The camp is effaced, its pavilions and lean-tos, at Miná – both Ghawl and Rijám desolate – and...
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p is effaced, its pavilions and lean-tos, – both Ghawl and Rijám desolate – torrent-beds of Er-Raiyán—their traces str ooth, like old lettering scored on a stone; es – since the people who left them tarried ave repeated their months ordinary and sacr ed to ask the place – but how can we questi ocks, whose speech is incomprehensible? Labíd ibn Rabi'a, c. 600 CE (trans. after AJ Arberry and Eric Ormsby)
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Transcript of The camp is effaced, its pavilions and lean-tos, at Miná – both Ghawl and Rijám desolate – and...
The camp is effaced, its pavilions and lean-tos,at Miná – both Ghawl and Rijám desolate –and the torrent-beds of Er-Raiyán—their traces stripped,made smooth, like old lettering scored on a stone;the ashes – since the people who left them tarried hereyears have repeated their months ordinary and sacred.…I stopped to ask the place – but how can we questionsolid rocks, whose speech is incomprehensible?…
Labíd ibn Rabi'a, c. 600 CE(trans. after AJ Arberry and Eric Ormsby)
The Sahara landscape over the Holocene
• life in the Hoggar (southern Algeria) c.9000 to 4000 BP
• stratigraphic approaches to reconstructing Saharan vegetation and hydrology
• a chronology
• a speculation
Nir Krakauer
the setting
Hoggar
Aïr
Tibesti
Hoggar
Tassilin’Ajjer
the Tassili n’AjjerAtlantis,
199
0
Henri LhoteM. Henri Lhote (1956)
copying the picturesrock…
to paper
the ‘round-headed’, hunting phases
herding (Bovidian) phases
What happened?
• a chronology of Holocene conditions in the Sahara has been reconstructed primarily from the following 14C datable materials:– ocean sediments– lake-bed carbonates, peat,diatoms – pollen
the Sahara was dustier at the
glacial maximum…
Ruddiman 1997
and less dusty in the mid-Holocene
Hoelzmann, Jolly et al 1998
pollen sitessabkhas, middens…
some vegetation m
apping: a legend
(E Shulz &
coworkers)
N Africa 8,000 y before-present
nowadays
the expandable Chad-Niger basin
the Servants: some lake level histories
Servant and Servant-Vildary 1980
the P/E index -diatom reconstructionServant and Servant-Vildary 1980
savanna
desert
Lake Chadbasin moisture
% terr. offMauritania
degradation
N Nigerpollen
Sahelriverdeposits
14CkyBP
ephemeralbraided
meandering
deflationbraided
deflationbraided
ephemeral
Tibestisilt terraces
aeolian + calcrete
humanartifacts
more sites
epi-paleolithic
neolithic
potterysheep& cow domestic
herding spreads
round -head
period?
Bovid
ian period?
Egypt: Old Kingdom
the bigpicture
a speculation on the Afroasiatic language family
or, Fermi’s question
Egyptian
5000
Akkadian4500
Canaanite3800
Somali
N Arabic2000
Hausa
Amharic1700
S Arabic2700
credits• z
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/maps/view/africam.html
• http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mohamed.sahnoun/Images/algeriamap.jpeg
• http://www.tara.org.uk/images/tassili.gif• http://www.paleologos.com/• http://rsta.pucmm.edu.do/biblioteca/pinacoteca/arte
%20prehistorico/prehistoria%20p1.htm• http://home.t-online.de/home/Jochen_Baumann/ • http://worldroom.tamu.edu/mideast/photos/sts036-152-252.jpg• http://www.edunetconnect.com/cat/timemachine/images/
scan1.gif• http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/geographie/fachi/
pal_atlas_afrika/index_atlas.htm#start• http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languagefamilies.html
printed referencesLhote H (trans. A Brodrick) The Search for the Tassili Frescoes, New York, 1959
• Ruddiman WF, Marine Geology 136:189-207(1997)• deMenocal P, J Ortiz et al Quat Sci Rev 16:347-
61(2000)• Hoelzmann P, D Jolly et al Global Biogeochem Cycles
12:35-51(1998)• Schulz E, Hydrobiologia 214:359-65(1991)• Talbot MR, in The Sahara and the Nile (MAJ Williams
and H Faure, eds.), 37-62, Rotterdam, 1980 • Servant M and Servant-Vildary S, in The Sahara and the
Nile (MAJ Williams and H Faure, eds.), 133-162
