The Sahara Read Online Free PDF Page A

eleven-year-old girl who was buried with a bracelet on her upper arm that was made from a hippo’s tusk. However, a number of the graves excavated have raised more questions than they have provided answers. The most intriguing of these is that of a woman and two children buried side by side in a communal plot. Positioned in such a way that implies they are engaged in a loving embrace, the bodies are thought to be those of a mother and her children. In addition to the tenderness of their proximity, pollen found in the grave suggests to archaeologists that they were laid to rest on a bed of flowers. Although impossible to prove, since none of the bodies bears any sign of violence, and it is assumed they were buried at the same time, it is likely the trio died as the result of a fatal contagion.
    Investigations at Gobero and elsewhere are far from complete, and the expectation of further revelations into early Saharan cultures runs high among archaeologists and others. What we do know is that around 2300 BCE the last period of the Green Sahara came to an end. As the monsoons from the south stopped, permanent sources of water dried up. Human and animal populations were forced to move away or die. In this post-pluvial era, aridity became the new standard, and the Sahara finally took on the parched quality that we are familiar with today.

Rock Art
     
“...We became aware that the valley contained some remarkable sculptures deserving our particular attention... No barbarian could have graven the lines with such astonishing firmness, and given to all the figures the light, natural shape which they exhibit.”
    Heinrich Barth, Travels and Disc(J1Jeries in North and Central Africa
     
     
    Everyone who has seen rock art in the Sahara has, in his or her own way, echoed the sentiments of surprise and delight uttered by Heinrich Barth upon his discovery of these examples of prehistoric human creativity. The beauty of these works of art is breath-taking, as is the astounding range and quantity of the works still in existence. Across the Sahara there are tens of thousands of examples of the ancient creative urge brought to life. Of all the evidence available to us regarding ancient human habitation in the Sahara, rock art is the most widespread and dramatic. What more striking sign of the one-time presence of people than a painting on the wall of a cave showing a herd of cattle and the thrill of the hunt?
    Even more dramatic than the pictures of cattle and other now domesticated animals are the depictions of bigger beasts, such as elephants, rhinoceroses and crocodiles. In many cases, these have been reproduced on walls and rocky outcrops in something close to scale. To gaze upon the exquisitely detailed, near life-size carving of a giraffe indicates how far conditions in the Sahara have changed over time. The widespread incidence of rock art, including the chosen subject matter, proves that wetter, milder conditions once prevailed in areas that are today uninhabitable, and also that not only was human tenancy in the desert possible but it occurred on a significant scale.
    Rock art is broadly divided into one of two types: petroglyphs (engravings or carvings) or pictographs (paintings). The earliest Saharan rock art is between twelve and fourteen thousand years old, although precise dating, as in so many matters prehistoric, is impossible. Also, the vastness of the Sahara militates against any consensus since there is no reason to suppose that while art was flourishing on one side of the continent, artists on the other side were creating works of the same quality or style at the same time. Nor is there any reason to assume that craftsmen thousands of miles apart would concurrently choose the same subject matter or materials.
    It is far more likely that items which display some similarity came about as a result of population shifts, for example people migrating after a once reliable water source dried up, or being forced to move with the