Green Sahara: The African Humid Period - Dirt 85

What this episode covers

The grass is always greener on the other side (of the Holocene). What is today a vast and inhospitable home to many people and creatures was, between ten and five thousand years ago, a lush environment replete with lakes, forests, and grasses. We examine the first clues that suggested a Green Sahara to researchers, explore the technologies and societies that lived there, and contemplate what the Sahara's past might suggest about its future. Links * Megalakes in the Sahara? A Review (Quaternary Research) [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research/article/megalakes-in-the-sahara-a-review/7515BC9AAFE40606D3FC30C9D0C7D9D7/core-reader] * Saharan Dust Blows Across the Atlantic (NOAA) [https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/saharan-dust-blows-across-atlantic] * The emergence of pottery in Africa during the tenth millennium cal BC : new evidence from Ounjougou (Mali) (Antiquity) [https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:12635] * Ounjougou [http://www.ounjougou.org/en/] * Technological and Cultural Change Among the Last Hunter-Gatherers of the Maghreb: The Capsian (10,000–6000 B.P.) (Journal of World Prehistory) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/25801215?seq=1] * Capsian (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archaeology) [https://books.google.fr/books?id=XneTstDbcC0C&pg=PA93#v=onepage&q&f=false] * The 8,000-year-old dugout canoe from Dufuna (NE Nigeria) [https://keyamsha.com/2019/09/07/the-8000-year-old-dugout-canoe-from-dufuna-ne-nigeria/] * Africa's oldest boat set for exhibit in Nigeria (Africa Times) [https://africatimes.com/2018/04/06/africas-oldest-boat-set-for-exhibit-in-nigeria/] * First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium BC (Nature) [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11186] * History of the Domestication of Cows and Yaks (ThoughtCo) [https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-domestication-of-cows-170652] * Chad Genetic Diversity Reveals an African History Marked by Multiple Holocene Eurasian Migrations (American Journal of Human Genetics) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5142112/] * End of the African Humid Period (NOAA) [https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/abrupt-climate-change/End%20of%20the%20African%20Humid%20Period] * End of the African Humid Period (Nature) [https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2355] * Climate Change in North Africa: The Past is Not the Future (Climatic Change) [https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/13575/1/Cla2003b.pdf] Contact * Email the Dirt Podcast [[email protected]] Affiliates * Wildnote [http://www.wildnoteapp.com/] * TeePublic [https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=5724&ref_type=aff] * Timeular [https://timeular.com/ref/chriswebster/]