Episode 85 - Green Sahara: The African Humid Period
The grass is always greener on the other side (of the Holocene). What is today a vast and inhospitable home to many people and creatures was, between ten and five thousand years ago, a lush environment replete with lakes, forests, and grasses. We examine the first clues that suggested a Green Sahara to researchers, explore the technologies and societies that lived there, and contemplate what the Sahara’s past might suggest about its future.
To learn more, check out:
Megalakes in the Sahara? A Review (Quaternary Research)
Saharan Dust Blows Across the Atlantic (NOAA)
The emergence of pottery in Africa during the tenth millennium cal BC : new evidence from Ounjougou (Mali) (Antiquity)
Technological and Cultural Change Among the Last Hunter-Gatherers of the Maghreb: The Capsian (10,000–6000 B.P.) (Journal of World Prehistory)
Capsian (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archaeology)
The 8,000-year-old dugout canoe from Dufuna (NE Nigeria)
Africa’s oldest boat set for exhibit in Nigeria (Africa Times)
First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium BC (Nature)
History of the Domestication of Cows and Yaks (ThoughtCo)
Chad Genetic Diversity Reveals an African History Marked by Multiple Holocene Eurasian Migrations (American Journal of Human Genetics)
End of the African Humid Period (NOAA)
End of the African Humid Period (Nature)
Climate Change in North Africa: The Past is Not the Future (Climatic Change)
Photo credit: Cave of Swimmers, by Roland Unger, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.
