Ancient humans followed Saharan rains
While modern humans take their time to avoid rain and gravitate to sunny spots, our ancestors took their time to follow the rains of the Sahara desert, according to new German research, published in the journal Science. The life-of-plenty that early humans lived in the modern-day Sahara gave them the skills to develop sophisticated farming techniques and some of the first signs of civilisation. The research shows that competition for scarce resources, such as water, have been critical throughout history, and many of today's conflicts are extensions of that same competition. 'Even modern day conflicts such as Dafur are caused by environmental degradation as it has been in the past,' Dr Stefan Kropelin of the University of Cologne and co-author of the paper, told the BBC. 'The basic struggle for food, water and pasture is still a big problem in the Sahara zone. This process started thousands of years ago and has a long tradition,' he said. The team examined many of the Sahara's forgotten settlements, in what is now a region too hot and arid to comfortably support any life. They found, in the examination of 150 sites throughout the Eastern Sahara of Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad over 30 years, that the area would once have been subject to heavy monsoon-like rains. About 10,500 years ago, the Sahara sprang into life, with heavy rains producing lakes, rivers and abundant wildlife. The settlements gave these ancient humans the resources to develop techniques for animal husbandry and pottery. Just as suddenly as the rains arrived, they passed again, about 6,000 years ago. The lack of rain forced people towards the Nile, Sudan and other areas of Africa. 'The Nile Valley was almost devoid of settlement until about exactly the time that the Egyptian Sahara was so dry people could not live there anymore,' Dr Kropelin told the BBC. But the humans had changed - they had now developed sophisticated techniques to farm and exploit the world around them. 'They brought all their know-how to the rest of the continent - the domestication of cattle was invented in the Sahara in the humid phase and was then slowly pushed over the rest of Africa,' he said. In short, the people had moved from a hunter-gatherer existence to a far more sophisticated farming society. The effects of this civilisation cannot be underestimated - as the techniques were further refined at the Nile. 'Southward shifting of the desert margin helped trigger the emergence of pharaonic civilization along the Nile, influenced the spread of pastoralism throughout the continent, and affects sub-Saharan Africa to the present day,' reads the paper.
Countries
Germany, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Chad