Prehistoric North Africa

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Prehistoric Central North Africa
)
North Africa consists of the six countries or territories situated between the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Western Sahara.
  Northern Africa[a]

The prehistory of North Africa spans the period of earliest human presence in the region to gradual onset of historicity in the

Nile Valley region, via ancient Egypt, contributed to the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age periods of the Old World, along with the ancient Near East
.

Climate

Further information: Climate of Africa
See also: African humid period, North African climate cycles, and Sahara pump theory
African vegetation during the Last Glacial Maximum (~12,000 BCE)

Human habitation in North Africa has been greatly influenced by the climate of the Sahara (currently the world's largest warm desert), which has undergone enormous variations between wet and dry over the last few hundred thousand years.[2] This is due to a 41,000-year Axial tilt cycle in which the tilt of the earth changes between 22° and 24.5°.[3] At present (2000 CE), we are in a dry period, but it is expected that the Sahara will become green again in 15,000 years (17,000 CE).

During the last

low pressure areas over the collapsing ice sheets to the north.[5] Once the ice sheets were gone, the northern Sahara dried out. In the southern Sahara, the drying trend was initially counteracted by the monsoon, which brought rain further north than it does today. By around 4200 BCE, however, the monsoon retreated south to approximately where it is today,[6] leading to the gradual desertification of the Sahara.[7] The Sahara is presently as dry as it was about 13,000 years ago.[2]

These conditions are responsible for what has been called the

Nile Valley. This separates populations of some of the species in areas with different climates, forcing them to adapt, possibly giving rise to allopatric speciation.[citation needed
]

Paleolithic

Lower Paleolithic

The earliest inhabitants of central North Africa have left behind significant remains: early remnants of hominid occupation in North Africa, for example, were found in Ain el Hanech, in Setif (c. 200,000 BCE); in fact, more recent investigations have found signs of Oldowan technology, which has been dated between 2,000,000 BCE and 1,470,000 BCE.[8]

Middle Paleolithic

Jebel Irhoud skull

Early

anatomically modern humans are known to have been present at Jebel Irhoud, in what is now Morocco, approximately 300,000 years ago.[1]

Human groups of Nazlet Sabaha, Egypt engaged in chert mining, as early as ~100,000 years ago, likely for use as tools.[9]

In the

MIS 4, in the Sahara and the Sahel, Aterians may have migrated southward into West Africa (e.g., Baie du Levrier, Mauritania; Tiemassas, Senegal; Lower Senegal River Valley).[11]

Affad 23 is an archaeological site located in the Affad region of southern Dongola Reach in northern Sudan,[12] which hosts "the well-preserved remains of prehistoric camps (relics of the oldest open-air hut in the world) and diverse hunting and gathering loci some 50,000 years old".[13][14][15]

Upper Paleolithic

The Iberomaurusian culture seems to have appeared around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, sometime between c. 25,000 cal BP and 23,000 cal BP. It will have lasted until the early Holocene, c. 11,000 cal BP.[16]

Archaeological evidence has attested that population settlements occurred in Nubia as early as the Late Pleistocene and from the 5th millennium BCE onwards, whereas there is "no or scanty evidence" of human presence in the Egyptian Nile Valley during these periods, which may be due to problems in site preservation.[17]

Mesolithic

Round Head rock art found in Tassili n'Ajjer (Plateau of the Chasms) region of the Central Sahara

The

Capsian culture was a Mesolithic and Neolithic culture of the Maghreb that persisted between 8000 BCE and 2700 BCE.[18][19]

The

Bubaline Period was created between 10,000 BP and 7500 BP.[20]

The engraved Central Saharan rock art of the Kel Essuf Period was created prior to 9800 BP.[20]

The painted Central Saharan rock art of the Round Head Period was created between 9800 BP and 7500 BP.[20]

Laboratory examination of the

Pastoral periods possessed dark skin complexions.[21]

Neolithic

Warrior/Shepherd figures and animals of the Pastoral period

period of pastoralism.[23]

Human remains were found by archaeologists in 2000 at a site known as Gobero in the Ténéré Desert of northeastern Niger.[24][25] The Gobero finds represent a uniquely preserved record of human habitation and burials from what is now called the Kiffian (7700 BCE – 6200 BCE) and the Tenerian (5200 BCE – 2500 BCE) cultures.[24]

The classic account of the riparian lifestyle of this period comes from investigations in Sudan during World War II by British archeologist

wavy line pottery in 6700 BCE, were black African rather than Mediterranean in origin and showed signs of intentional cultivation of grain crops instead of simply gathering wild grains.[27]

Several scholars have argued that the Northeast African origins of the Egyptian civilisation derived from pastoral communities which emerged in both the Egyptian and Sudanese regions of the Nile Valley in the 5th millennium BCE.[28]

According to American historian and linguist,

linguistic and genetic data which he argued supported the demographic history.[29]

Dotted wavy line pottery and fishing cultures have also been located in the Lake Turkana region in poorly dated contexts.[30] By 3000 BCE, it does not appear that the Turkana Basin was populated with harpoon and dotted wavy line pottery users, but fishing remained an important part of peoples' diets into the late Holocene.[30]

The engraved Central Saharan rock art of the Caballine Period was created between 2800 BP and 1000 BP.[20][31]

The engraved and painted Central Saharan rock art of the Cameline Period was created from 2000 BP onward.[20][31]

Bronze Age

Egypt

Main article:
Protodynastic Period of Egypt

In

Old Kingdom of the regional Bronze Age[32] is the name given to the period in the 3rd millennium BCE when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement – the first of three "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization in the lower Nile Valley (the others being Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom
).

Maghreb

The Maghreb transferred from the Mesolithic stage to the Neolothic stage between the 6th millennium BCE and 5th millennium BCE, then entered an intermediary period between Neolithic, Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age probably in the 2nd millennium BCE,[34] although they never truly transferred into either the Chalcolithic Age or the Bronze Age, remaining in between them and the Neolithic Age.[35]

Iron Age

Egypt

Main article: Third Intermediate Period of Egypt

The

Pepi I, the metal is mentioned.[36] A sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah as well as a battle axe with an iron blade and gold-decorated bronze shaft were both found in the excavation of Ugarit.[37] A dagger with an iron blade found in Tutankhamun's tomb, 13th century BCE, was recently examined and found to be of meteoric origin.[38][39][40]

Maghreb

Iron-working Phoenician colonization along the coast and trade with the inland caused the Maghreb to rapidly transfer from this intermediary stage to the Iron Age.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The disputed territory of Western Sahara (formerly Spanish Sahara) is mostly administered by Morocco; the Polisario Front claims the territory in militating for the establishment of an independent republic, and exercises limited control over rump border territories.

References

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  4. ISBN 978-0-8139-2085-6.[page needed
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  5. ^ Fezzan Project — Palaeoclimate and environment. Retrieved March 15, 2006. Archived June 7, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ "Sahara's Abrupt Desertification Started By Changes In Earth's Orbit, Accelerated By Atmospheric And Vegetation Feedbacks". ScienceDaily.
  7. S2CID 9045667. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 22 February 2019.
  8. S2CID 129518072. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 2020-07-13.
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  13. ^ Osypiński, Piotr (2020). "Unearthing Pan-African crossroad? Significance of the middle Nile valley in prehistory" (PDF). National Science Centre.
  14. OCLC 1374884636
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  15. OCLC 1374884636
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  17. ^ Gatto, Maria C. "The Nubian Pastoral Culture as Link between Egypt and Africa: A View from the Archaeological Record".
  18. ISBN 9780306461583
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  19. ISBN 9781349075898.[permanent dead link
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  20. ^
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  22. ^ a b c d Priehodová, Edita; et al. "Sahelian pastoralism from the perspective of variants associated with lactase persistence" (PDF). American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
  23. S2CID 131665275
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  24. ^
    PMID 18701936.*"Stone Age Graveyard Reveals Lifestyles Of A 'Green Sahara'"
    (Press release). August 15, 2008.
  25. ^ Gwin, Peter (1 September 2011). "Lost Lords of the Sahara". National Geographic. Archived from the original on July 13, 2020.
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  31. ^ a b Coulson, David; Campbell, Alec (2010). "Rock Art of the Tassili n Ajjer, Algeria" (PDF). Adoranten: 30.
  32. ^ a b Karin Sowada and Peter Grave. Egypt in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Old Kingdom.
  33. ^ Lukas de Blois and R. J. van der Spek. An Introduction to the Ancient World. p. 14.
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  36. ^ a b Chisholm, H. (1910). The Encyclopædia Britannica. New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Co.
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  38. doi:10.1111/maps.12664
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  39. ^ Walsh, Declan (2 June 2016). "King Tut's Dagger Made of 'Iron From the Sky,' Researchers Say". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 June 2016. ...the blade's composition of iron, nickel and cobalt was an approximate match for a meteorite that landed in northern Egypt. The result "strongly suggests an extraterrestrial origin"...
  40. ^ Panko, Ben (2 June 2016). "King Tut's dagger made from an ancient meteorite". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved 5 June 2016.

External links

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