speaking Hausa, Niger's dominant language. At the Tuareg fire, the guides removed their linen chèches, which they kept neatly wound around their faces during the day. They reclined on foam mattresses, served each other strong, sugary tea, and quietly discussed Niger's restive politics in their native Tamashek. Meanwhile, the dig team cooked couscous and freeze-dried vegetables on a propane stove, eating by the light of their headlamps. Their conversations focused on the stark differences in the burials. Some appeared to be little more than a tight bundle of bones, as if the body had been bound or squeezed into a basket or a leather bag, which had long since decomposed. These compact burials belied the fact that some of these individuals were surprisingly large—as much as six feet eight inches tall, with thick bones suggesting they had been well muscled.
By contrast, other skeletons belonged to much smaller people, about five-and-a-half feet tall. They were buried on their sides in relaxed positions, as if they had fallen asleep and drifted into death. Some of their graves contained beads, arrowheads, or animal bones. But since no potsherds were found in the burials, it wasn't clear which were Kiffian and which were Tenerian. Until the age of the bones could be determined, no one could say for sure. And what had led the Tenerian to bury their dead in the exact same spot as the Kiffian had laid theirs to rest, thousands of years earlier?
"Perhaps the Tenerian found the Kiffian burials and recognized this place as sacred," Garcea offered. "It's possible they thought these bones belonged to their own ancestors."
The search for answers could not wait long. Gobero held at least 200 burials, which would take several field seasons to excavate. But the constant desert wind was eroding the site year by year, scattering the bones down the sides of the dunes. An even more dire concern was looters. Officials in Niger have identified close to a hundred Stone Age sites in the and report that nearly all were looted before they could be excavated. Often Tuareg traveling in camel caravans find the sites and scavenge artifacts to sell to dealers in Agadez, who in turn sell them illicitly to tourists. Though the Niger government has outlawed the sale of antiquities, only Gobero and one other site remained unlooted.
Members of the dig team suspected that a few of the soldiers were picking up artifacts as they patrolled the site's perimeter. When confronted by Sereno, they denied it. One night by the Tuareg fire, I asked one of the guides whether he thought anyone might pilfer artifacts. He shrugged. "When you are hungry and your children are hungry, what can you do?" Another confided to me that over the years he had collected a small number of artifacts during his travels in the desert. He produced a leather pouch that held an array of gemlike arrowheads and a beautiful knife chipped from the strange green stone. "These are not for sale," he said. "They are for my children. It is their history. I want them to see it before it is all gone."
SERENO FLEW HOME with the most important skeletons and artifacts and immediately began planning for the next field season. In the meantime, he carefully removed one tooth from each of four skulls and sent them to a lab for radiocarbon dating. The results pegged the age of the tightly bundled burials at roughly 9,000 years old, the heart of the Kiffian era. The smaller "sleeping" skeletons turned out to be about 6,000 years old, well within the Tenerian period. At least now the scientists knew who was who.
In the fall of 2006 they returned to Gobero, accompanied by a larger dig crew and six additional scientists. Garcea hoped to excavate some 80 burials, and the team began digging. As the skeletons began to emerge from the dunes, each presented a fresh riddle, especially the Tenerian. A male skeleton had been buried with a finger in his mouth. Another had been interred inside a frame of disarticulated human bones. Among the strangest was an adult male buried with a boar tusk and a crocodile ankle bone and his head resting on a clay pot. Parts of the skeleton appeared to have been burned, hinting that an elaborate ritual had accompanied his burial.
Garcea paid close attention to these details. In lieu of a written language, such clues are critical to understanding what she described as a culture's "software"—its traditions, value system, and beliefs about the supernatural. The very act of burial contains a message, Garcea told me as she delicately brushed dirt from another Tenerian skeleton. "By infusing the land with the remains of your people, you claim it."
Unlike the Tenerian burials, the bundles of Kiffian bones came with few artifacts to shed light on their culture. But bones and teeth alone can say a lot about the daily lives of a vanished people. Their appearance can reveal an individual's sex, age, and general health, and they hold chemical signatures that, analyzed in a lab, can reveal the kinds of food a person ate and the location of the water sources he drank from.
Even at the site, Arizona State University bioarchaeologist Chris Stojanowski could begin to piece together some clues. Judging by the bones, the Kiffian appeared to be a peaceful, hardworking people. "The lack of head and forearm injuries suggests they weren't doing much fighting," he told me. "And these guys were strong." He pointed to a long, narrow ridge running along a femur. "That's the muscle attachment," he said. "This individual had huge leg muscles, which means he was eating a lot of protein and had a strenuous lifestyle—both consistent with a fishing way of life." For contrast, he showed me the femur of a Tenerian male. The ridge was barely perceptible. "This guy had a much less strenuous lifestyle," he said, "which you might expect of a herder."
Stojanowski's assessment that the Tenerian were herders fits the prevailing view among scholars of life in the Sahara 6,000 years ago, when drier conditions favored herding over hunting. But if the Tenerian were herders, Sereno pointed out, where were the herds? Among the hundreds of animal bones that had turned up at the site, none belonged to goats or sheep, and only three came from a cow species. "It's not unusual for a herding culture not to slaughter their cattle, particularly in a cemetery," Garcea responded, noting that even modern pastoralists, such as Niger's Wodaabe, are loath to butcher even one animal in their herd. Perhaps, Sereno reasoned, the Tenerian at Gobero were a transitional group that had not fully adopted herding and still relied heavily on hunting and fishing.
The twilight of the Green Sahara around 4,500 years ago might have been the perfect time to be hunting at Gobero, said Carlo Giraudi, the team's geologist. As water sources dried up throughout the region, animals would have been drawn to pocket wetlands, making them easier to kill. Four middens found on the dunes and dated to around that time included hundreds of animal remains, as well as fish bones and clamshells—not usually part of a herder's diet. "The Green Sahara's climate was rapidly changing," said Giraudi, "but just before the lake dried up, the people at Gobero would have thought they were living in a golden period."
Then they were gone, leaving only bones and a few artifacts to bear witness. On my last day at Gobero, Sereno and his colleagues began excavating a particularly poignant burial containing three skeletons. Several members of the dig team interrupted their own work to watch. Soon a few of the Tuareg abandoned their late afternoon tea and wandered over, and a couple of soldiers joined the group. Evening breezes began to sweep away the desert's intense heat. As the sand was carefully brushed away, a petite Tenerian woman came into clear relief, lying on her side. Facing her were the skeletons of two children. Their molars suggested they were five and eight years old when they died. Each child reached tiny arms toward the woman. Her fragile arm bones reached back to them. Between the skeletons lay a cluster of disarticulated finger bones, implying the deceased had been laid to rest holding hands.
Was this a mother and her children? Had a grieving father posed his family in this gesture of love before covering them with sand? The questions rippled around the graveside in English, French, Tamashek, and Hausa. The skeletons exhibited no clear signs of trauma, though four arrowheads turned up near the bones, perhaps part of a burial ritual. But if their deaths weren't violent, how did they all die at the same time? If it was a disease or a plague, who would have been left to bury the bodies in such an elaborate fashion? Maybe, someone suggested, they drowned in the lake.
Back in Arizona, Stojanowski continues to analyze the Gobero bones for clues to the Green Saharans' health and diet. Other scientists are trying to derive DNA from the teeth, which could reveal the genetic origins of the Kiffian and Tenerian—and possibly link them to descendants living today. Sereno and Garcea estimate a hundred burials remain to be excavated. But as the harsh Ténéré winds continue to erode the dunes, time is running out. "Every archaeological site has a life cycle," Garcea said. "It begins when people begin to use the place, followed by disuse, then nature takes over, and finally it is gone. Gobero is at the end of its life."
In February of 2007, as the team was making plans to return to Niger, hostilities broke out again between some of Niger's Tuareg groups and the government. By December, Human Rights Watch had reported scores of soldiers and civilians had been killed or injured in clashes and by land mines. The government declared emergency rule in the region, prohibiting foreigners from traveling to the Ténéré. Sereno and Garcea were forced to cancel the 2007 and 2008 dig seasons. Meanwhile, the wind blows across Gobero, and the desert continues to consume the last remnants of the Green Sahara.
Undaunted by a sandstorm, Wodaabe men promenade at a Niger festival of herding tribes. Like the Wodaabe, Gobero's last known inhabitants may have been keepers of livestock.
Ladies of Kidal
Petroglyph showing women of ancient Essouk. Site scene Kidal! Dating back 8.000 Ky
Although no signs of houses were found, diverse and sophisticated stone implements for hunting, fishing, and collecting and processing plants were discovered around hearths.
In Egypt, the earliest evidence of humans can be recognized only from tools found scattered over an ancient surface, sometimes with hearths nearby. In Wadi Kubbaniya, a dried-up streambed cutting through the Western Desert to the floodplain northwest of Aswan in Upper Egypt, some interesting sites of the kind described above have been recorded. A cluster of Late Paleolithic camps was located in two different topographic zones: on the tops of dunes and the floor of the wadi (streambed) where it enters the valley. Although no signs of houses were found, diverse and sophisticated stone implements for hunting, fishing, and collecting and processing plants were discovered around hearths. Most tools were bladelets made from a local stone called chert that is widely used in tool fabrication. The bones of wild cattle, hartebeest, many types of fish and birds, as well as the occasional hippopotamus have been identified in the occupation layers. Charred remains of plants that the inhabitants consumed, especially tubers, have also been found.
It appears from the zoological and botanical remains at the various sites in this wadi that the two environmental zones were exploited at different times. We know that the dune sites were occupied when the Nile River flooded the wadi because large numbers of fish and migratory bird bones were found at this location. When the water receded, people then moved down onto the silt left behind on the wadi floor and the floodplain, probably following large animals that looked for water there in the dry season. Paleolithic peoples lived at Wadi Kubbaniya for about 2,000 years, exploiting the different environments as the seasons changed. Other ancient camps have been discovered along the Nile from Sudan to the Mediterranean, yielding similar tools and food remains. These sites demonstrate that the early inhabitants of the Nile valley and its nearby deserts had learned how to exploit local environments, developing economic strategies that were maintained in later cultural traditions of pharaonic Egypt.
Diana Craig Patch Department of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Laura Anne Tedesco Department of Education, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Posts: 22249 | From: Omni | Registered: Nov 2010
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If you mean the small metal amulet the guy in the foreground is wearing, that is a tanaghilt or zakkat more popularly known as a 'Tuareg Cross'. It is a traditional amulet worn by Tuareg people though I don't know if it's traditionally worn by Wodaabe. The Woodabe are long time trading partners of the Tuareg so it's possible it was bought from Tuareg. The tanaghilt is usually made from silver (a metal of purity) and is believe to bring good luck or ward off evil.
tanaghilt
Ausar, whose mother is Tuareg, once created a thread on the topic of the tanaghilt and its possible connections to the Egyptian ankh. I doubt the thread exists as that was almost a decade ago.
Posts: 26513 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Claudio Ottoni: Paternal heritage of the Libyan Tuaregs:
quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol:
Claudio Ottoni: Maternal heritage of the Libyan Tuaregs:
First Genetic Insight into Libyan Tuaregs: A Maternal Perspective
Claudio Ottoni et al.
Abstract
The Tuaregs are a semi-nomadic pastoralist people of northwest Africa. Their origins are still a matter of debate due to the scarcity of genetic and historical data. Here we report the first data on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genetic characterization of a Tuareg sample from Fezzan (Libyan Sahara). A total of 129 individuals from two villages in the Acacus region were genetically analysed. Both the hypervariable regions and the coding region of mtDNA were investigated. Phylogeographic investigation was carried out in order to reconstruct human migratory shifts in central Sahara, and to shed light on the origin of the Libyan Tuaregs. Our results clearly show low genetic diversity in the sample, possibly due to genetic drift and founder effect associated with the separation of Libyan Tuaregs from an ancestral population. Furthermore, the maternal genetic pool of the Libyan Tuaregs is characterized by a major "European" component shared with the Berbers that could be traced to the Iberian Peninsula, as well as a minor 'south Saharan' contribution possibly linked to both Eastern African and Near Eastern populations.
Posts: 43122 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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If you mean the small metal amulet the guy in the foreground is wearing, that is a tanaghilt or zakkat more popularly known as a 'Tuareg Cross'. It is a traditional amulet worn by Tuareg people though I don't know if it's traditionally worn by Wodaabe. The Woodabe are long time trading partners of the Tuareg so it's possible it was bought from Tuareg. The tanaghilt is usually made from silver (a metal of purity) and is believe to bring good luck or ward off evil.
tanaghilt
Ausar, whose mother is Tuareg, once created a thread on the topic of the tanaghilt and its possible connections to the Egyptian ankh. I doubt the thread exists as that was almost a decade ago.
Claudio Ottoni: Maternal heritage of the Libyan Tuaregs:
First Genetic Insight into Libyan Tuaregs: A Maternal Perspective
Claudio Ottoni et al.
Abstract
The Tuaregs are a semi-nomadic pastoralist people of northwest Africa. Their origins are still a matter of debate due to the scarcity of genetic and historical data. Here we report the first data on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genetic characterization of a Tuareg sample from Fezzan (Libyan Sahara). A total of 129 individuals from two villages in the Acacus region were genetically analysed. Both the hypervariable regions and the coding region of mtDNA were investigated. Phylogeographic investigation was carried out in order to reconstruct human migratory shifts in central Sahara, and to shed light on the origin of the Libyan Tuaregs. Our results clearly show low genetic diversity in the sample, possibly due to genetic drift and founder effect associated with the separation of Libyan Tuaregs from an ancestral population. Furthermore, the maternal genetic pool of the Libyan Tuaregs is characterized by a major "European" component shared with the Berbers that could be traced to the Iberian Peninsula, as well as a minor 'south Saharan' contribution possibly linked to both Eastern African and Near Eastern populations.
It speaks of a particular region. Village-specific maternal mtDNA lineages.
Where Tuaregs have admixture. Due to Mamluk and Saqaliba females, which is recorded history vs the "possibilities"!
Further more, my thread, this thread is for collecting historical data on neolithic, palaeolithic and Holocene Africa. With focus on the Sahara and Sahel region.
Posts: 22249 | From: Omni | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Phonetic Clues Hint Language Is Africa-Born
By NICHOLAS WADE, NY Times
A researcher analyzing the sounds in languages spoken around the world has detected an ancient signal that points to southern Africa as the place where modern human language originated.
The finding fits well with the evidence from fossil skulls and DNA that modern humans originated in Africa. It also implies, though does not prove, that modern language originated only once, an issue of considerable controversy among linguists.
The detection of such an ancient signal in language is surprising. Because words change so rapidly, many linguists think that languages cannot be traced very far back in time. The oldest language tree so far reconstructed, that of the Indo-European family, which includes English, goes back 9,000 years at most.
Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, has shattered this time barrier, if his claim is correct, by looking not at words but at phonemes — the consonants, vowels and tones that are the simplest elements of language. Dr. Atkinson, an expert at applying mathematical methods to linguistics, has found a simple but striking pattern in some 500 languages spoken throughout the world: A language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it.
Some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, whereas Hawaiian, toward the far end of the human migration route out of Africa, has only 13. English has about 45 phonemes.
This pattern of decreasing diversity with distance, similar to the well-established decrease in genetic diversity with distance from Africa, implies that the origin of modern human language is in the region of southwestern Africa, Dr. Atkinson says in an article published on Thursday in the journal Science.
Language is at least 50,000 years old, the date that modern humans dispersed from Africa, and some experts say it is at least 100,000 years old. Dr. Atkinson, if his work is correct, is picking up a distant echo from this far back in time.
Linguists tend to dismiss any claims to have found traces of language older than 10,000 years, “but this paper comes closest to convincing me that this type of research is possible,” said Martin Haspelmath, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Dr. Atkinson is one of several biologists who have started applying to historical linguistics the sophisticated statistical methods developed for constructing genetic trees based on DNA sequences. These efforts have been regarded with suspicion by some linguists.
In 2003 Dr. Atkinson and Russell Gray, another biologist at the University of Auckland, reconstructed the tree of Indo-European languages with a DNA tree-drawing method called Bayesian phylogeny. The tree indicated that Indo-European was much older than historical linguists had estimated and hence favored the theory that the language family had diversified with the spread of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, not with a military invasion by steppe people some 6,000 years ago, the idea favored by most historical linguists.
“We’re uneasy about mathematical modeling that we don’t understand juxtaposed to philological modeling that we do understand,” Brian D. Joseph, a linguist at Ohio State University, said about the Indo-European tree. But he thinks that linguists may be more willing to accept Dr. Atkinson’s new article because it does not conflict with any established area of linguistic scholarship.
“I think we ought to take this seriously, although there are some who will dismiss it out of hand,” Dr. Joseph said.
Another linguist, Donald A. Ringe of the University of Pennsylvania, said, “It’s too early to tell if Atkinson’s idea is correct, but if so, it’s one of the most interesting articles in historical linguistics that I’ve seen in a decade.”
Dr. Atkinson’s finding fits with other evidence about the origins of language. The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert belong to one of the earliest branches of the genetic tree based on human mitochondrial DNA. Their languages belong to a family known as Khoisan and include many click sounds, which seem to be a very ancient feature of language. And they live in southern Africa, which Dr. Atkinson’s calculations point to as the origin of language. But whether Khoisan is closest to some ancestral form of language “is not something my method can speak to,” Dr. Atkinson said.
His study was prompted by a recent finding that the number of phonemes in a language increases with the number of people who speak it. This gave him the idea that phoneme diversity would increase as a population grew, but would fall again when a small group split off and migrated away from the parent group.
Such a continual budding process, which is the way the first modern humans expanded around the world, is known to produce what biologists call a serial founder effect. Each time a smaller group moves away, there is a reduction in its genetic diversity. The reduction in phonemic diversity over increasing distances from Africa, as seen by Dr. Atkinson, parallels the reduction in genetic diversity already recorded by biologists.
For either kind of reduction in diversity to occur, the population budding process must be rapid, or diversity will build up again. This implies that the human expansion out of Africa was very rapid at each stage. The acquisition of modern language, or the technology it made possible, may have prompted the expansion, Dr. Atkinson said.
“What’s so remarkable about this work is that it shows language doesn’t change all that fast — it retains a signal of its ancestry over tens of thousands of years,” said Mark Pagel, a biologist at the University of Reading in England who advised Dr. Atkinson.
Dr. Pagel sees language as central to human expansion across the globe.
“Language was our secret weapon, and as soon we got language we became a really dangerous species,” he said.
In the wake of modern human expansion, archaic human species like the Neanderthals were wiped out and large species of game, fossil evidence shows, fell into extinction on every continent shortly after the arrival of modern humans.
posted
New Evidence Puts Man In North America 50,000 Years Ago
ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2004)
Dr. Al Goodyear examining artifacts in the terrace. (Photo courtesy of University of South Carolina)
ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2004) — Radiocarbon tests of carbonized plant remains where artifacts were unearthed last May along the Savannah River in Allendale County by University of South Carolina archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear indicate that the sediments containing these artifacts are at least 50,000 years old, meaning that humans inhabited North American long before the last ice age.
The findings are significant because they suggest that humans inhabited North America well before the last ice age more than 20,000 years ago, a potentially explosive revelation in American archaeology.
Goodyear, who has garnered international attention for his discoveries of tools that pre-date what is believed to be humans' arrival in North America, announced the test results, which were done by the University of California at Irvine Laboratory, Wednesday (Nov .17).
"The dates could actually be older," Goodyear says. "Fifty-thousand should be a minimum age since there may be little detectable activity left."
The dawn of modern homo sapiens occurred in Africa between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago. Evidence of modern man's migration out of the African continent has been documented in Australia and Central Asia at 50,000 years and in Europe at 40,000 years. The fact that humans could have been in North America at or near the same time is expected to spark debate among archaeologists worldwide, raising new questions on the origin and migration of the human species.
"Topper is the oldest radiocarbon dated site in North America," Goodyear says. "However, other early sites in Brazil and Chile, as well as a site in Oklahoma also suggest that humans were in the Western Hemisphere as early as 30,000 years ago to perhaps 60,000."
In 1998, Goodyear, nationally known for his research on the ice age PaleoIndian cultures dug below the 13,000-year Clovis level at the Topper site and found unusual stone tools up to a meter deeper. The Topper excavation site is on the bank of the Savannah River on property owned by Clariant Corp., a chemical corporation headquartered near Basel, Switzerland. He recovered numerous stone tool artifacts in soils that were later dated by an outside team of geologists to be 16,000 years old.
For five years, Goodyear continued to add artifacts and evidence that a pre-Clovis people existed, slowly eroding the long-held theory by archaeologists that man arrived in North America around 13,000 years ago.
Last May, Goodyear dug even deeper to see whether man's existence extended further back in time. Using a backhoe and hand excavations, Goodyear's team dug through the Pleistocene terrace soil, some 4 meters below the ground surface. Goodyear found a number of artifacts similar to the pre-Clovis forms he has excavated in recent years.
Then on the last day of the last week of digging, Goodyear's team uncovered a black stain in the soil where artifacts lay, providing him the charcoal needed for radiocarbon dating. Dr. Tom Stafford of Stafford Laboratories in Boulder, Colo., came to Topper and collected charcoal samples for dating.
"Three radiocarbon dates were obtained from deep in the terrace at Topper with two dates of 50,300 and 51,700 on burnt plant remains. One modern date related to an intrusion," Stafford says. "The two 50,000 dates indicate that they are at least 50,300 years. The absolute age is not known."
The revelation of an even older date for Topper is expected to heighten speculation about when man got to the Western Hemisphere and add to the debate over other pre-Clovis sites in the Eastern United States such as Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pa., and Cactus Hill, Va.
In October 2005, archaeologists will meet in Columbia for a conference on Clovis and the study of earliest Americans. The conference will include a day trip to Topper, which is sure to dominate discussions and presentations at the international gathering. USC's Topper: A Timeline
May, 1998 — Dr. Al Goodyear and his team dig up to a meter below the Clovis level and encounter unusual stone tools up to two meters below surface.
May 1999 — Team of outside geologists led by Mike Waters, a researcher at Texas A&M, visit Topper site and propose a thorough geological study of locality.
May 2000 — Geology study done by consultants; ice age soil confirmed for pre-Clovis artifacts.
May 2001 — Geologists revisit Topper and obtain ancient plant remains deep down in the Pleistocene terrace. OSL (optically stimulated luminescence) dates on soils above ice age strata show pre-Clovis is at least older than 14,000.
May 2002 — Geologists find new profile showing ancient soil lying between Clovis and pre-Clovis, confirming the age of ice age soils between 16,000 - 20,000 years.
May 2003 — Archaeologists continue to excavate pre-Clovis artifacts above the terrace, as well as new, significant Clovis finds.
May 2004 — Using backhoe and hand excavations, Goodyear and his team dig deeper, down into the Pleistocene terrace, some 4 meters below the ground surface. Artifacts, similar to pre-Clovis forms excavated in previous years, recovered deep in the terrace. A black stain in the soil provides charcoal for radio carbon dating.
November 2004 — Radiocarbon dating report indicates that artifacts excavated from Pleistocene terrace in May were recovered from soil that dates some 50,000 years. The dates imply an even earlier arrival for humans in this hemisphere than previously believed, well before the last ice age. DR. ALBERT C. GOODYEAR III
University of South Carolina archaeologist Albert C. Goodyear joined the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology in1974 and has been associated with the Research Division since 1976. He is also the founder and director of the Allendale PaleoIndian Expedition, a program that involves members of the public in helping to excavate PaleoAmerican sites in the central Savannah River Valley of South Carolina.
Goodyear earned his bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of South Florida (1968), his master's degree in anthropology from the University of Arkansas and his doctorate in anthropology from Arizona State University (1976). He is a member of the Society for American Archaeology, the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, the Archaeological Society of South Carolina, and the Florida Anthropological Society. He has served twice as president of the Archaeological Society of South Carolina and is on the editorial board of The Florida Anthropologist and the North American Archaeologist.
Goodyear developed his interest in archaeology in the 1960s as a member of the F1orida Anthropological Society and through avocational experiences along Florida's central Gulf Coast. He wrote and published articles about sites and artifacts from that region for The Florida Anthropologist in the late 1960s. His master's thesis on the Brand site, a late PaleoIndian Dalton site in northeast Arkansas, was published in 1974 by the Arkansas Archeological Survey. At Arizona State University, he did field research on Desert Hohokam mountain hunting and gathering sites in the Lower Sonoran desert of Southern Arizona.
Goodyear, whose primary research interest has been America's earliest human inhabitants, has focused on the period of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition dating between 12,000 and 9,000 years ago. He has taken a geoarchaeological approach to the search for deeply buried early sites by teaming up with colleagues in geology and soil science. For the past 15 years he has studied early prehistoric sites in Allendale County, S.C., in the central Savannah River Valley. These are stone tool manufacturing sites related to the abundant chert resources that were quarried in this locality.
This work has been supported by the National Park Service, the National Geographic Society, the University of South Carolina, the Archaeological Research Trust (SCIAA), the Allendale Research Fund, the Elizabeth Stringfellow Endowment Fund, Sandoz Chemical Corp. and Clariant Corp., the present owner of the site.
Goodyear is the author of over 100 articles, reports and books and regularly presents public lectures and professional papers on his PaleoIndian discoveries in South Carolina.
It speaks of a particular region. Village-specific maternal mtDNA lineages.
Where Tuaregs have admixture. Due to Mamluk and Saqaliba females, which is recorded history vs the "possibilities"!
Further more, my thread, this thread is for collecting historical data on neolithic, palaeolithic and Holocene Africa. With focus on the Sahara and Sahel region.
LOL Lyinass busted again. Posts: 26513 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
^ Who = The people that overlap with much of that area.
Posts: 2463 | From: New Jersey USA | Registered: Dec 2007
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
quote:Originally posted by astenb:
Notice again who your wet saharans are:
A supplement to flesh out the rest of the continent. by James Dahl on SomaliNetPosts: 8179 | From: the Tekrur straddling Senegal & Mauritania | Registered: Dec 2011
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posted
^ I've been looking for that exact map for a long time since I first saw it several years ago! I believe it used to be posted in this forum also, but I haven't been able to find it since. Excellent job, Tukuler.
quote:Originally posted by astenb: Who = The people that overlap with much of that area.
That's what I thought you were saying, but I was asking if you could elaborate...
^ I take it you suggest the Nilo-Saharan speakers to be the original inhabitants of the ancient Central Saharan watershed(?).
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Archeologists say the findings mark a breakthrough that requires a rewriting of the history of Cameroon and the rest of Central Africa. Artifacts from hundreds of archeological sites from southern Chad to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Cameroon have turned up several surprises.
The research was conducted between 1999 and 2004 as construction was underway on the underground petroleum pipeline. The pipeline is sponsored by the World Bank and runs from Chad to the port of Kribi, Cameroon.
Researchers say at first, they set out merely to deepen their archeological knowledge of the areas straddling the pipeline trench, which is more than 1000 kilometers long.
But Professor Scott MacEachern says they found more. According to MacEachern a specialist in African Archeology at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, 472 archeological sites along the area in both Cameroon and Chad were found .some dating back to as long ago as 100,000 years. He says, “ we found sites where people had lived, where people had stored food, where people had made tools of iron. Before people in this area used iron, they made a whole variety of different kinds of tools including axes, arrow points, knives and fire scrapers from stone. These are artifacts from a site in southern Cameroon. It’s a small rock shelter. It has a history of about 5,000 years.”
Other artifacts excavated by the researchers include pottery and iron-smelting furnaces.
In late May, scores of researchers from around the world converged on the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde, for the International Conference on Rescue Archeology. At the meeting archeologists introduced the new findings in a book titled: “Kome-Kribi: Rescue Archeology Along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline; 1999-2004.
The researchers have urged governments in Central Africa to use the new documents to rewrite regional history. They say knowledge of a people’s cultural heritage and historical evolution is crucial in understanding their value and contribution to the world.
It adds a lot to our knowledge but also links different kinds of archeological culture according to Pierre de Maree a professor of anthropology and archeology with decades of fieldwork across Africa.
“ We’re starting to see what was going on about 3,000 years ago around Yaounde,” Maree explains.
“This is very interesting because what we see is more and more evidence of a very sophisticated culture of who was settling the forest 3000 years ago. When I started to work in Cameroon almost 40 years ago, people had the idea that Cameroonians were not from here. In fact, archeology proves that the present different groups have been living in the same place for thousands of years,” Maree says.
Officials at Cameroon’s Ministry of Culture pledge to preserve the research findings and act on recommendations of the archeologists. They include the creation of a national commission on cultural heritage, which would work to avoid the destruction of archeological sites during major infrastructure projects. Other recommendations are the construction of a national museum and the strengthening of laws on the conservation of cultural artifacts.
They are all in line with global objectives laid down at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro relating to the preservation of the heritage of human beings.
Raymond Asombang is a lecturer in the Department of Archeology at the University of Yaounde. He says for the time being, the relics will be preserved until government acts on the recommendations.
“We’re going to keep them in museums where people will come to see, to know that people lived in Cameroon at a certain era; that this is what they were able to achieve – because we need to know that in civilization, you are only adding your own contribution to the contributions of other people. So when we see what our ancestors have done, we will know what our contribution to that civilization will be,” Asombang says.
Archeologists say they will continue digging for clues to ancient Cameroon so today’s Africans can have an accurate understanding of the past.
posted
Elaborating is somewhat of a tall order. I can give you a summary. Basically I am saying many of the people that area in the Saharan....and really the whole sahara were Nilo-Saharan speakers...and possible the ancestors of Niger Kordofanian speakers. Or maybe Nilo-Saharans "birthed" Niger Kordofanians in an event that happened more out west later on.
In anycase these folks may have been back then and definitely are today autosomaly what can be described as Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Kordofanian and derivatives of such. These are SOME of the people that moved into the Nile Valley and were also pushed directly South with the drying of the Sahara....the live in the Sahel now.
This is why there is no surprise (to me) that Ancient Egyptian Autosomal dna has a similar affinity. With this argument we have to disregard what we expect people should look like based on what genetic profile they have/had. Many of these arguments are made here: http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=005881;p=1
I also believe that these folks were E1b1a, B2a, A3b2 and to a lesser extent M35. While M35 from the Horn was more around the Red Sea Coast the Nile Valley and sahara had the former lineages. M35 joins later....and R1b1 (V-88) migrants (assuming they come from west Asia) were absorbed into a mostly Nilo-Saharan speaking/ancestry people.
Looking at the "Ancient River Channels" on the map I am not surprised. In theory V-88 migrants can follow the coast directly into the Western Desert of Egypt where a V-88 signature (as well as b2a) is left in the Siwa. They can then go directly south following one of these channels into the Central Sahara Water Shed. Migrants from the horn enter...Language shift occurs.....Sahara dries out.....Some of these folks disperse BACK into a Nile valley, but also West and South.....Some stay around the lake Chad area where the V-88 founder effect/drift occurs. Of course V-88 is not Afroasiatic and has nothing to do with them as they concentrated and dispursed from the Red Sea....going north as proto Semites/Berber/Egyptians and south as Proto-Omotics/Cushitics. R-V88 is not in the horn obviously because it was not there and has nothing to do with Chadic that spread from that same area.
THis theory has kinks but This is my story and I am sticking to it.
Posts: 2463 | From: New Jersey USA | Registered: Dec 2007
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mtDNA sequences of Chadic-speaking populations from northern Cameroon suggest their affinities with eastern Africa
V. Černý†, M. Hájek†, R. Čmejla‡, J. Brůžek§ and R. Brdička‡
1Department of Anthropology & Environment, Institute of Archaeology, Czech Academy of Sciences, 118 01 Prague 1, Czech Republic
2Institute of Haematology and Blood Transfusion, 128 20 Prague 2, Czech Republic
3UMR 5199, PACEA, Laboratoire d’anthropologie des populations du passé, Université de Bordeaux I, 33405
Talence, France
Correspondence: Viktor, Černý, Department of Anthropology & Environment, Institute of Archaeology, Czech Academy of Sciences...
Background: No mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from Chadic-speaking peoples have yet been reported, even though these populations inhabit a vast territory from eastern Nigeria to central Chad. This paper deals with the mtDNA sequences of four Central Chadic populations (Hide, Kotoko, Mafa and Masa) from northern Cameroon, biological samples from which were collected during anthropological research in the area of their homeland.
Objective: The main goals of this article are to report new mtDNA sequences of Chadic-speaking populations, to analyse their genetic diversity and to establish their relationships within the peri-Saharan area in respect of geography and languages.
Subject and methods: The analyses are based on 104 mtDNA haplotypes, which can be localized into four different areas of northern Cameroon. Data collection was based on a strict geographical sampling strategy; the ethnonyms are retained here only for comparative purposes.
Results: None of the examined Chadic populations displays a departure from the normal mismatch distribution pattern, and the null hypothesis of the expansion event cannot be rejected. Analyses of molecular variance and FST genetic distances revealed that the Chadic-speaking groups of northern Cameroon share more similarities with the populations of the Upper and Middle Nile Valley and East Africa than with populations from Central Africa. The results show geographical clustering to be more important than the correlation of linguistic affiliations with molecular genetic data.
Conclusion: The observation that the Chadic group reveals some affinities to East Africans is extremely surprising giving the present-day geographical distance (around 2000 km) between them. These observations complement recent linguistic and archaeological findings, which consider the Chadic branch in the Afro-Asiatic phylum to be of eastern origin. A continuous, well-defined, geographic sampling strategy of the different genetic polymorphisms of the native populations of sub-Saharan Africa is further needed as the only way of understanding the differentiation of the mtDNA sequences at a micro-regional scale.
Posts: 22249 | From: Omni | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Signatures of the Preagricultural Peopling Processes in Sub-Saharan Africa as Revealed by the Phylogeography of Early Y Chromosome Lineages
Chiara Batini† et al.
1Institute of Evolutionary Biology,
Abstract
The study of Y chromosome variation has helped reconstruct demographic events associated with the spread of languages, agriculture, and pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa, but little attention has been given to the early history of the continent. In order to overcome this lack of knowledge, we carried out a phylogeographic analysis of haplogroups A and B in a broad data set of sub-Saharan populations. These two lineages are particularly suitable for this objective because they are the two most deeply rooted branches of the Y chromosome genealogy. Their distribution is almost exclusively restricted to sub-Saharan Africa where their frequency peaks at 65% in groups of foragers. The combined high-resolution single nucleotide polymorphism analysis with short tandem repeats variation of their subclades reveals strong geographic and population structure for both haplogroups. This has allowed us to identify specific lineages related to regional preagricultural dynamics in different areas of sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, we observed signatures of relatively recent contact, both among Pygmies and between them and Khoisan speaker groups from southern Africa, thus contributing to the understanding of the complex evolutionary relationships among African hunter-gatherers. Finally, by revising the phylogeography of the very early human Y chromosome lineages, we have obtained support for the role of southern Africa as a sink, rather than a source, of the first migrations of modern humans from eastern and central parts of the continent. These results open new perspectives on the early history of Homo sapiens in Africa, with particular attention to areas of the continent where human fossil remains and archaeological data are scant.
posted
Science. 2006 Aug 11;313(5788):803-7. Epub 2006 Jul 20.
Climate-controlled Holocene occupation in the Sahara: motor of Africa's evolution.
Kuper R, Kröpelin S.
Source
Collaborative Research Center 389 (ACACIA), University of Cologne, Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology, Africa Research Unit, Jennerstrasse 8, 50823 Köln, Germany.
Abstract
Radiocarbon data from 150 archaeological excavations in the now hyper-arid Eastern Sahara of Egypt, Sudan, Libya, and Chad reveal close links between climatic variations and prehistoric occupation during the past 12,000 years. Synoptic multiple-indicator views for major time slices demonstrate the transition from initial settlement after the sudden onset of humid conditions at 8500 B.C.E. to the exodus resulting from gradual desiccation since 5300 B.C.E. Southward shifting of the desert margin helped trigger the emergence of pharaonic civilization along the Nile, influenced the spread of pastoralism throughout the continent, and affects sub-Saharan Africa to the present day.
Posts: 22249 | From: Omni | Registered: Nov 2010
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Lakeside cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 years of holocene population and environmental change.
Sereno PC et al.
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Approximately two hundred human burials were discovered on the edge of a paleolake in Niger that provide a uniquely preserved record of human occupation in the Sahara during the Holocene ( approximately 8000 B.C.E. to the present). Called Gobero, this suite of closely spaced sites chronicles the rapid pace of biosocial change in the southern Sahara in response to severe climatic fluctuation.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:
Two main occupational phases are identified that correspond with humid intervals in the early and mid-Holocene, based on 78 direct AMS radiocarbon dates on human remains, fauna and artifacts, as well as 9 OSL dates on paleodune sand. The older occupants have craniofacial dimensions that demonstrate similarities with mid-Holocene occupants of the southern Sahara and Late Pleistocene to early Holocene inhabitants of the Maghreb. Their hyperflexed burials compose the earliest cemetery in the Sahara dating to approximately 7500 B.C.E. These early occupants abandon the area under arid conditions and, when humid conditions return approximately 4600 B.C.E., are replaced by a more gracile people with elaborated grave goods including animal bone and ivory ornaments.
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:
The principal significance of Gobero lies in its extraordinary human, faunal, and archaeological record, from which we conclude the following: The early Holocene occupants at Gobero (7700-6200 B.C.E.) were largely sedentary hunter-fisher-gatherers with lakeside funerary sites that include the earliest recorded cemetery in the Sahara.Principal components analysis of craniometric variables closely allies the early Holocene occupants at Gobero with a skeletally robust, trans-Saharan assemblage of Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene human populations from the Maghreb and southern Sahara.Gobero was abandoned during a period of severe aridification possibly as long as one millennium (6200-5200 B.C.E).More gracile humans arrived in the mid-Holocene (5200-2500 B.C.E.) employing a diversified subsistence economy based on clams, fish, and savanna vertebrates as well as some cattle husbandry.Population replacement after a harsh arid hiatus is the most likely explanation for the occupational sequence at Gobero.We are just beginning to understand the anatomical and cultural diversity that existed within the Sahara during the Holocene.
posted
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2011 Sep;146(1):49-61. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.21542.
Biogeochemical inferences of mobility of early Holocene fisher-foragers from the Southern Sahara Desert.
Stojanowski CM, Knudson KJ.
Source
Center for Bioarchaeological Research, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. christopher.stojanowski@asu.edu
Abstract
North Africa is increasingly seen as an important context for understanding modern human evolution and reconstructing biocultural adaptations. The Sahara, in particular, witnessed a fluorescence of hunter-gatherer settlement at the onset of the Holocene after an extended occupational hiatus. Subsequent subsistence changes through the Holocene are contrary to those documented in other areas where mobile foraging gave way to settled agricultural village life. In North Africa, extractive fishing and hunting was supplanted by cattle and caprine pastoralism under deteriorating climatic conditions. Therefore, the initial stage of food production in North Africa witnessed a likely increase in mobility. However, there are few studies of paleomobility in Early Holocene hunter-gatherer Saharan populations and the degree of mobility is generally assumed. Here, we present radiogenic strontium isotope ratios from Early Holocene fisher-forager peoples from the site of Gobero, central Niger, southern Sahara Desert. Data indicate a relatively homogeneous radiogenic strontium isotope signature for this hunter-gather population with limited variability exhibited throughout the life course or among different individuals. Although the overall signature was local, some variation in the radiogenic strontium isotope data likely reflects transhumance into the nearby Aïr Massif. Data from Gobero were significantly less variable than in other worldwide hunter-gatherer populations, including those thought to be fairly sedentary. Strontium data from Gobero were also significantly different from contemporaneous sites in southwestern Libya. These patterns are discussed with respect to archaeological models of community organization and technological evolution.
Posts: 22249 | From: Omni | Registered: Nov 2010
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Archaeology: a lion found in the Egyptian tomb of Maïa.
Callou C, Samzun A, Zivie A.
Source
MNHN et CNRS (UMR 5197), Paris, France.
Abstract
Lions are mentioned by classical scholars and in pharaonic inscriptions as being among the sacred animals that were bred and buried in the Nile valley. And yet no specimens have been found in Egypt - until the excavation of the Bubasteion necropolis at Saqqara. Here we describe a complete skeleton, once a mummy, of a male lion (Panthera leo) that was discovered there, buried among the cats' catacombs created during the last centuries bc and occupying the much older tomb of Maïa, wet-nurse to the king Tutankhamun (from the New Kingdom, fourteenth century bc). This important find at a site that was dedicated to the feline goddess Bastet (also known as Bubastis) confirms the status of the lion as a sacred animal during the Late and Greek periods.
Posts: 22249 | From: Omni | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Radiol Med. 2008 Aug;113(5):615-26. Epub 2008 Jun 3.
Notes on the history of the radiological study of Egyptian mummies: from X-rays to new imaging techniques.
Cosmacini P, Piacentini P.
Abstract
A few centuries after the practice of mummification was finally abolished in the seventh century A.D., mummies began to capture the collective imagination, exerting a mysterious fascination that continues to this day. From the beginning, the radiological study of Egyptian mummies permitted the collection not only of medical data but also of anthropological and archaeological evidence. The first radiological study of an Egyptian mummy was performed by Flinders Petrie shortly after the discovery of X-rays in 1895, and since then, radiology has never stopped investigating these special patients. By the end of the 1970s, computed tomography (CT) scanning permitted more in-depth studies to be carried out without requiring the mummies to be removed from their cartonnage. CT images can be used to obtain a three-dimensional reconstruction of the mummy that provides important new information, in part thanks to the virtual endoscopy technique known as "fly through". Moreover, starting from CT data and using sophisticated graphics software, one can reconstruct an image of the face of the mummified individual at the time of his or her death. The history of imaging, from its origins until now, from the simplest to the most sophisticated technique, allows us to appreciate why these studies have been, and still are, fundamental in the study of Egyptian mummies. PMID: 18523844
Posts: 22249 | From: Omni | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
^ Okay TP. I fail to see how the last two posts on the lions and x-ray mummies have to do with the topic but whatever.
quote:Originally posted by astenb: Elaborating is somewhat of a tall order. I can give you a summary. Basically I am saying many of the people that area in the Saharan....and really the whole sahara were Nilo-Saharan speakers...and possible the ancestors of Niger Kordofanian speakers. Or maybe Nilo-Saharans "birthed" Niger Kordofanians in an event that happened more out west later on.
In anycase these folks may have been back then and definitely are today autosomaly what can be described as Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Kordofanian and derivatives of such. These are SOME of the people that moved into the Nile Valley and were also pushed directly South with the drying of the Sahara....the live in the Sahel now.
This is why there is no surprise (to me) that Ancient Egyptian Autosomal dna has a similar affinity. With this argument we have to disregard what we expect people should look like based on what genetic profile they have/had. Many of these arguments are made here: http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=005881;p=1
No, you pretty much explained yourself well. I agree with what you're saying about the Nilo-Saharans. Though I should point out Niger-Kordofanian is an entirely different phylum that may share common ancestry with Nilo-Saharan based on certain features, though the two have diverged much.
quote:I also believe that these folks were E1b1a, B2a, A3b2 and to a lesser extent M35. While M35 from the Horn was more around the Red Sea Coast the Nile Valley and sahara had the former lineages. M35 joins later....and R1b1 (V-88) migrants (assuming they come from west Asia) were absorbed into a mostly Nilo-Saharan speaking/ancestry people.
Looking at the "Ancient River Channels" on the map I am not surprised. In theory V-88 migrants can follow the coast directly into the Western Desert of Egypt where a V-88 signature (as well as b2a) is left in the Siwa. They can then go directly south following one of these channels into the Central Sahara Water Shed. Migrants from the horn enter...Language shift occurs.....Sahara dries out.....Some of these folks disperse BACK into a Nile valley, but also West and South.....Some stay around the lake Chad area where the V-88 founder effect/drift occurs. Of course V-88 is not Afroasiatic and has nothing to do with them as they concentrated and dispursed from the Red Sea....going north as proto Semites/Berber/Egyptians and south as Proto-Omotics/Cushitics. R-V88 is not in the horn obviously because it was not there and has nothing to do with Chadic that spread from that same area.
THis theory has kinks but This is my story and I am sticking to it.
You're theory makes a hell of a lot more sense than some Euronuts who try to explain the presence of such lineages as being due to a "black slave trade". Posts: 26513 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Okay TP. I fail to see how the last two posts on the lions and x-ray mummies have to do with the topic but whatever.
They do not deal with the topic directly.
But I did not want to withhold this information.
Posts: 22249 | From: Omni | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Abstract: This paper reports the combined preliminary results of the Italian Mission to Kassala and the joint University of Khartoum/Southern Methodist University Butana Project. Both groups have been carrying out extensive survey and test excavations in the Southern Atbai of the East Central Sudan, between the Atbara and Gash Rivers. This work has led to the recognition of a previously unknown culture area and ceramic tradition which spans about 5000 years and, at its peak, probably covered about 100,000 sq. km east of the Nile. This ceramic tradition, the Atbai Tradition, is associated with the development of large villages (over 10 ha) during the 4th millennium bc. /// Le présent article rapporte les résultats préliminaires combinés de la Mission italienne à Kassala et du projet Butana entrepris en commun par les universités de Khartoum et Southern Methodist. Ces deux groupes ont réalisé des reconnaissances archéologiques extensives et des sondages dans le sud de l'Atbai, dans la partie centrale orientale du Soudan, entre les rivières Atbara et Gash. Leur travail a mené à la reconnaissance d'une civilisation et d'une tradition céramique auparavant inconnues qui durèrent quelque 5000 ans et qui couvraient à leur apogée environ 100,000 km² à l'est du Nil. Cette tradition céramique, la tradition Atbai, est associée au développement des grands villages (de plus de 10 ha) au cours du $4^{{\rm e}}$ millénaire avant notre ère.
posted
The ruins were discovered deep in the desert of Western Sahara
The remains of a prehistoric town dating back 15,000 years have been discovered in the Moroccan-administered territory of Western Sahara.
The Moroccan state media on Thursday said a team of scientists stumbled across the sand-covered ruins of the town Arghilas, deep in the desert of Western Sahara.
The remains of a place of worship, houses and a necropolis, as well as columns and rock engravings depicting animals, were found at the site near the northeastern town of Aousserd.
Significant find
The isolated area is known to be rich in prehistoric rock engravings, but experts said the discovery could be significant if proven that the ruins were of Berber origin as this civilisation is believed to date back only about 9000 years.
"It appears that scientists have come up with the 15,000-year estimate judging by the style of engravings and the theme of the drawings," Mustafa Ouachi, a Rabat-based Berber historian said.
Berbers are the original inhabitants of North Africa before Arabs came to spread Islam in the seventh century.
The population of Western Sahara, seized by Morocco in 1975 when former colonial power Spain pulled out, is mostly of Berber and Arab descent.
quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol: The ruins were discovered deep in the desert of Western Sahara
The remains of a prehistoric town dating back 15,000 years have been discovered in the Moroccan-administered territory of Western Sahara.
The Moroccan state media on Thursday said a team of scientists stumbled across the sand-covered ruins of the town Arghilas, deep in the desert of Western Sahara.
The remains of a place of worship, houses and a necropolis, as well as columns and rock engravings depicting animals, were found at the site near the northeastern town of Aousserd.
Significant find
The isolated area is known to be rich in prehistoric rock engravings, but experts said the discovery could be significant if proven that the ruins were of Berber origin as this civilisation is believed to date back only about 9000 years.
"It appears that scientists have come up with the 15,000-year estimate judging by the style of engravings and the theme of the drawings," Mustafa Ouachi, a Rabat-based Berber historian said.
Berbers are the original inhabitants of North Africa before Arabs came to spread Islam in the seventh century.
The population of Western Sahara, seized by Morocco in 1975 when former colonial power Spain pulled out, is mostly of Berber and Arab descent.
And as was explained before when this was brought up in another thread, how could the builders of this town be 'Berber' when at that time period Proto-Afroasiatic had just begun to diverge and proto-Berber didn't even exist?
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