Saharan Prehistory

In the present article, we aim to describe a large part of the paintings adorning thirty-four shelters in Oummat Chegag. The surviving rock art of this massif, known mainly thanks to the freehand drawings of Captain Cauneille, has remained unfairly neglected. The vast number of images and their previously unsuspected archaeological interest constitute an important body of rock art within the area of Zemmour and in South Morocco. These documents validate the analysis of Joaquim Soler Subils, who emphasized the stylistic analogies between the painted sites of these regions, and provide new factors to be taken into account for the establishment of a classification and a chronology of the different styles.
Nous présentons une large part des peintures ornant trente-quatre abris d’Oummat Chegag. Les vestiges rupestres de ce massif, connus essentiellement par les dessins à main levée du Capitaine Cauneille, sont restés injustement sous-estimés. L’abondance des figurations et leur intérêt archéologique insoupçonné en font un ensemble important de l’art rupestre du Zemmour et du Sud-Marocain. Confirmant l’analyse de Joaquim Soler Subils, qui a mis l’accent sur les analogies stylistiques entre les sites peints de ces régions, ces documents fournissent des nouveaux éléments de discussion pour l’établissement d’une classification et d’une chronologie des différents styles.

The term “Moor”and its variants have long been used throughout Europe as synonyms for Nigri or Negro and to denote various black-skinned and nearly black peoples. In the last century or so, it has been presumed that ancient “Moorish” Muslims in the Iberian peninsula were erroneously thought of as black by medieval Europeans. It has also been presupposed that the term “Moro” in the Iberian peninsula originally denoted Saracens and Berber-speakers that were distinct from modern “blacks” of Africa in phenotype and biological origin. It has been concluded that early “Berber” populations in North Africa were descendants of ancient  “Caucasoids“ who have absorbed different black African populations in recent times. Similarly it is believed that the Arab populations of North Africa a thousand years ago were mainly “Caucasoid” groups affiliated with present populations of the Levant.

Historical documents, physical anthropology, linguistics, archeology and traditional record in Muslim Africa and Asia, however, support the view that early “Berber” clans entering Europe were not only “blacks” and “near blacks” in the literal sense, but affiliated with early and current black populations of the Fezzan, Mzab, Syrtica, the Moroccan Riff, Sudan, Sahara and Sahel designated Garawa, Masmuda, Jarawa or Wangara, and Zaghawa, Zaghai or Songhai.

The Tuwarek or Tuareg were also one of the originally "Ethiopic" peoples of coastal regions of North Africa once  designated Lewathes, Mauri, Austuriani,  Nasamones and Mazikes or "Mazazeces"  from which comes the nationalist term  "Amazigh" of modern Berber-speakers.  The Tuareg peoples in combination with the original Beriberi or "Berbers" were the populations first referred to as Mauri or Moors, a designation which was utilized for them as late as the early Medieval period.

Subsequent to the publication of four Iheren style elephant hunt scenes in this journal (Zboray 2017), several more similar scenes were recognised at some rarely visited sites in the Tasīli-n-Ăjjer during visits made in 2018 and 2019. These paintings are invariably very faint, in most cases only recognisable in the field with hindsight gained from other similar, better preserved scenes. Processing the taken digital photographs with DStretch®, a plug-in of ImageJ developed by Jon Harman enables the full appreciation of these compositions.

http://www.orgonelab.org/cart/xdemeo.htm#SAHARASIA
Ancient humans were peaceful - modern violence is avoidable. That's the basic message contained in "Saharasia", a controversial "marriage of heresies" over 10 years in the making. It will change forever your way of looking at the world, your home culture, and current events. Saharasia constitutes a revolutionary new discovery on a geographic pattern to global human behavior as deeply embedded within the scientific literature of anthropology, history and archaeology. It covers issues and events which typically are ignored in the "politically correct" academic environment, even though it was produced within that same environment. Saharasia presents the first cross-cultural, anthropological, archaeological and historical survey of human family and social institutions, tracing human violence back in time to specific times and places of first-origin. Saharasia also presents an additional controversy, given the factual identity of the violence-prone Saharasian region to be the homeland of the Islamo-fascist terror brigades. Saharasia has at several times in human history been the region from which massive armies marched out to conquer those moister regions lying at its periphery: into Europe, China, India and sub-Saharan Africa. These would be the early Indo-Aryan, Kurgan and Battle-Axe warriors, the Scythians and Huns, the Mongols, Turks, and Arab-Muslims, all of whom formed gigantic empires encompassing desert Saharasia and parts of its moister borderlands. While the analysis contained in this book starts around 12,000 BC and ends at around 1900 AD, the suggestion is clear, that the modern problem of global terrorism also springs forth from basic Saharasian-warrior roots. If you really want to know why so much of the world is in such a miserable condition, and to fully understand the current "march to war" within Islamic nations, this book will provide answers. One of the largest and most ambitious scientific and systematic, cross-cultural evaluations of human behavior ever undertaken. Originally a doctoral dissertation undertaken by the author at the University of Kansas, now supplemented with new chapters, and with hundreds of maps and illustrations. "Saharasia" is scarsely known to the wider public, given the controversial conclusions which precipitated from its development. But its findings, made as early as 1980, have been validated repeatedly by subsequent scientific discovery, and by world events. The new edition contains all-new Appendix documentation: "Update on Saharasia"reviewing archaeological evidence suggestive of an ancient period of generally peaceful human social conditions, world-wide.

This paper examines the evidence for Saharan trade in the Roman period in the light of recent fieldwork in the Libyan Sahara by the Fazzan Project and the Desert Migrations Project and by the Italian Mission in the Acacus. The results of these projects suggest that trade between the Roman world and the communities of the Sahara was substantially greater than believed a few years ago and highlight the transformative effect that contact with the ancient Mediterranean had on Saharan society, especially on the Garamantes of Fazzan. But this paper also argues that in focusing chiefly on trans-Saharan commerce, much previous research has misunderstood the nature and importance of Saharan trade in antiquity. Relatively few types of goods were traded all the way across the Sahara from south to north or vice-versa in the Roman period. Rather, we should be thinking principally in terms of a network of interdependent sub-systems, of short-, medium- and long-distance exchange; the trans-Saharan traffic was only one part of this network. Moreover, Saharan trade -- and especially the short- and medium-distance subsystems -- also provoked transformations in the frontier zones of Roman North Africa. The abundant evidence of Roman imports to Fazzan discovered by British fieldwork there also calls into question the universal assumption that trans-Saharan trade in the medieval and modern periods exceeded the scale of trans-Saharan trade in antiquity; this is based on no good evidence at all and may be entirely false. Comparison with better documented periods suggests that the Roman world was capable of absorbing a trans-Saharan slave traffic at least as large as that of the medieval period and the evidence of Roman imports points to a substantial trade, of which slaves were probably a major component, via the central routes across the Sahara. Saharan trade in antiquity was organised around a set of drivers that were very different from those of the medieval trans-Saharan trade, with a key role played by the development of a substantial agriculturally-based trading state within the Sahara itself, the Garamantes. The collapse of Saharan trade in late antiquity is related to the decline of Garamantian authority and is linked in part to the emergence of new tribal conglomerations in the frontier zones between the fourth and sixth centuries AD.

Abstract : In the Maghreb and the Sahara, a sunny rain is called ‘‘the jackal’s wedding’’. Using statistical and ethnological arguments, I will show that this expression probably finds its origin in the Neolithic period, in North Africa or in the Levant, and that from this area it would have spread as far as Japan on the one hand, and in sub-Saharan Africa on the other hand. It is therefore possible to use this expression as a way to understand the meaning of certain images of Saharan rock art, showing the sexual intercourse of a woman and a canid.

Résumé : Au Maghreb et au Sahara, une pluie ensoleillée est désignée sous le nom de « mariage du chacal ». En m’appuyant sur des arguments statistiques et ethnologiques, je montrerai que cette expression trouve probablement son origine au Néolithique, en Afrique du Nord ou au Levant, et que de là elle se serait diffusée jusqu’au Japon d’une part, et en Afrique subsaharienne d’autre part. Il est donc possible de l’utiliser pour tenter de comprendre le sens de certaines représentations rupestres sahariennes, montrant l’accouplement d’une femme et d’un canidé.

This paper re-examines the evidence for the diffusion of foggara-based irrigation across the Sahara in ancient and medieval times. Recent fieldwork by the Fazzan project has established that the foggaras of the Wadi al-Ajal in Libya are of Garamantian origin (last centuries B.C. / early centuries A.D.), and appear to have been used perhaps until the early middle ages (ninth to eleventh centuries), but probably not beyond this. Abandonment of some of the foggaras may even have begun as early as the fourth century A.D. It is argued that foggara irrigation technology was introduced from Egypt in the second half of the first millennium B.C., and enabled the development of a Garamantian agricultural society in Fezzan, which controlled trans-Saharan trade. From the Fezzan, foggaras spread north to the fringes of the Garamantian world, to southern Tunisia and the southern Aurès in the Roman period.
An apparent collapse in North-South trans-Saharan trade in the late Roman period (fourth/fifth centuries A.D.), linked to the decline of the Tripolitanian coastal cities, weakened the Garamantian state, not least by affecting supplies of slaves used in foggara construction and maintenance. Coupled with a declining water table, problems of labour and maintenance gradually led to the abandonment of most foggaras, and a shift to smaller-scale agriculture supported by wells. Meanwhile, however, development of oasis zones in the west central Sahara (especially the Touat and Gourara) facilitated the subsequent development of new North-South trade routes through what is now the Algerian Sahara. These oases are today the zones of most highly developed foggara use anywhere outside Iran; local tradition puts foggara use here as early as the eleventh century A.D., and there are grounds for thinking it may go back to the seventh century if not earlier. There are strong similarities, in construction and nomenclature, between the foggaras of Fezzan and those of the west central Sahara, and it is most likely that the foggaras of the Touat and Gourara were introduced from the Fezzan. From these oases the foggara subsequently spread to the Tidikelt, Tafilelt and Figuig. Foggara technology spread throughout north Africa along trans-Saharan trade routes, and also enabled the development of oases as trading centres. As such, the history of the foggara in the Sahara is inseparable from the history of trans-Saharan trade.

This article identifies two sets of Neolithic symbols from the eastern and western ends of the Sahara, which seem so similar, isolated at their loci, and unlikely to result from parallel evolution, because of the variety and intimate association of the symbols in the sets, that the similarities might indicate a cultural connection; and perhaps even a displacement between 4000 and 3700 BCE, rather than cultural diffusion during the earlier westward spread of pastoralism.
Several observers, including Henri Lhote and Raymond Vaufrey, have already noted individual resemblances between central and western Saharan iconography and Egyptian symbols, such as falcon imagery and rams wearing discs between their horns. But this article argues that the set of similarities is both larger than reported and more concentrated, with several strands of evidence converging on a zone encompassing the Kem-Kem Hamada and Wadi Draa on the Algerian-Moroccan border. While some of these similarities probably derive from the common roots of Nilotic and Saharan cultures during the spread of pastoralism from Nubia to the Maghreb from 6000 to 5400 cal. BCE, others — such as grinding platforms with low relief, inwardly spiralled snakes on their backs, which occur in the western Sahara as part of a tradition of decorated querns, and northern Nubia, where there was apparently no such tradition — might signal a later connection.
The article weighs the probability of a westward contact versus an eastward one around 4000 BCE and speculates that some of the resemblances might represent the arrival in the Nile Valley of refugees who fled the increasing aridity of the 4th millennium BCE by retracing the steps of pastoral ancestors. If this scenario is correct, some of the elements of Egyptian theology that became the prerogatives of royalty and the rationale for kingship, including the Horus-Osiris cycle, arrived from the west as the result of an exodus caused by climate change.

PDFs of my articles are also available from my personal website, www.duncancaldwell.com.

This study examines paintings located in two previously undocumented shelters on the Yangara enneri, one of the trails leading to the Ouri plain. The best preserved images provide new information about the cultural group that produced the Karnasahi style paintings. These documents show that this group expressed itself by using two distinct techniques, engraving and painting. They thus complete the distribution map of this style. 
Je présente les peintures provenant de deux abris inédits de l’enneri Yangara, un des chemins d’accès à la plaine d’Ouri (nord-est du Tibesti). Les images les mieux conservées apportent de nouvelles informations sur le groupe culturel à l’origine des peintures en style de Karnasahi. Ces documents révèlent que ce groupe s’est exprimé avec les deux techniques, gravures et peintures, et complètent la carte de distribution de ce style.

Introduction; The biological evolution of Homo and the gradual appearance of different cultural forms; The aesthetic function; The emergence of art as a stage of fundamental importance in the cultural evolution of Homo; Prehistoric art as awareness of the environment, the real andthe non-real; Prehistoric art in the Sahara: difficulties of interpretation; Research activity in the Tadrat Acacus; Research activity in the Amsak Settafet; Style and technique; The earliest anthropomorphic engravings; History and prehistory of the Sahara: neolithisation and anthropomorphism: the Round Head Period; The sacred nature of shelters; Kettles; Pairs of holes; Chronology; Notes to the illustrations; Glossary; Bibliography.
"L'ERMA" di BRETSCHNEIDER

A B S T R A C T Although the Central Saharan rock art has been studied for more than five decades, attention has been given almost exclusively to figurative paintings and engravings. Images were divided into stylistic groups, which functioned as a sequence of relative chronology. Non-figurative engravings, such as grooves, ovals, kettles and cupules, have been considered only marginally or were completely ignored. Next to the impressive images of animals and human beings, these small engravings were not even considered a true form of rock art and were never included into the stylistic rock art table. Even more surprising is the exclusion of Kel Essuf. These particular anthropomorphic petroglyphs were already known in the 1960s, however, because of their marked stylistic and thematic difference from other engravings , they were treated as anomalous and, like the non-figurative art, they were not included among the official styles. This paper focuses on previously neglected or unpublished rock art, and suggests that the simplest engravings are signs bearing their own meaning. When studied as a whole instead of being treated as isolated units without any relation to other forms of rock art, it emerges that grooves, ovals, cupules and Kel Essuf engravings were probably created following the same pattern.

Two dictionaries of Nilo-Saharan, A historical-comparative Reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan, by Christopher Ehret, and The Nilo-Saharan Languages : A Comparative Essay, by Lionel M. Bender, are assessed from three points of view . First, as they reconstruct the same linguistic family, they should contain common or similar radicals. Second, a statistical calculus of false positives is made. Third, cognitive biases (congruence bias, wrong heuristics) are identified in authors' approach.

Durante el franquismo, la aportación de los distintos autores vinculados con las Comisarías Provinciales de Excavaciones Arqueológicas de Canarias daría pie al desarrollo de una lectura nacionalista de la prehistoria canaria, directamente influenciada por las directrices teóricas, prácticas e ideológicas que por entonces daban sentido a la prehistoria peninsular. Una aproximación al estudio del primitivo poblamiento de las Islas Canarias durante este período nos ha permitido sacar a relucir
la estrecha relación que existió entre la política y la arqueología y, por ende, entre el poder y la generación del conocimiento científico.

UN REGARD SUR LES ORIGINES DU PASTORALISME AU SAHARA
Cet article se propose de jeter un regard sur les origines du pastoralisme au Sahara. Dans une première partie, l’article donne une synthèse de ce que nous apprennent les recherches paléoclimatiques sur le Sahara. Il apporte le regard nouveau d’une recherche italienne au Fezzan qui montre les premières transhumances accompagnées de l’âne. La seconde partie s’interroge sur les animaux qui ont accompagné le pastoralisme, l’âne, le cheval et le dromadaire. Des hypothèses nouvelles sont proposées. La matière de cet article est extraite de chapitres de l’ouvrage de G Lazarev, Populations et Territoires du Maghreb VI°-XI° siècle

French translation of English original. Full French text at this webpage:
http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia_fr.pdf
A travers une analyse systématique des données anthropologiques sur 1170 cultures de niveaux de subsistance, nous avons corrélé et développé des modèles géographiques globaux des institutions sociales de comportements patristes, cuirassés, violents, traumatisants, douloureux et répressifs qui empechent les liens mère-enfant et homme-femme. Lorsque les données sur le comportement ont été cartographiées, nous avons découvert que la ceinture désertique hyperaride entourant l'Afrique du Nord, le Proche-Orient et l'Asie Centrale, que j'appelle Saharasie, possède la plus grande étendue territoriale des institutions sociales et des comportements patristes les plus extremes sur Terre. Nous avons découvert que les régions les plus éloignées de Saharasie, en Océanie et dans le Nouveau-Monde, possèdent les comportements les plus matristes, non cuirassés et doux qui soutiennent et protègent les liens mèreenfant et homme-femme. Un passage en revue systématique des matériaux archéologiques et historiques suggère que le patrisme s'est développé en premier en Saharasie aux alentours de 4000 avant notre ère, l'époque d'une transition écologique majeure des conditions relativement humides de prairies-forets vers des conditions de désert aride. Des modèles de peuplement et de migration des peuples patristes ont été tracés, à partir de leurs foyers les plus anciens en Saharasie, afin d'expliquer l'apparition ultérieure du patrisme dans des régions situées hors de Saharasie. Avant l'installation des conditions de sécheresse en Saharasie, la preuve de l'existence du matrisme est largement répandue, alors que celle du patrisme était en général inexistante. Il est prouvé que le matrisme constitue la forme la plus ancienne, la plus primitive et la plus innée de comportement humain et et de l'organisation sociale, alors que le patrisme, perpétué par des institutions sociales traumatisantes, s'est d'abord développé parmi les Homo Sapiens en Saharasie, sous la pression d'une désertification et d'une famine sévères et de migrations forcées. Les observations psychologiques de Wlihelm Reich permettent de comprendre le mécanisme par lequel les comportements patristes (cuirassés, violents) se sont établis et ont continué longtemps après que le trauma initial soit passé.

This article investigates a largely unknown corpus of stone figurines, which have been consistently described by museums and galleries over the last decade as being Neolithic and coming from the Azawagh Valley in the south-central Sahara. Many of these sculptures, which are often made of amphibolite or dinosaur bone, represent pregnant women or can be read simultaneously as an animal and expectant mother. The appearance of the figurines, which do not correspond to anything that has been collected under controlled circumstances, led to an effort both to find where the figurines really come from and how they might have been used.

Thus, two groups were traced with some confidence to the Yatenga in Burkina Faso, a third group was traced to a zone around Mopti in Mali, and a fourth one appeared to be linked to the desert around Agadez in Niger. While the last group might be Neolithic, the age of the other three groups, which overlap stylistically, is probably constrained by the representation in Group II of dromedaries, which only appeared in the three zones at the beginning of the historic era.

The search also revealed the existence of birth protection rituals involving both live animals and anthropomorphic figurines made of animal bones. The revelation of such customs, which include the use of birthing amulets, opens new avenues for research throughout Africa while casting possible light on the figurines, whose groups appear in all but one case to be younger and from different locations than previously thought.

The Mousgou Settlement Complex is a large group of prehistoric human habitation sites that are dispersed northward from the northern and western slopes of the Ehi Mousgou mountain in northwestern Chad. The habitation sites consist of small round huts and irregularly-shaped enclosures, which probably served as livestock corrals. The presence of many hundreds of livestock enclosures suggests an origin for the Mousgou Settlement Complex during the Pastoral Period in the Sahara, dating from about 4500 to 3000 BCE.  There are a few tire-track paths into the Mousgou Settlement Complex, but there have been no reports of an on-site archaeological investigation of the area. Using Google Earth, the author of this paper has mapped the habitation sites of the Mousgou Settlement Complex.

The Kel Tadrart Tuareg, desert pastoralists from the Tadrart Acacus massif in Libya, were the subject of an ethnoarchaeological research carried out between 2003 and 2011. By means of a multi-pronged approach, a variety of topics were explored, ranging from the Kel Tadrart interactions with natural resources and the settlement pattern, to the layout of campsites and the processes of sites’ abandonment. The study of the Kel Tadrart adaptation to an arid environment and patchy resources, along with the recording of material evidence, holds direct relevance to archaeologists, anthropologists, and stakeholders interested in sustainable dryland pastoralism.

Since 2002, the author and numerous companions have been conducting a systematic rock art survey of the Egyptian and Sudanese parts of Jebel Uweinat. During these surveys, all the rock art sites reported by early explorers have been located and revisited, save for one notable example, Winkler’s site 75.  Based on Winkler’s unpublished photographs in the archives of the Egypt Exploration Society in London,  it appeared to be one of the more important sites at Jebel Uweinat.

Hans Winkler had seen and photographed the site “which is somewhat difficult to find”, but his description is disappointingly brief: “Paintings underneath the roof and on the vertical wall. Cattle. Men, some with armlets, some with long sticks. Women.” His description of the location is no less short and vague “Kurkurr Murr. Near the head of this wadi, about 1. km to the south-east of the foot of the peak 1323, shelter open to the south”. Searches were made on several previous trips in the general indicated area at the foot of the eastern cliffs of the Hassanein Plateau with no results. Finally in October 2006 the authors searched  an area to the north of the location suggested by Winkler’s description, and found the shelter on the northern side of a shallow valley  (the continuation of the main valley of Karkur Murr) about one kilometer from the point suggested  by Winkler’s description.

Winkler’s brief description and the few unpublished photographs do not fully do justice to the site. The shelter is one of the largest rock art sites in the Uweinat area. It is approximately 30 metres in width, cut in half by a large fallen wedge shaped rock. The ceilings of the shelters to the left and to the right of the fallen slab are covered with very fine and well preserved paintings of the cattle pastoralist style.

The Messak plateau contains remarkable evidence of human occupation during prehistoric and historic times, such as rock art engravings, megalithic monuments, and scatters of stone tools. Since 1980 these remains have been heavily affected by oil extraction-related operations, and it has only been over the last decade that these operations were adequately supported by archaeological mitigation strategies. The ‘Messak Project’ was originally conceived as a three-year programme (2010–2012) focusing on a range of co-ordinated actions to increase the knowledge of the area, to assess any damage and potential risks, and to preserve and manage the cultural heritage. Uprisings in Libya led to the sudden interruption of the project in late February 2011. Nevertheless, major results of the projects include: the compilation of a database of circa 10,000 sites, including hundreds of unpublished sites from previous surveys; the discovery of circa 2500 new archaeological sites; and the drawing of ...

In this book, the author deals with a subject that has intrigued and still intrigues many Saharan travellers: triliths, small stone constructions that rarely exceed one metre in height and one metre in length. Trilith, because of the three orthostats that support a subhorizontal table.
Dans ce livre, l'auteur aborde un sujet qui a intrigué et intrigue encore de nombreux sahariens : les trilithes, à savoir de petites constructions en pierre qui dépassent rarement un mètre de hauteur et un mètre de longueur. « Trilithes », en raison des trois orthostates qui supportent une table subhorizontale.