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Originally posted by Doug M:

I have that program and I must say watch your step.
While they do admit the presence of mummification in Africa prior to Egypt, they at the same time make comments such as "the rock art of the sahara obviously represents NORTHERN peoples who entered the sahara"...... please.

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Unfortunately I haven't even seen the program yet, but what exactly do they mean by "northern"?! I maybe asking an undersatingly rhetorical question, but if by "northern" they mean by what anthropologists of the 'old days' used as a nickname for "caucasoid", then these folks are seriously desperate!

From what I understand, almost no anthropologists today speak of "caucasoids" in North Africa, at least by Neolithic times!!

There are fossil remains in the area described as "Proto-Mediterranean" but only in the sense of certain East Africans found in the Horn.

Exactly, WHAT rock paintings made them come to the conclusion of a "northern" people, anyway?!!

And who was the Italian anthropologist in the show anyway? I don't think it was Cavelli Sforza, especially since Sforza has recently come to his senses and admit the presence of blacks in North Africa since the Neolithic.

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Likewise the above mention of the antiquity of Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is NOT more ancient than Egypt or other civilizations in Africa. Therefore, it is NOT the standard bearer for the FIRST civilization. Therefore, we MUST be careful when viewing this stuff. Also, this was NOT the only mummy found.

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The whole mention of Mesopotamia is a joke to me. Egypt is far older than Mesopotamia with cultural complexes going back further than those found in the Near East proper. In fact thare are even urban communities found further up the Nile in Nubia that are much older than anything in Mesopotamia!

Judging by these claims, I believe that Discovery Channel did a cheap job in hiring the 'experts' for this project and these so-called experts obviously did a shoddy job to say the least.

Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Supercar:
Doug makes a good point about what constitutes a more ancient culture; Kemet was the world's first nation state, a centralized polity that spans a wide region [having brought different polities under a single polity], to extent of the abundance of evidence. No such state existed in Mesopotamia until much later. What Eurocentrist scholars do, is simple "artificially" unify the disparate complexes in the Levant, and impart the impression that "Mesopotamia" was some well-organized centralized polity from the onset. I guess, if one were to "artificially" unit all early separate predynastic Nile Valley polities from "Meroitic" regions, Kerma, all the way to the coast of Lower Egypt, even then, "Mesopotamia" would still not match up to the antiquity of the "combined" cultural complexes documented in the region.

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As far as Uan Muhuggiag or "Black Mummy" is concerned, maybe if a facial reconstruction of it was done, with an attempt to give it an awkward "Nordic" appearance, and referred to as "Caucasoid" Black Mummy, the ensuing controversy would no doubt enhance the media/internet "sensation" about it.

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Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:

So you agree with Hore's opinion that racial bias is that great-- that if the mummy were not 'black' he would recieve greater fame and recognition??...

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Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
^^I see. But in any case, if people are so fascinated with mummies and with Egypt then why isn't Uan getting that much attetion as the world's earliest mummy and representitive of a culture that introduced the custom of mummification to Egypt?!...

Uan is one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time yet he treated like 2nd class to the likes of Tut even though Tut's mummy is a result of the influence of Uan's people.

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I wouldn't mind giving you a straight up answer, but I figure you know what's up.

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
^^Regardless, I still don't understand why the mummy was labeled black when it looke NO DIFFERENT from Egyptian mummies in terms of features.

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Originally posted by Djehuti:

No need to be paranoid or smartass about it. I never disagreed with Hiernaux, and on the contrary I myself have cited that piece on many occasions.

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Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Explorateur:

No, I wouldn't want that; we have an ASS already, i.e. you, paranoid about a mere call for substantian of this: "it looke NO DIFFERENT from Egyptian mummies in terms of features - Djehuti.

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One ASS is too many. You ought to stop the paranoia of turning each and any geniune desire to learn the source(s) of your claim as something cynical or someone out to 'gatch ya'; perhaps akoben and the like following you around has really focked your mind up, and got the better of you. You need a chill pill, buay!

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Gaygoyle9<--- wrote:

Djehuti is one of the most unscholarly and anti-intellectual posters to have ever post here outside of his fellow racists from the race loon forums.

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He has absolutely no ability to provide evidence or facts for his claims, which in turn means that his claims are nothing more than opinions and wishful thinking.

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This forum cannot afford his type of bankrupt anti-intellectual non-scholarship posts.

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Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Johnny Blaze:

I finally seen this on National Geographic channel, and I must say, I don't get why they're sooo surprised that a so-called "BLACK MUMMY" found in Northern Africa, would be such a SHOCK. I mean it's in Africa. Now if they'd found an African in my country (USA) older then the oldest Africans found in the Mexico early 1500's, then that would be an interesting story.

And how can they tell features from a small child anyway, I thought our features didn't kick in, until we're adolescents. The Italian dude seemed really sincere, and honest, nothing like that katt Hawass. The only thing that bothered me is how he refers to the mummy as "the black mummy"....and we the public are suppose to trust the so-called scientist, please.

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Originally posted by osirion:

Anyone know where I get this vid on the Net?

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Originally posted by Obenga:

The mummy was significantly prognathic, they had no doubts it was "Negroid".

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Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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The prehistory of Western Sahara in a regional context: the archaeology of the "free zone"
by
Brooks, Nick
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Saharan Studies Programme and School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
Coauthors: Di Lernia, Savino ((Department of Scienze Storiche, Archeologiche, e Antropologiche dell’Antichità, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Via Palestro 63, 00185 – Rome, Italy) and Drake, Nick (Department of Geography, King’s College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS).

The disputed territory of Western Sahara has long been inaccessible to research as a result of the military and political conflict between Morocco, which occupies some eighty per cent of the territory, and the Frente Polisario, the Algeria-based Western Saharan independence movement. This paper presents the findings of a two-week reconnaissance survey of the archaeology and environment of the Northern Sector of the Polisario-controlled zone of Western Sahara (Figure 1), which took place in September and October 2002, and comprised researchers from the UK and Italy. The results of the survey are described within the context of their relevance to the archaeology and environmental history of the wider Saharan region, after a consideration of the general environmental history of he Sahara as a whole. Fig. 1: Study area of the 2002 survey. The cultural history of the Sahara is intimately related to the existence of a succession of humid and arid episodes, which in turn are associated with periods of global warming and cooling respectively. Evidence from throughout the Sahara indicates that the region experienced a cool, dry and windy climate during the last glacial period, followed by a wetter climate with the onset of the current interglacial, with humid conditions being fully established by around 10,000 years BP, ***when we see the first evidence of a reoccupation of parts of the central Sahara by hunter gathers, most likely originating from sub-Saharan Africa*** (Cremaschi and Di Lernia, 1998; Goudie, 1992; Phillipson, 1993; Ritchie, 1994; Roberts, 1998). The cycle of glacial desiccation followed by interglacial greening is believed to be driven predominantly by variations in northern hemisphere insolation resulting from changes in the tilt of the Earth’s axis associated with the precessional cycle (Roberts, 1998). Stronger insolation leads to increase heating of the North African subcontinent, intensifying the African Monsoon, which penetrates deep into the Sahara. Superimposed on the interglacial humid episodes are brief periods of aridity lasting from decades to centuries, broadly coincident with cold events in the Atlantic that appear to be manifestations of internal climate variability that (Alley et al. 1997; Bond et al., 1997; Cremaschi et al., 2001, 2002; Di Lernia and Palombini, 2002). In the early Holocene, when northern hemisphere summer insolation was strong, these arid episodes were followed by recovery; however, the onset of aridity around 5000 years BP was followed by a long-term desiccation throughout the Sahara (Cremaschi, 1998; Jolly et al. 1998; Lioubimsteva 1995). While there is a high degree of homogeneity in the Saharan palaeoclimatic record on multi-millennial timescales (Jolly et al., 1998; Lézine, 1989; Petit-Maire et al., 1997), the timings of arid episodes and the onset of environmental desiccation are not identical at all locations (Alley et al., 1997; Gasse and van Campo, 1994; Goodfriend, 1991; Smith, 1998). This may be explained by a combination of geographical differences in the nature of the principal rain-bearing systems (particularly at the extremities of the Sahara), and the mediation of climate change impacts by local surface environments. The impacts of the final climatic desiccation of the Sahara on human populations would have been strongly mediated by the rapidity and nature of the corresponding environmental desiccation. Where surface water disappeared rapidly, human populations would have been forced to migrate to wetter areas; however, in certain areas populations undertook local adaptation to gradual desiccation by exploiting refugia in which water remained as a consequence of the near-surface geology or occasional rainfall resulting from local topography (Di Lernia et al., 2002; Mattingly et al., 2003). The area investigated during the 2002 field survey in Western Sahara is situated between the present day zones of westerly Atlantic rain-bearing systems to the northwest and monsoonal rainfall to the south, and is characterised by numerous ephemeral river channels. While further research is necessary to develop a detailed environmental chronology for the study area, two radiocarbon dates indicate wetter conditions in the region in the seventh millennium BP, with water present in one of the now-dry lakes in the fifth millennium BP (Brooks et al., 2003). These preliminary results are broadly consistent with data from the central Sahara indicating an early-middle Holocene humid episode followed by middle-late Holocene desiccation (Petit-Maire et al., 1997). Archaeological materials also indicate significant commonality with other Saharan regions. Acheulian and Aterian materials, and a single trihedral point, indicate that the study area was occupied in the Pleistocene, although the density of materials suggests that occupation may have been in the form of small, transient groups. The density of burial sites indicates a much larger population in the Holocene, and Holocene microlithic materials were also recorded. In particular, funerary monuments representing a wide range of typologies reflect the material culture of the central Sahara. Conical tumuli, platform burials and a V-type monument represent structures similar to those found in other Saharan regions and associated with human burials, appearing in sixth millennium BP onwards in northeast Niger and southwest Libya (Sivilli, 2002). In the latter area a shift in emphasis from faunal to human burials, complete by the early fifth millennium BP, has been interpreted by Di Lernia and Manzi (2002) as being associated with a changes in social organisation that occurred at a time of increasing aridity. While further research is required in order to place the funerary monuments of Western Sahara in their chronological context, we can postulate a similar process as a hypothesis to be tested, based on the high density of burial sites recorded in the 2002 survey. Fig. 2: Megaliths associated with tumulus burial (to right of frame), north of Tifariti (Fig. 1). A monument consisting of sixty five stelae was also of great interest; precise alignments north and east, a division of the area covered into separate units, and a deliberate scattering of quartzite inside the structure, are suggestive of an astronomical function associated with funerary rituals. Stelae are also associated with a number of burial sites, again suggesting dual funerary and astronomical functions (Figure 2). Further similarities with other Saharan regions are evident in the rock art recorded in the study area, although local stylistic developments are also apparent. Carvings of wild fauna at the site of Sluguilla resemble the Tazina style found in Algeria, Libya and Morocco (Pichler and Rodrigue, 2003), although examples of elephant and rhinoceros in a naturalistic style reminiscent of engravings from the central Sahara believed to date from the early Holocene are also present. The situation at Sluguilla is unusual in that carvings are located on isolated, largely horizontal limestone slabs exposed to the elements (Figure 3). Fig. 3: Example of engravings at Sluguilla, near the border with Algeria. The combination of familiar Saharan subjects and local stylistic innovation is also apparent at the previously recorded sites of Erqeiz and Irghayra (Soler et al, 1999) and the newly identified site of Bou Dheir (Brooks et al, 2003). These sites are all located along elevated areas overlooking wide plains, in contrast to Sluguilla, and are associated with paintings rather than carvings. Erqeiz and Bou Dheir are notable for their representations of large wild fauna, familiar from the central Sahara in the form of engravings (Dupuy, 1999, Jelínek, 2000; Phillipson, 1993). At Rekeiz an elephant and rhinoceros are depicted on the same vertical rock face in a location some distance from the main concentrations of paintings, while an elephant and a buffalo are recorded at Bou Dheir in close proximity to representations of human figures, hand prints, cattle, gazelle and a large painting that may be a wild or domesticated ovicaprid. Giraffe are represented in paintings at Bou Dheir and Rekeiz, and in engravings at Sluguilla, indicating that they occupied an important role in the lives of the prehistoric peoples of the region, as they did throughout the Sahara (Dupuy, 1999; van Hoek, 2003). Cattle feature prominently in the rock art of the Northern Sector, particularly at Erqueiz. They are also represented at Bou Dheir, in a particularly distinctive painted style. A remarkable isolated engraving of a cow with a smaller animal depicted inside the stomach, presumably an infant or unborn calf, was recorded on a rock at the edge of a plateau on which were located a number of funerary monuments, including platform and corbeille structures (Figure 4). Fig. 4: Representation of pregnant cow (?) in far north of study area (Wadi Tirnit). These images illustrate that cattle were crucial to the lives of the prehistoric peoples of Western Sahara, as they were throughout the Sahara (e.g. Di Lernia and Palombini, 2002; Holl and Dueppen, 1999). Ovicaprids are also a common theme in the rock paintings of the study area, although it is difficult to determine whether these images represent domestic or wild animals. At Rekeiz and Irghrayra sheep or goats are depicted in long lines consisting of many animals. The dominant painted panel at Bou Dheir is centred on a large image of an animal of uncertain type, possibly an ovicaprid or a wild herbivore, but clearly of great significance to the artist or artists (Figure 5). Human figures are represented only in the painted imagery recorded to date; they are absent from the recorded engravings of Sluguilla, although their presence at unrecorded sites cannot be discounted. Some of the figures at Bou Dheir are represented with distinctive crests or headdresses reminiscent of painted figures of Mediterranean or Near Eastern appearance in the central Sahara, while representations at Erqueiz are very different in appearance, suggesting at least two different population groups. Despite the large distances involved, it appears that the far west of the Sahara around the latitude of 25° N was far from isolated from the remainder of the greater Saharan region. The prehistoric inhabitants of Western Sahara hunted and recorded the same animals as their counterparts in central and eastern regions, and shared the same technologies. Fig. 5: Principal painted recess at the Bou Dheir rock shelter. As throughout the Sahara, they responded to the same pressures of climatic and environmental desiccation; the location of hearths within wide river channels suggests a congregation around diminishing water resources, while the depiction of a wide variety of more humid-climate fauna indicate Holocene desiccation following a humid phase. However, many questions remain regarding the chronology of human occupation and the processes of adaptation and cultural evolution. For example, was the region reoccupied at the same time as the recolonisation of the central Sahara, or did transient occupation continue through the arid period that preceded the Holocene? Did changes in funerary practices evolve in situ as societies became more stratified during the final period of desiccation, or were new practices introduced fully formed by migrants from other regions where desiccation was more advanced? How and when were cattle introduced to the region? In what directions did migration occur throughout the Holocene? These questions can only be answered by further extensive research in the region, which is contingent on a continued ceasefire between the parties to the conflict, and ultimately on its peaceful and just resolution.

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http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~e118/publications/Brooks-BeyondCollapse-abs.pdf

Beyond collapse: the role of climatic desiccation in the emergence of
complex societies in the middle Holocene
Nick Brooks
Saharan Studies Programme, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and School of Environmental
Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK. Email: nick.brooks@uea.ac.uk.
Extended Abstract
Abrupt climate change is often invoked as a trigger for the collapse of civilisations. The fall of the
Akkadian Empire and the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom around 4200 years before present (BP) have
both been attributed to climatic change resulting in regional desiccation (Cullen et al., 2000; Hassan, 1997;
Weiss, 1997). However, there is widespread evidence that climatic and environmental stress played a major
role in the emergence of early civilisations, and that aridification in particular acted as a trigger for
increased social complexity associated with urbanisation and state formation. This paper argues that the
highly urbanised, state-level societies of the sub-tropical arid belt that emerged in the middle Holocene did
so as a result of a process of adaptation to water scarcity.
Evidence that the desert belt of the northern hemisphere experienced wetter conditions in the past is
widespread, but is particularly rich in the Sahara (Jolly, 1998; Kutzback and Liu, 1997; Lezine, 1989;
Lioubimsteva, 1995; Maley, 1977). Dating of archaeological sites, lake sediments and faunal remains
indicates that wet conditions were established in the Sahara by around 10,000 BP after a long period of
aridity associated with the last glacial period (Goudie, 1992, Ritchie, 1994; Roberts, 1998). This humid
phase was associated with an intensification of the African Monsoon caused by increased northern
hemisphere summer insolation, resulting in its penetration far north of its current northernmost position
(Claussen et al., 1999, 2003; Ganopolski et al., 1998; Tuenter et al., 2003). The early Holocene humid
phase was, however, punctuated by episodes of aridity that appear to have coincided with North Atlantic
cooling events evident from ice-rafted debris and Greenland ice-core records (Alley et al. 1997; Bond et al.,
1997; Cremaschi et al., 2001, 2002; Di Lernia and Palombini, 2002; Goodfriend, 1991; Smith, 1998; Guo
et al., 2000). While summer insolation remained strong, the Saharan region recovered from these arid
interruptions, and humid conditions were re-established. However, there is evidence that recovery was at
best partial in the eastern Sahara after an arid event around 6000 BP (Di Lernia and Palombini, 2002;
Goodfriend, 1991; Smith, 1998), and the entire Sahara had entered a period of desiccation by around 5000
BP (Cremaschi, 1998; Grandi et al. 1999; Jolly et al. 1998; Lioubimsteva 1995). The process of
environmental desiccation that followed the southward retreat of the monsoon was mediated by geography;
while water persisted at or near the surface in some locations long after the cessation of significant rainfall,
hyper-arid surface conditions were established rapidly in other Saharan regions (Cremaschi and Di Lernia,
1998).
It has been noted that the rise of Dynastic civilisation in Egypt coincided with the onset of widespread
Saharan desiccation, and a number of authors have suggested that increased social complexity in the Nile
Valley may have been precipitated by desertification in the eastern Sahara. Adams and Cialowicz (1997, p
57) state that the formation of the pharaonic state was the result of the expansion of the Naqada culture of
Upper Egypt and was “encouraged by the pressure of a greater population in the south, where climatic
change in the late Predynastic had reduced winter rainfall and husbandry in the deserts and brought about a
reliance of agriculture in natural basins.” This view is supported by Wilkinson (2003), who argues that
populations that had previously practiced seasonal migration between the Nile Valley and the summer
savannah in what is now Egypt’s Eastern Desert were forced to settle permanently in the Nile Valley as a
result of the cessation of summer rainfall. Malville et al. (1998, p 448) suggest that “an exodus from the
Nubian Desert at ~4,800 [uncalibrated radiocarbon] years BP may have stimulated social differentiation
and cultural complexity in pre-dynastic Upper Egypt.”
It is plausible that the necessity to settle permanently in the Nile Valley, coupled with a likely
increase in population due to immigration resulting from the desiccation of the surrounding Saharan
2
regions, stimulated both technological innovation and further social stratification. Current models of
Egyptian state formation suggest that the northward expansion that led to unification followed a period in
which competing “proto-state entities” coalesced in Upper Egypt in the late sixth millennium BP (Maisels,
1999). It is tempting to interpret such a process within a context of both cooperation (between the
constituent elements of such entities) and conflict (between entities) driven by the need for collective
security in a time of instability and dwindling resources. Migrant groups arriving in the Nile Valley are
likely either to have come into conflict with existing populations or to have formed disadvantaged groups,
either of which would have increased social stratification. Groups of lower status would have provided a
pool of labour which during the Early Dynastic period could have been exploited for the monumental
building projects that were a prominent feature of Egyptian society.
The cultural and environmental trajectories of Mesopotamia are less well understood and arguably
more complex than those of Egypt. The courses of the Tigris and Euphrates appear to have been more
variable than that of the Nile, and shifts in river courses had dramatic impacts on local environments,
meaning that caution must be exercised in palaeo-environmental interpretation (Maisels, 1999; Matthews,
2003). Nonetheless, a combination of palaeo-environmental evidence and modelling studies reviewed
briefly by Algaze (1991) indicate that parts of southern Mesopotamia underwent a process of aridification
in the middle and late sixth millennium BP, the formative period of Mesopotamian civilisation
characterised by the Uruk culture. A combination of changes in river courses and increasing aridity has
been postulated by Algaze (2001) as a driver of increasing social complexity, stimulating social instability,
regional competition and conflict, and population agglomeration. While palaeoclimatic proxies are
unavailable at present for the southern Mesopotamian alluvial lowlands, evidence from surrounding regions
suggest a precipitation minimum from around 5200-4900 BP (Butzer, 1995, cited in Pollock, 1999),
coinciding with the transitional Jemdet Nasr period. During this period the Uruk culture collapsed, giving
way to “an extended period of regionalism” (Matthews, 2003, pp 118-119). The principal Uruk city of
Uruk-Warka nonetheless grew dramatically, and “The region around Uruk-Warka played host to a sudden
tenfold increase in settlement density at about 3200 BC, coupled with the development of a four-tiered
hierarchy of settlement, all made possible by increased availability of dry and very fertile land newly freed
from constant inundation by an ameliorating [sic] climate” (Matthews, 2003, p110, citing Nissen, 1988 pp
66-67). This period also appears to have been associated with increased conflict and the fortification of
settlements, suggesting competition for resources as much as abundance resulting from the availability of
new fertile land (Leick, 2001, p 55; Schwartz, 2001, p 262), and was followed by a period of competing
and cooperating city states (Leick, 2001; Pollock, 1999).
While the factors driving demographic, social and political change in Mesopotamia in the sixth and
fifth millennia BP were doubtless complex and numerous, there is evidence that the wider region was
subject to significant environmental change during this period, characterised by increasing aridity (Wright,
2001. p 128). It is therefore a reasonable hypothesis that water scarcity and a consequent shift of population
and food production to the vicinity of major rivers was a significant factor in the evolution of
Mesopotamian society. The growth of urban centres and the emergence of competing city states that
ultimately gave way to the Akkadian and Babylonian empires is reminiscent of the process postulated
above for the Nile Valley, albeit unfolding over a much longer timescale. In Mesopotamia the emergence
of city states is preceded by a degree of apparent cultural homogeneity during the Ubaid and Uruk periods.
There is still much debate as to the nature of Ubaid society, and of the Uruk expansion throughout the sixth
millennium BP; while some scholars view the latter in an imperial context, others question the view of
Uruk as an imperial capital (Algaze, 2001; Matthews, 2003). What does seem unambiguous is that, while
Mesopotamia is experiencing fragmentation at a time of unity in early Dynastic Egypt, in both cases
cooperation and conflict are associated with the emergence of stratified state-level societies during a time
of increasing aridity in the late sixth and early fifth millennia BP. It is also notable that complex urban
societies emerge in other parts of the world in the early fifth millennium, for example in the Indus Valley
region (Maisels, 1999, p 192; Chakrabarti, 1995, pp 111-114) and the Supe Valley of Peru (Solis et al.,
2001). In both cases this form of increasing social complexity appears to follow regional climatic
desiccation in the late sixth and fifth millennia BP (Enzel et al., 1999; Haug et al., 2001). While the
interactions of human populations with the physical environment are even more obscure in the Americas
and the Indus region than in Mesopotamia and Egypt, we can postulate (as a hypothesis to be tested)
competition, cooperation and population agglomeration as responses to water scarcity that led to new social
structures, as the surface environment underwent desiccation in response to a reduction in rainfall.
3
The purpose here is not to present a case for climatic determinism, rather to illustrate that climatic and
environmental change of a kind usually associated (correctly or incorrectly) with the collapse of
civilisations also appears to have played a significant role in the emergence of the very same civilisations.
The environmental desiccation experienced in sub-tropical Africa and Asia in the sixth and fifth millennia
BP appears to be associated with an abrupt cool episode occurring around 5900 BP that led to widespread
aridity (Bond et al., 1997; Goodfriend, 1991; Smith, 1998). Research into land-atmosphere interaction
suggests that this event may have acted as a trigger for long-term desiccation in some regions (such as the
eastern Sahara) and that subsequent desiccation around 5000 BP was due to a collapse of vegetation
feedbacks as orbital forcing of the summer monsoon weakened (Claussen et al., 1999, 2003; Haug et al.,
2001). It should be noted that the cool/arid episode that has been linked to societal collapse around 4200 BP
(Cullen et al., 2000; Weiss, 1997) was of a qualitatively similar nature to that of 5900 BP, while the
outcomes of these events, according to the above hypothesis, were very different.
It is not only different outcomes from similar types of event that caution us against simple climatic
determinism. The concentration of populations in expanding settlements where surface water is available,
and the organisation of these populations into specialised urban and/or stratified state-level societies, is not
the only response to increasing aridity evident in the archaeological record. In other words the nature of the
response is not determined by the nature of the climatic stress to which people must adapt.
Differential adaptation is apparent in response to climatic desiccation in the Fezzan region of southern
Libya, where Di Lernia and Palombini (2002) describe two contrasting responses to aridity in the middle
Holocene. In higher elevation regions cattle herding, previously the dominant economic activity, almost
completely disappeared after 5000 BP. The keeping of cattle was replaced by highly mobile pastoralism
based on sheep and goats and involving large-scale year round movement in order to exploit remnant water
and pasture, a nomadic lifestyle that persists to this day. In contrast, lower elevation regions were
characterised by increasing settlement in relict oases, associated with sedentism and more intensive
exploitation of local resources. Settlement in the relict oases ultimately led to the emergence of the
Garamantian civilisation in the early third millennium BP, based on the exploitation of underground water
resources via the construction of subterranean irrigation channels or foggara (Wilson and Mattingly, 2003).
The Garamantes dominated the Fezzan between about 3000 BP and 700 AD, and their society appears to
have arisen as the result of local innovation, the outcome of a process of increasing social complexity
among the pastoral groups of the Fezzan (Di Lernia et al., 2002; Mattingly, 2003). As seems to have
occurred in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the emergence of the Garamantian polity was associated with inward
migration, increased population density, changes in religious beliefs and practices, social stratification and
a more territorial approach to the landscape, catalysed by the final desiccation of most of the landscape
soon after 3000 BP (Brooks et al., 2003; Cremaschi and Di Lernia, 2001; Di Lernia et al, 2002; Mattingly
et al., 2003).
The evidence strongly suggests that climatic desiccation centred around 5000 BP played a major role
in the emergence of early complex societies or “civilisations”, characterised by a high degree of some or all
of the following: urbanisation, specialisation, social stratification, and state-level organisation. This event
appears to have been connected with a combination of millennial-scale North Atlantic variability, orbitallyinduced
southwards monsoonal retreat, and a collapse of vegetation-atmosphere feedbacks. Nonetheless,
the nature of early civilisations varied considerably, and there was no single trajectory followed by
societies as they adapted to increasing aridity.

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Population genetic relationships between Mediterranean populations determined by HLA allele distribution and a historic perspective.

1) Greeks share an important part of their genetic pool with sub-Saharan Africans (Ethiopians and west Africans) also supported by Chr 7 Markers. The gene flow from Black Africa to Greece may have occurred in Pharaonic times or when Saharan people emigrated after the present hyperarid conditions were established (5000 years B.C.).

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Posts: 6572 | From: N.Y.C....Capital of the World | Registered: Jun 2008  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by argyle104:
View the thread below.


http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=005433

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Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Doug M:
[qb]


And who was the Italian anthropologist in the show anyway? I don't think it was Cavelli Sforza, especially since Sforza has recently come to his senses and admit the presence of blacks in North Africa since the Neolithic.

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Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by zarahan:

Agreed. The Sahara seems the foundation. The black mummy is not as glamorous as say a pharoah in a massive pyramid, but it was the Saharan peoples that laid the foundation. In religion, those foundations appear to also be in the Sahara and northeast Africa, according to the older reference below.

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I read a long time ago that the early inhabitants of Crete showed 'negroid' affinities but can't remember that source except that it said they were "pug-nosed" and showed said affinities. Does anyone know of any studies examining this angle or the archealogy of Crete's early inhabitants?

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Blurb on Egyptian religion origins:

"A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apil-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty."

"It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1974 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)

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Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged |