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Ase
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Any images that demonstrate what Africa looked like before and during the expansion of the Sahara?
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alTakruri
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With these maps climate and geography show when and
where spread and migration was facile or restrictive for
gene flow.

1000 miles of desert buffered the Maghreb proper from all
the rest of Africa in the Last Glacial Arid Maximum (LGAM).

Communication to or from Libya and Egypt via the Mediterranean
coast wasn't easy. Likewise for the Atlantic coast south all the way
to Guinea. The Maghreb had a tiny strip of scrubland at the very
north with semi-desert conditions from there to the Atlas having
extreme desert at its southern foot.

Ocean heights were lower in the LGAM so Iberia, and Pantelleria
on to Sicily, were easier to get to compared to south or eastward
flow. No one had to wait for glaciers to melt to go back and forth
across the straits of Gibraltar thus no 'end of LGM refugium exit'
to the Maghreb which was readily accessible throughout the entire
LGM.

Any African looks, cultures, and genes in LGAM Maghreb were
there since before 20kya, including Kefi's overlooked L mtDNA
clades. By 11K scrub replaced Maghreb's semi-desert while earlier
scrublands forested but desert extremes still waited beyond.


Zoom out until you see 3 in a row
_ the early Holocene ________________________________ just before the Younger Dryas ___________________ full glacial arid conditions
 -  -  -

_the mid Holocene __________________________________ the early-to-mid Holocene_______________________ the early Holocene
 -  -  -

As the Holocene starts and at the end of Maurusian times
folk were very easily following fertile landscapes all over
Africa. Scrubland spread a little south and eastward across
the farther north of Libya and Egypt while south of that
whole swath were grasslands down to 28° N. Some 2000 years
later the small band of semi-desert disappeared when northern
and southern grasslands merged and no place in Africa was
restrictive only the Namibian desert strip.

And so it would stay until 5K when the Green Sahara civs
were shutdown by receding monsoons and folk following
fertile landscape radiated from the Sahara except for the
ones who stayed.

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Tukuler
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Zoom out until you see 3 in a row

__ Green Sahara era________________________________ the Present ___________________________________ LGM arid maximum
 -  -  -

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Tukuler
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The maps help picture climate affected regions' drifts, bottlenecks, and expansions.

Post by A-RTU inspiring the old 'Following Fertile Landscapes' thread where these last few posts came from

quote:
Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

Ancient humans 'followed rains'
By Helen Briggs
Science reporter, BBC News


Prehistoric humans roamed the world's largest desert for some 5,000 years, archaeologists have revealed.

The Eastern Sahara of Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad was home to nomadic people who followed rains that turned the desert into grassland.
When the landscape dried up about 7,000 years ago, there was a mass exodus to the Nile and other parts of Africa.
The close link between human settlement and climate has lessons for today, researchers report in Science.
"Even modern day conflicts such as Dafur are caused by environmental degradation as it has been in the past,"
Dr Stefan Kropelin of the University of Cologne, Germany, told the BBC News website.

"The basic struggle for food, water and pasture is still a big problem in the Sahara zone.
This process started thousands of years ago and has a long tradition."


Jigsaw puzzle

The Eastern Sahara, which covers more than 2 million sq km, an area the size of Western Europe,
is now almost uninhabited by people or animals, providing a unique window into the past. Dr Kropelin
and colleague Dr Rudolph Kuper pieced together the 10,000-year jigsaw of human migration and settlement;
studying more than 100 archaeological sites over the course of 30 years.

In the largest study of its kind, they built up a detailed picture of human evolution in the world's largest
desert. They found that far from the inhospitable climate of today, the area was once semi-humid.

Between about 14,000 and 13,000 years ago, the area was very dry. But a drastic switch in environmental
conditions some 10,500 years ago brought rain and monsoon-like conditions. Nomadic human settlers
moved in from the south, taking up residence beside rivers and lakes. They were hunter-gatherers at first,
living off plants and wild game. Eventually they became more settled, domesticating cattle for the first time,
and making intricate pottery.


Neolithic farmers

Humid conditions prevailed until about 6,000 years ago, when the Sahara abruptly dried out. There was then
a gradual exodus of people to the Nile Valley and other parts of the African continent.



“ The domestication of cattle was invented in the Sahara in the humid phase and was then slowly pushed over the rest of Africa ”
Dr Stefan Kropelin of the University of Cologne

"The Nile Valley was almost devoid of settlement until about exactly the time that the Egyptian Sahara was
so dry people could not live there anymore," Dr Kropelin told the BBC News website. "People preferred to
live on savannah land. Only when this wasn't possible they migrated towards southern Sudan and the Nile.
"They brought all their know-how to the rest of the continent - the domestication of cattle was invented in
the Sahara in the humid phase and was then slowly pushed over the rest of Africa. "This Neolithic way of life,
which still is a way of life in a sense; preservation of food for the dry season and many other such cultural
elements, was introduced to central and southern Africa from the Sahara."


'Motor of evolution'

Dr Kuper said the distribution of people and languages, which is so politically important today, has its roots
in the desiccation of the Sahara
. The switch in environmental conditions acted as a "motor of Africa's evolution," he said.
"It happened during these 5,000 years of the savannah that people changed from hunter-gathers to cattle keepers," he said.
"This important step in human history has been made for the first time in the African Sahara."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5192410.stm


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Tukuler
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You can mix 'em & match 'em and arange them to illustrate whatever.

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DD'eDeN
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The Shahra of Oman Dhofar mountains raise cattle, keep them in dome huts fumigated with frankincense and seasonally in caves, per the book The road to Ubar, it is the only place in the Arabian peninsula where cattle raising has been continuous for many thousands of years. The map per 5ka seems to show grasslands there, but arid-woodland-savanna thrives there.

--------------------
xyambuatlaya

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