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)

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 Nir Krakauer

the setting Hoggar Aïr Tibesti

Hoggar Tassili n’Ajjer

the Tassili n’Ajjer Atlantis, 1990

Henri Lhote M. Henri Lhote (1956)

copying the pictures rock… to paper

the ‘round-headed’, hunting phases

herding (Bovidian) phases

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

the Sahara was dustier at the glacial maximum… Ruddiman 1997

and less dusty in the mid-Holocene

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

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

N Africa 8,000 y before-present

nowadays

the expandable Chad-Niger basin

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

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

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

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

credits zhttp:// fricam.htmlhttp:// fricam.html eghttp://perso.wanadoo.fr/mohamed.sahnoun/Images/algeriamap.jp eg ico/prehistoria%20p1.htmhttp://rsta.pucmm.edu.do/biblioteca/pinacoteca/arte%20prehistor ico/prehistoria%20p1.htm ifhttp:// if wuerzburg.de/geographie/fachi/pal_atlas_afrika/index_atlas.htm #starthttp:// wuerzburg.de/geographie/fachi/pal_atlas_afrika/index_atlas.htm #start

printed references Lhote H (trans. A Brodrick) The Search for the Tassili Frescoes, New York, 1959 Ruddiman WF, Marine Geology 136: (1997) deMenocal P, J Ortiz et al Quat Sci Rev 16: (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.),