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Where did the ancient Saharan people go ?

By T.K. Randall
June 26, 2013 · Comment icon

21 comments

Image Credit: CC 2.0 Joadl

The Sahara was home to sizable communities up to 10,000 years ago, but what happened to them ?

Paleolithic rock art discovered in regions of the Sahara desert are now all that's left of what were once sophisticated human settlements which over the centuries developed clay pottery, rode horses and eked out a living in what is now the world's largest desert. But who were these ancient people, how did they survive there and where did they go ?

Archaeologist Stefan Kröpelin ventured in to the Sahara in the hopes of finding the answers. What he discovered was that the Sahara was not always as it is today - thousands of years ago it was a lush savannah covered in grassland and lakes, the perfect place for early humans to settle. As time went on however the region dried up, forcing its ancient inhabitants back towards the Nile.

The Sahara in central Africa is the largest hot desert on Earth, its blistering sands practically lifeless. But just a few thousand years ago, it was a home to early human civilizations. Over the past decade, we've gotten a sharp picture of what happened to the people who lived in this lost landscape.

Source: io9.com | Comments (21)

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#12 Posted by seeder 11 years ago

What happened to them? Some of them are still there, but most of them got thirsty and moved to a more thirst-quenching locale, don't you suppose? Harte I think this is probably the most logical answer, along with Cormacs. Some of the Saharan rock art shows cattle or deer type animals, something perhaps not found in desert landscapes http://en.wikipedia....aharan_rock_art quote: What they suggest (Kröpelin and his team), is that after a long arid period during the last ice age, the Sahara began to experience heavy monsoons starting about 8500 years BCE. The whole region became a grassy savanna... [More]

#13 Posted by Harte 11 years ago

After 7000 BC, human settlement became well established all over the Eastern Sahara, fostering the development of cattle pastoralism. (D) Retreating monsoon rains caused the onset of desiccation of the Egyptian Sahara at 5300 BC Prehistoric populations were forced to the Nile valley or ecological refuges and forced to exodus into the Sudanese Sahara where rainfall and surface water were still sufficient. While your reference is primarily about the Eastern Sahara, there was a culture that stretched across the entire Sahara, even up into modern times (as we know - Bedouin, Tuareg, etc.) The port... [More]

#14 Posted by seeder 11 years ago

I think it's a safe bet if not a lock that there are thousands more sites that remain undiscovered with similar rock art, all over the Sahara. Harte We need a massive hurricane or 2 in the desert to blow lots of sand away! Just think whats buried, ruins, tombs maybe, entire villages, maybe treasure too. But we may never know sadly...like so many other things lost in the sands of time

#15 Posted by paperdyer 11 years ago

I've always wondered how all the dirt and plants, etc. changed to silica over the eons.

#16 Posted by seeder 11 years ago

I've always wondered how all the dirt and plants, etc. changed to silica over the eons. But they dont do that, do they? Sand is from weathered rocks, like sandstone, or any other rock to be fair

#17 Posted by moonshadow60 11 years ago

And somewhere under all of that dirt is water. I've read articles about the "ocean" of water beneath the Sahara. It does look a bit like beach sand, doesn't it?

#18 Posted by HollyDolly 11 years ago

My late father during World War 2 was in North Africa. I recall him talking about the rock paintings. Daddy also mentioned about how from the air,when they were flying over the desert,you could see what appeared to be the remains of cities or towns .He was a flight crew chief and mechanic with the 376 Liberators and bombed the Ploesti Romanian Oil fields amongst other places. I once asked him did they ever attempt to do archeological digs at these sites, and he said as far as he knew,no. Some were rather remote, not easy to get to apparently.

#19 Posted by keithisco 11 years ago

it's the 26,000 year cycle or "Earth Wobble" which means the tropics drift up and down over this period of time. The Sahara will one day be a lush savannah again (at the expense of another region). http://en.wikipedia....nkovitch_cycles This is all to do with the natural cycle of the Earth's orbit around the sun but something that those that tax us like to call "climate change" which itself was an updated "buzzword" for "global warming" which was dropped once the powers that be realised that particular buzzword bulls**t would not stick much longer. There is always a denier who fails to read hi... [More]

#20 Posted by jaylemurph 11 years ago

For best available information on the Saharan Peoples and what eventually happened to them, read the Urantia Book, Paper 80:2.1. You can find this on page 890 of the Urantia Book. You can also read and search the Urantia Book online. Try www.urantiabook or www.urantiabookonlinestudyedition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urantia_Book#Criticism_of_its_science The only informationThe Urantia Book reliably provides is "Who is the biggest sucker in the room?" --Jaylemurph

#21 Posted by seeder 11 years ago

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