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Saharan Landscape Over the Holocene - A Chronological Speculation

This article explores the changes in the Sahara landscape over the Holocene period, including the life in the Hoggar region, stratigraphic approaches to reconstructing Saharan vegetation and hydrology, and a chronological speculation. It also discusses the significance of rock art and the impact of climate change on the region.

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Saharan Landscape Over the Holocene - A Chronological Speculation

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  1. The camp is effaced, its pavilions and lean-tos, at Miná – both Ghawl and Rijám desolate – and the torrent-beds of Er-Raiyán—their traces stripped, made smooth, like old lettering scored on a stone; the ashes – since the people who left them tarried here years have repeated their months ordinary and sacred. … I stopped to ask the place – but how can we question solid rocks, whose speech is incomprehensible? … Labíd ibn Rabi'a, c. 600 CE (trans. after AJ Arberry and Eric Ormsby)

  2. Nir Krakauer The Sahara landscape over the Holocene • life in the Hoggar (southern Algeria) c.9000 to 4000 BP • stratigraphic approaches to reconstructing Saharan vegetation and hydrology • a chronology • a speculation

  3. the setting Tibesti Hoggar Aïr

  4. Tassili n’Ajjer Hoggar

  5. the Tassili n’Ajjer Atlantis, 1990

  6. M. Henri Lhote (1956) Henri Lhote

  7. copying the pictures rock… to paper

  8. the ‘round-headed’, hunting phases

  9. herding (Bovidian) phases

  10. What happened? • a chronology of Holocene conditions in the Sahara has been reconstructed primarily from the following 14C datable materials: • ocean sediments • lake-bed carbonates, peat,diatoms • pollen

  11. the Sahara was dustier at the glacial maximum… Ruddiman 1997

  12. and less dusty in the mid-Holocene

  13. pollen sites sabkhas, middens… Hoelzmann, Jolly et al 1998

  14. some vegetation mapping: a legend (E Shulz & coworkers)

  15. N Africa 8,000 y before-present

  16. nowadays

  17. the expandable Chad-Niger basin

  18. the Servants: some lake level histories Servant and Servant-Vildary 1980

  19. Servant and Servant-Vildary 1980 the P/E index -diatom reconstruction

  20. Sahel river deposits % terr. off Mauritania N Niger pollen 14C ky BP Lake Chad basin moisture human artifacts Tibesti silt terraces degradation the big picture ephemeral braided Bovidian period? deflation desert Egypt: Old Kingdom neolithic savanna herding spreads braided deflation aeolian + calcrete round -head period? epi-paleolithic sheep& cow domestic pottery meandering braided more sites ephemeral

  21. a speculation on the Afroasiatic language family or, Fermi’s question Akkadian 4500 Canaanite 3800 N Arabic 2000 Egyptian 5000 S Arabic 2700 Amharic 1700 Hausa Somali

  22. credits • zhttp://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/maps/view/africam.html • http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mohamed.sahnoun/Images/algeriamap.jpeg • http://www.tara.org.uk/images/tassili.gif • http://www.paleologos.com/ • http://rsta.pucmm.edu.do/biblioteca/pinacoteca/arte%20prehistorico/prehistoria%20p1.htm • http://home.t-online.de/home/Jochen_Baumann/ • http://worldroom.tamu.edu/mideast/photos/sts036-152-252.jpg • http://www.edunetconnect.com/cat/timemachine/images/scan1.gif • http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/geographie/fachi/pal_atlas_afrika/index_atlas.htm#start • http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languagefamilies.html

  23. printed references Lhote H (trans. A Brodrick) The Search for the Tassili Frescoes, New York, 1959 • Ruddiman WF, Marine Geology 136:189-207(1997) • deMenocal P, J Ortiz et al Quat Sci Rev 16:347-61(2000) • Hoelzmann P, D Jolly et al Global Biogeochem Cycles 12:35-51(1998) • Schulz E, Hydrobiologia 214:359-65(1991) • Talbot MR, in The Sahara and the Nile (MAJ Williams and H Faure, eds.), 37-62, Rotterdam, 1980 • Servant M and Servant-Vildary S, in The Sahara and the Nile (MAJ Williams and H Faure, eds.), 133-162

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