Ring tombs of likely Late Antique age (c. 1st Millennium CE) at Di’irabab
From my own experience, the Sahara Dessert, at least the Tunisian part of it, is cold and wet!
At least that was what we experience a few years ago when we went there in early June, to avoid the heat of summer. That was a mistake, as Tunisia was experiencing one of the coldest Springs in living memory, when, at times, it felt like it was about to snow. We shivered at the Roman amphitheater at Al Jem where we were back on the coach within 20 minutes, asking for the heating to be turned on, and a trip to the Bardot Mosaic Museum in Tunis was spoilt by the rain.
But it was in the desert near Tozeur, dressed only in summer clothes, that we experienced a cold, wet Sahara, much as it may have been between 15,000 and 5,000 years ago when cattle herders were painting images of their cattle on the rocks at Atbai, east of Wado Halfa in Eastern Sudan. This period of Saharan 'greening' was when the West African subspecies of Rock dove (Columba livia lividor) managed to interbreed with a hybrid between C. rupestris and an Asian subspecies of C. livia, probably somewhere in the Sahara. And from that, probably all domestic and feral (town) pigeons are descended, as I described recently.
It was also where humans herded the cattle they had obtained from North African pastoralists, as described in the following article by Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University, Australia, reprinted here from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. His article has been reformatted for stylistic consistency, but the text is unaltered:
New rock art discoveries in Eastern Sudan tell a tale of ancient cattle, the ‘green Sahara’ and climate catastrophe
Julien Cooper
Julien Cooper, Macquarie University The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new research has found rock art over 4,000 years old that depicts cattle.
In 2018 and 2019, I led a team of archaeologists on the Atbai Survey Project. We discovered 16 new rock art sites east of the Sudanese city of Wadi Halfa, in one of the most desolate parts of the Sahara. This area receives almost no yearly rainfall.
Almost all of these rock art sites had one feature in common: the depiction of cattle, either as a lone cow or part of a larger herd.
On face value, this is a puzzling creature to find carved on desert rock walls. Cattle need plenty of water and acres of pasture, and would quickly perish today in such a sand-choked environment.
In modern Sudan, cattle only occur about 600 kilometres to the south, where the northernmost latitudes of the African monsoon create ephemeral summer grasslands suitable for cattle herding.
The theme of cattle in ancient rock art is one of most important pieces of evidence establishing a bygone age of the “green Sahara”.
New sites discovered on surveys in Eastern Sudan.
© The Atbai Survey Project
Archaeological and climatic fieldwork across the entire Sahara, from Morocco to Sudan and everywhere in between, has illustrated a comprehensive picture of a region that used to be much wetter.
Climate scientists, archaeologists and geologists call this the “African humid period”. It was a time of increased summer monsoon rainfall across the continent, which began about 15,000 years ago and ended roughly 5,000 years ago.
The wastes of the Atbai Desert, north-east Sudan – a very different landscape to the ‘green Sahara’.
Julien Cooper
In this small “wet gap”, around 8,000–7,000 years ago, local nomads adopted cattle and other livestock such as sheep and goats from their neighbours to the north in Egypt and the Middle East.
A close human-animal connection
When the prehistoric artists painted cattle on their rock canvasses in what is now Sudan, the desert was a grassy savannah. It was brimming with pools, rivers, swamps and waterholes and typical African game such as elephants, rhinos and cheetah – very different to the deserts of today.
Cattle were not just a source of meat and milk. Close inspection of the rock art and in the archaeological record reveals these animals were modified by their owners. Horns were deformed, skin decorated and artificial folds fashioned on their neck, so-called “pendants”.
A strong relationship between human and animal: a cow with a modified ‘neck’ pendant and horns.
Julien Cooper
The perils of climate change
At the end of the “humid period”, around 3000 BCE, things began to worsen rapidly. Lakes and rivers dried up and sands swallowed dead pastures. Scientists debate how rapidly conditions worsened, and this seems to have differed greatly across specific subregions.
Local human populations had a choice – leave the desert or adapt to their new dry norms. For those that left the Sahara for wetter parts, the best refuge was the Nile. It is no accident that this rough period also eventuated in the rise of urban agricultural civilisations in Egypt and Sudan.
The most common image in the local rock art was of cattle.
Julien Cooper
This abandonment would have major ramifications on all aspects of human life: diet and lack of milk, migratory patterns of herding families and, for nomads so connected to their cattle, their very identity and ideology.
New phases of history
Archaeologists, who spend so much time on the ancient artefacts of the past, often forget our ancestors had emotions. They lived, loved and suffered just like we do. Abandoning an animal that was very much a core part of their identity, and with whom they shared an emotional connection, cannot have been easy for their emotions and sense of place in the world.
For those communities that migrated and lived on the Nile, cattle continued to be a symbol of identity and importance. At the ancient capital of Sudan, Kerma, community leaders were buried in elaborate graves girded by cattle skulls. One burial even had 4,899 skulls.
Today in South Sudan and much of the Horn of Africa, similar practices regarding cattle and their cultural prominence endure to the present. Here, just as in ancient Sahara, cattle are decorated, branded and have an important place in funeral traditions, with cattle skulls marking graves and cattle consumed in feasts.
As we move into a new phase of human history subject to rapid climate oscillations and environmental degradation, we need to ponder just how we will adapt beyond questions of economy and subsistence.
One of the most basic common denominators of culture is our relationship to our shared landscape. Environmental change, whether we like it or not, will force us to create new identities, symbols and meanings.
Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
It's strange how creationists who normally pride themselves on their mental agility in making the facts fit the Bible narrative, don't seem to have the ability to draw the obvious conclusion from the fact that a great deal of real-world evidence simply wouldn't be there if their mythology were true, instead, it would either be swept away or covered in the inevitable 4000-year-old deep layer of silt containing fossils of animals and plants from disconnected landmasses that such a flood would have deposited.
The significance of the lack of evidence for a flood and the abundant evidence against it seems to be lost on creationists.
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