Title speaks for itself, post factoids or ask questions regarding the most important time periods of African history.
Its my specialty so I don't mind answering questions.
Pic related are Kiffian reconstructions found in Niger and Libya and part of a more extensive indigenous North African population.
Other urls found in this thread:
academia.edu
sciencedaily.com
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
nature.com
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fun fact: before the expansion of Middle Eastern livestock people similar to Kiffians penned and raised barbary sheep
Oldest representation of psilocybin mushrooms found in what is now the Sahara and estimated at 9k years old
1k years older than the oldest known mummified remains in Egypt was found Uan Muhuggiag Southwest Libya
Tashwinat Mummy aka the black mummy by the Italian archaeologist who found him
neat/10
have nothing to contribute unfortunately but this is really interesting.
come on guys can you please ask questions :-/
Image from "The Cave of Swimmers" however I don't feel it depicts swimmers given the very strong faunal representations found throughout the Sahara, seems to be interlinked with
aw, thanks. I thought no one was reading this desu
Unfortunately it's after 2AM where I am and it's finals week, so I can't stay up to contribute really, but I guess I can get you started with some questions.
About when did these cultures exist? Did they disappear as the result of the desertification of the Sahara? Are they the same people that are in those regions now or did they die off/migrate away?
whoops
Its a complicated history. Contrary to popular belief there have been many Green periods. Researchers believe one that occurred 100k years ago was used by sub Saharans to migrate to the Mediterranean coast line of the Maghreb.
sciencedaily.com
Each time the deserts re-formed the populations ran northern and south and constantly fluctuated as cousins of sorts basically. This interweaving occurred a handful of times, laszt occuring in the second half of the neolithic subpluvial after a hyper arid gap for a thousand or so years.
thanks for asking inspite of being busy!
People certainly lurk, just hard for people to contribute because most aren't studied in such subjects.
both populations in north and "sub-saharan" Africa were quite similar and intermixed until two events occured by the looks of it 1. A paleo-african population similar to say neanderthals or denisovans intermixing with the southern groups and 2. Western Asian neolithic farmers coming in much later and absorbing significant portions of North Africa to varying degrees and the newly created "sub-sahara" populations.
>Abbreviations: Ater, Aterian; EMC, eastern Maghreb Capsian; EMI, eastern Maghreb Iberomaurusian; Gob-e, Gobero early Holocene; Gob-m, Gobero mid-Holocene; Mali, Hassi-el-Abiod, Mali; Maur, Mauritania; WMC, western Maghreb Capsian; WMI, western Maghreb Iberomaurusian
for those who may claim the OP pic shows "mulattos" of recent mixture I want to point out this wonderful graph from physone. Its basically showing the archetypical North African aligns with Gob-E aka Kiffians. Gob-M are Tenerians the first herders and semi-horticulturalists of the Sahara found in pic related that moved from the south to the north.
gob-m here
>Gautier (1980, 1984) we have suggested
that these early Holocene groups were
cattle pastoralists who brought their herds
into the desert for grazing after the summer
rains, coming into the desert from
some as yet unidentified area where wild
cattle were present and where the initial
steps toward domestication first occurred
(Wendorf et al. 1984: 420–422; Wendorf
and Schild 1994). This may have been the
Nile Valley, between the First and Second
Cataracts, because wild cattle had been
present in that area (and a major prey
animal since the Middle Paleolithic; Gautier
1968), as were people with lithic industries
closely similar to those in the earliest
Holocene sites in the Western Desert.
We have suggested that cattle may have
facilitated human use of the desert by providing
a mobile, dependable, and renewable
food resource in the form of milk and
blood. The use of cattle as a renewable
resource rather than meat may be a possible
explanation for the paucity of cattle
remains in these Saharan sites. This use of
cattle may have been closely similar to
that of modern African pastoralists, who
use the by-products from their herds, but
rarely kill them for meat, and then only at
important ceremonial occasions.
pic related
>The discovery was significant as the piles of cattle bones and the construction of the tumuli for the remains suggest that the animals were sacrificed and that much effort went into their burial. The practice of sacrifice is usually associated with a belief in a god or gods and so this finding, combined with the discovery of megalith alignments and stone circles, suggest that Nabta Playa may have been used as a regional ceremonial centre, which was unprecedented in Africa at that time. Although similar megalithic structures have been found in other areas, they are generally dated much later than those found in Nabta Playa.
>The cow had been covered with broken rocks that formed a mound eight meters in diameter and one meter high.
the Dufuna canoe was discovered by a local Fulani herdsman in 1987
>"the canoe has shown that people in the Niger area had a history of advanced technology and that they had mastered the three major items of neolithic culture which included the fashioning, standardization and utilization of tools according to set traditions."It gives concrete evidence of transportation by seas as well as providing evidence of some form of long distance commercial activities indicative of existing political and economic structures."
>The boat was dug out from a depth of five meters beneath the earth's surface and measured 8.4 meters in length, 0.5 meters wide and about 5 cm thick varying at certain parts of the surface
>people similar to Kiffians penned and raised barbary sheep
like different species or different culture?
So Kiffians are related very closely with other groups of North Africans for about 80k or so years as shown here Kiffians are identified not only by their extreme height but also their distinct pottery. So while I cannot say the pottery is the same, the people who penned these distinct sheep species are part of similar cultural complexes at least by way of a uniform period of art style.
Note the child on top of one sheep in the lower left and in the lower right-hand corner another petting one. Clearly, the process of domestication or at least taming was quite effective.
Sadly in the neolithic subpluvial there was a gap of hyper-aridity and it seems the barbary sheep was abandoned.
Years ago I was digging through the dusty books written in Italian and French ancient Saharan paintings.
It was there where I found this although much better sized. It really struck me because I rarely see side profiles in cave art anywhere
these life-sized images of Giraffe carved into the stone some 8k years ago
am I the only one wwho is amazed by their eye for anatomically correct carvings and the perfect positioning of the antelope? To me its like a still life almost in detail.
We are not related dumb nigger.
I don't know what you're talking about but I can say that the genetic, phenotypical and archeological information dispels the notion of two complete seperate africas.
When the sahara does not exist there is no "sub-saharan" population
>More than 2,000 sequences were collected from the literature, and networks were constructed. The results show that the most ancient haplogroup is L3*, which would have been introduced to North Africa from eastern sub-Saharan populations around 20,000 years ago. Our results also point to a less ancient western sub-Saharan gene flow to Tunisia, including haplogroups L2a and L3b. This conclusion points to an ancient African gene flow to Tunisia before 20,000 BP. These findings parallel the more recent findings of both archaeology and linguistics on the prehistory of Africa. The present work suggests that sub-Saharan contributions to North Africa have experienced several complex population processes after the occupation of the region by anatomically modern humans. Our results reveal that Berber speakers have a foundational biogeographic root in Africa and that deep African lineages have continued to evolve in supra-Saharan Africa.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Bump
nice
damn nice
Very cool thread.
Anyone got any info on the mediterranean coastline during the last Ice Age and the greening of the Sahara?
>tfw you will never see the rolling lowland hills of the Mediterranean Ice Age valley as you come down from the forested highland Sahara
well i doubt global warming will bring us closer to seeing a green sahara or any other desert ever again
Is anything known about the language or mythology of back then?
Burials? Similarities with levante people?
You can't really see it in this photo but there's a line coming down from the giraffe's head which is interpreted as a leash. Other examples exist which show humans holding onto the leash, confirming its identification. Tamed giraffes held by leashes are attested in recent periods on the southern fringes of the Sahara too.
Yeah I used to believe this but my readings have led me to think it was sympathetic magic to "tame" the giraffe.
Their images of Barbary sheep and Cattle are always leashless, only prestige beasts had the lines
Quite a few anthropologists claim pastoral era art aligns with Fulani ceremony and dress. It was positively perceived by elders strangely enough.
According to Roger Blench who is an expert on African languages Berber as a whole is in essence one remaining prestige language that's less than 2-3k old that absorbed all other Berber languages.
Fact of the matter is the languages of the past are mostly still around today.
Bangi-Me, Mande languages, Dogon, Ijoid and the so called Nilo Saharan languages (it's a lazy grouping and not linguistically united) have very ancient roots related to agriculture.
No evidence of migration into the Levant and mesapothamia?
What happened to the people when the Sahara dried out?
Did this cause wars? Invasions I to lands of others? Can an estimated population density be given of this area, I can imagine a green Sahara can give several millions hunter gatherers a home.
There are correlations between North African Capsians and Natufians who were settled complex Hunter-tenderers in Israel via earlier Ramonian culture peoples of Sinai about 15kya
>"Recently, it has been proposed that E3b originated in sub-Saharan Africa and expanded into the Near East and northern Africa at the end of the Pleistocene. E3b lineages would have then been introduced from the Near East into southern Europe by immigrant farmers, during the Neolithic expansion"
Cruciani F, La Fratta R, Santolamazza P, et al. (May 2004). "Phylogeographic Analysis of Haplogroup E3b (E-M215) Y Chromosomes Reveals Multiple Migratory Events Within and Out Of Africa". American Journal of Human Genetics. 74 (5): 1014–22.
You must remember that before these populations could get to the Middle East they had to move through the Nile.
At this proposed time people North Africans where in Coastal Northern Africa, central montane Sahara (the sahara lowlands were far too dry), Sahel and the Nile. Population densities in the Nile likely forced a northerly migration.
Oh 10k year old massacre in dry Kenya near Lake Turkana
>The nature of inter-group relations among prehistoric hunter-gatherers remains disputed, with arguments in favour and against the existence of warfare before the development of sedentary societies1, 2. Here we report on a case of inter-group violence towards a group of hunter-gatherers from Nataruk, west of Lake Turkana, which during the late Pleistocene/early Holocene period extended about 30km beyond its present-day shore3. Ten of the twelve articulated skeletons found at Nataruk show evidence of having died violently at the edge of a lagoon, into which some of the bodies fell. The remains from Nataruk are unique, preserved by the particular conditions of the lagoon with no evidence of deliberate burial.
every few tens of thousands of years, the monsoon rainds of tropical Africa move north. Which makes the Sahara green and allows animals to migrate across it.
What I find most interesting is thinking about what the could have used the, for, may they have been an effort ofmsome competition in their culture, like, who can raise the tallest giraffe?
Or some odd practical use, because I can't think of any that couldn't be done by a more practical animal.
Humans breeding Giraffes for while may explain why it has recently come to light that there are more genetically distinct Giraffes than we first thought.....
>Their images of Barbary sheep and Cattle are always leashless
If they were domesticated they wouldn't need leashes, they could just be herded around. Giraffes were only ever tamed, so they'd still need them.
The sheep were likely tamed not domesticated. Khoi in Southern Africa also has "leashes" in art of wild animals. It's unlikely they were raised or tamed, rather it seems to have you to supplicate wild animals.