Les Néolithiques du Sahara central et l'histoire générale de l'Afrique

SUMMARY In the general history of Africa, a privileged position is held by the Neolithic populations of Central Sahara (0° to 20° East) due to the existence of rock-paintings in the naturalistic style in the mountain ranges of the Algerian Tassili n'Ajjer and the Lybian Tadrart-Acacus in particular. These rock- paintings represent not only the largest and most beautiful prehistoric museum in the world but also a truly historical source of information. Besides, there is almost positive proof today that those Central Sahara mountain ranges harboured two essential elements of the Neolithic culture -pottery and cattle domestication. Pottery evolved probably in the early seventh millennium, when an abundance of food caused fishermen-gatherers to become sedentary. The cattle-farming organised in the mountain ranges in the sixth millennium had been preceded by a lengthy period of « preliminaries » to such an activity, linked with the food scarcity due to the dessication of Northern Sahara from 14,000 B.P. onwards. Though any definite conclusion is made impossible by the scarcity of archaeological data, it seems justified to argue about the possibility of agriculture in Southern Central Sahara from 5,000 to 3,500 B.P., when evidence of organised and hierarchised cultures appears. Climatologists have been able to establish that the dessication of the Sahara varied considerably in places. In the whole Southern Sahara one can distinguish five waves of migration towards the present Sahel, ranging from 4,400 B.P. to 1,800 B.P. (second century A.D.) -and these migrations are directly related to the protohistoric settlement of West Africa. For some years inter-disciplinary research connected with the mining of uranium has been undertaken in Niger, more particularly east, south-west and south of the Air range. From 1979 published 14 С datations, one can infer that in the Agades area copper metallurgy existed as early as the 14th century B.C., while iron metallurgy existed from the 10th century B.C. Those exceptionally early datations remain to be confirmed yet they appear perfectly plausible when one bears in mind the remarkable inventiveness of the neolithic populations of Central Sahara in fields as varied as pottery, rock art, cattle domestication, the organisation of sedentary societies and perhaps agriculture.Cornevin Marianne. Les Néolithiques du Sahara central et l'histoire générale de l'Afrique. In: Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française, tome 79, n°10-12, 1982. Études et Travaux. pp. 439-450