Biogeography and behavioral adaptations of late Quaternary hunter gatherers in the Sahara

Descripción del proyecto

Las antiguas migraciones humanas a través de los paisajes áridos de Libia

Comprender el comportamiento y las pautas migratorias del ser humano primitivo en el norte de África es fundamental para reconstruir la dispersión de nuestra especie por el mundo. Sin embargo, los escasos datos arqueológicos de las regiones saharianas y perisaharianas dificultan comprender esta dinámica histórica. En el proyecto BREATHE, financiado con fondos europeos, se examinarán los registros arqueológicos del sur y el norte de Libia, prestando especial atención a las regiones de Al Jabal al Gharbi y Acacus-Messak. Se emplearán técnicas punteras como la estadística geoespacial y la morfometría geométrica para analizar superficies líticas del Paleolítico y el Mesolítico. Con este planteamiento se pretende dilucidar los patrones de uso del suelo y las estrategias de adaptación, ofreciendo así una visión de la migración y el comportamiento del ser humano en este corredor árido fundamental entre el África subsahariana y el Mediterráneo.

Objetivo

Project BREATHE aims to contribute a new understanding of cultural and behavioral traits of North African early humans through the archaeological record of southern and northern Libya. This is a crucial region for understanding the trans-Saharan connections that contributed to the global dispersal of our species. However, the current scant archaeological and chronometric data for the Saharan and peri-Saharan regions limits our knowledge of biogeographic dynamics that linked different regions of North Africa at key moments of human biological and cultural evolution, especially around the emergence of H. sapiens ca. 300 ka. The project research areas, the Jebel Gharbi to the north and the Acacus and Messak to the south, represent the extremes of an ideal North-South transect with different environments and archaeological records, an important axis between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean. These arid regions have deeply eroded landscapes where Pleistocene geoarchaeological archives are rare. Except for few buried contexts, the evidence is mostly comprised of lithic artefacts found on open-air surfaces. Nevertheless, these surface lithics can provide a wealth of information when an array of cutting-edge analytical techniques (geospatial statistics, geometric morphometrics and wear analyses) are combined in the way proposed by BREATHE. These artefacts span the final phases of the Early Stone Age, the early emergence of the Middle Stone Age and its later manifestations, particularly the Aterian. The spatial amplitude of the research areas enables large-scale landscape analyses to be carried out, identifying land use and occupation patterns not detectable at a site-oriented research scale. This provides a unique window into past human behaviour and biogeographic dynamics in a central arid area that may have played a key role in the adaptive strategies that enabled our species to colonise new and challenging environments across Africa and beyond.