Prehistoric Sahara

http://www.orgonelab.org/cart/xdemeo.htm#SAHARASIA
Ancient humans were peaceful - modern violence is avoidable. That's the basic message contained in "Saharasia", a controversial "marriage of heresies" over 10 years in the making. It will change forever your way of looking at the world, your home culture, and current events. Saharasia constitutes a revolutionary new discovery on a geographic pattern to global human behavior as deeply embedded within the scientific literature of anthropology, history and archaeology. It covers issues and events which typically are ignored in the "politically correct" academic environment, even though it was produced within that same environment. Saharasia presents the first cross-cultural, anthropological, archaeological and historical survey of human family and social institutions, tracing human violence back in time to specific times and places of first-origin. Saharasia also presents an additional controversy, given the factual identity of the violence-prone Saharasian region to be the homeland of the Islamo-fascist terror brigades. Saharasia has at several times in human history been the region from which massive armies marched out to conquer those moister regions lying at its periphery: into Europe, China, India and sub-Saharan Africa. These would be the early Indo-Aryan, Kurgan and Battle-Axe warriors, the Scythians and Huns, the Mongols, Turks, and Arab-Muslims, all of whom formed gigantic empires encompassing desert Saharasia and parts of its moister borderlands. While the analysis contained in this book starts around 12,000 BC and ends at around 1900 AD, the suggestion is clear, that the modern problem of global terrorism also springs forth from basic Saharasian-warrior roots. If you really want to know why so much of the world is in such a miserable condition, and to fully understand the current "march to war" within Islamic nations, this book will provide answers. One of the largest and most ambitious scientific and systematic, cross-cultural evaluations of human behavior ever undertaken. Originally a doctoral dissertation undertaken by the author at the University of Kansas, now supplemented with new chapters, and with hundreds of maps and illustrations. "Saharasia" is scarsely known to the wider public, given the controversial conclusions which precipitated from its development. But its findings, made as early as 1980, have been validated repeatedly by subsequent scientific discovery, and by world events. The new edition contains all-new Appendix documentation: "Update on Saharasia"reviewing archaeological evidence suggestive of an ancient period of generally peaceful human social conditions, world-wide.

This paper examines the evidence for Saharan trade in the Roman period in the light of recent fieldwork in the Libyan Sahara by the Fazzan Project and the Desert Migrations Project and by the Italian Mission in the Acacus. The results of these projects suggest that trade between the Roman world and the communities of the Sahara was substantially greater than believed a few years ago and highlight the transformative effect that contact with the ancient Mediterranean had on Saharan society, especially on the Garamantes of Fazzan. But this paper also argues that in focusing chiefly on trans-Saharan commerce, much previous research has misunderstood the nature and importance of Saharan trade in antiquity. Relatively few types of goods were traded all the way across the Sahara from south to north or vice-versa in the Roman period. Rather, we should be thinking principally in terms of a network of interdependent sub-systems, of short-, medium- and long-distance exchange; the trans-Saharan traffic was only one part of this network. Moreover, Saharan trade -- and especially the short- and medium-distance subsystems -- also provoked transformations in the frontier zones of Roman North Africa. The abundant evidence of Roman imports to Fazzan discovered by British fieldwork there also calls into question the universal assumption that trans-Saharan trade in the medieval and modern periods exceeded the scale of trans-Saharan trade in antiquity; this is based on no good evidence at all and may be entirely false. Comparison with better documented periods suggests that the Roman world was capable of absorbing a trans-Saharan slave traffic at least as large as that of the medieval period and the evidence of Roman imports points to a substantial trade, of which slaves were probably a major component, via the central routes across the Sahara. Saharan trade in antiquity was organised around a set of drivers that were very different from those of the medieval trans-Saharan trade, with a key role played by the development of a substantial agriculturally-based trading state within the Sahara itself, the Garamantes. The collapse of Saharan trade in late antiquity is related to the decline of Garamantian authority and is linked in part to the emergence of new tribal conglomerations in the frontier zones between the fourth and sixth centuries AD.

This paper re-examines the evidence for the diffusion of foggara-based irrigation across the Sahara in ancient and medieval times. Recent fieldwork by the Fazzan project has established that the foggaras of the Wadi al-Ajal in Libya are of Garamantian origin (last centuries B.C. / early centuries A.D.), and appear to have been used perhaps until the early middle ages (ninth to eleventh centuries), but probably not beyond this. Abandonment of some of the foggaras may even have begun as early as the fourth century A.D. It is argued that foggara irrigation technology was introduced from Egypt in the second half of the first millennium B.C., and enabled the development of a Garamantian agricultural society in Fezzan, which controlled trans-Saharan trade. From the Fezzan, foggaras spread north to the fringes of the Garamantian world, to southern Tunisia and the southern Aurès in the Roman period.
An apparent collapse in North-South trans-Saharan trade in the late Roman period (fourth/fifth centuries A.D.), linked to the decline of the Tripolitanian coastal cities, weakened the Garamantian state, not least by affecting supplies of slaves used in foggara construction and maintenance. Coupled with a declining water table, problems of labour and maintenance gradually led to the abandonment of most foggaras, and a shift to smaller-scale agriculture supported by wells. Meanwhile, however, development of oasis zones in the west central Sahara (especially the Touat and Gourara) facilitated the subsequent development of new North-South trade routes through what is now the Algerian Sahara. These oases are today the zones of most highly developed foggara use anywhere outside Iran; local tradition puts foggara use here as early as the eleventh century A.D., and there are grounds for thinking it may go back to the seventh century if not earlier. There are strong similarities, in construction and nomenclature, between the foggaras of Fezzan and those of the west central Sahara, and it is most likely that the foggaras of the Touat and Gourara were introduced from the Fezzan. From these oases the foggara subsequently spread to the Tidikelt, Tafilelt and Figuig. Foggara technology spread throughout north Africa along trans-Saharan trade routes, and also enabled the development of oases as trading centres. As such, the history of the foggara in the Sahara is inseparable from the history of trans-Saharan trade.

Two dictionaries of Nilo-Saharan, A historical-comparative Reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan, by Christopher Ehret, and The Nilo-Saharan Languages : A Comparative Essay, by Lionel M. Bender, are assessed from three points of view . First, as they reconstruct the same linguistic family, they should contain common or similar radicals. Second, a statistical calculus of false positives is made. Third, cognitive biases (congruence bias, wrong heuristics) are identified in authors' approach.

For many years archaeological missions in the eastern Sahara have provided fruitful evidence for a distinct cross-regional relationship between the inhabitants of the Nile and the tribes west of it. In some sense it can be difficult to know whether Egyptians of the Old Kingdom and prior ages were merely travelers to the desert or were – in part – originally from there. One thing can be certain: they were there. Extensive surveys and many years of personal dedication by a handful of archaeologists have determined an acute connection, so although when one ponders ancient Egypt and immediately thinks of the lush Nile Valley as its national limit, it is unwise to constrain it to the river alone. Rather, when contemplating the catalytic seed of an Egyptian nation we must – and do – consider the whole of northeastern Africa. Thus the ancient society we know today can be seen as a conglomerate of peoples drawn from afar and within. This view continues to be anchored more and more firmly through successive findings in both the eastern and western deserts, as well as regions to the distant south (such as Nubia), Sinai and the Arabian peninsula. As time progressed the area of influence obviously expanded, but early on the immediate countryside is what would provide a more substantial and formative impact base. More recent intrigues have served to augment a Sahara-Egypt bond, one of which was no less an unsolved curiosity as it was a development waiting to happen.

French translation of English original. Full French text at this webpage:
http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia_fr.pdf
A travers une analyse systématique des données anthropologiques sur 1170 cultures de niveaux de subsistance, nous avons corrélé et développé des modèles géographiques globaux des institutions sociales de comportements patristes, cuirassés, violents, traumatisants, douloureux et répressifs qui empechent les liens mère-enfant et homme-femme. Lorsque les données sur le comportement ont été cartographiées, nous avons découvert que la ceinture désertique hyperaride entourant l'Afrique du Nord, le Proche-Orient et l'Asie Centrale, que j'appelle Saharasie, possède la plus grande étendue territoriale des institutions sociales et des comportements patristes les plus extremes sur Terre. Nous avons découvert que les régions les plus éloignées de Saharasie, en Océanie et dans le Nouveau-Monde, possèdent les comportements les plus matristes, non cuirassés et doux qui soutiennent et protègent les liens mèreenfant et homme-femme. Un passage en revue systématique des matériaux archéologiques et historiques suggère que le patrisme s'est développé en premier en Saharasie aux alentours de 4000 avant notre ère, l'époque d'une transition écologique majeure des conditions relativement humides de prairies-forets vers des conditions de désert aride. Des modèles de peuplement et de migration des peuples patristes ont été tracés, à partir de leurs foyers les plus anciens en Saharasie, afin d'expliquer l'apparition ultérieure du patrisme dans des régions situées hors de Saharasie. Avant l'installation des conditions de sécheresse en Saharasie, la preuve de l'existence du matrisme est largement répandue, alors que celle du patrisme était en général inexistante. Il est prouvé que le matrisme constitue la forme la plus ancienne, la plus primitive et la plus innée de comportement humain et et de l'organisation sociale, alors que le patrisme, perpétué par des institutions sociales traumatisantes, s'est d'abord développé parmi les Homo Sapiens en Saharasie, sous la pression d'une désertification et d'une famine sévères et de migrations forcées. Les observations psychologiques de Wlihelm Reich permettent de comprendre le mécanisme par lequel les comportements patristes (cuirassés, violents) se sont établis et ont continué longtemps après que le trauma initial soit passé.

Five previously unreported rock art sites were surveyed in the northern range of Jebel Arkenu. Particularly interesting among the noted paintings attributable to the Uweinat Cattle Pastoralists style are the first recognized examples of human figures carrying fringed shoulder bags. A large  panel entirely attributable to the “Elongated Roundhead” style represents one of the most elaborate  known artistic expressions to date of this earliest defined cultural period. Depictions of archers equipped with transverse arrowheads were noted in a shelter hosting many faded human figures, in part attributable to the Wadi Wahesh style. Giraffes and antelopes tethered to complex anchors feature a petroglyph site containing the most numerous and varied composition of tethered wild animal scenes ever found in the region.

Survey by the DMP Burials and Identity team around the Tāqallit headland in 2009–2010 has revealed in exceptional detail a well-preserved Garamantian landscape, comprising extensive cemeteries, foggara irrigation systems and numerous oasis settlements. However, this remarkable survival of the Garamantian landscape was found in 2010 to be under direct and imminent threat of destruction. This report describes the landscape features recorded and the steps taken to try to preserve the evidence from obliteration in the face of modern agricultural development. Important new information was recorded about the date and furnishing of some key types of Proto-Urban tombs, linking with a refined view of the relationship of these cemeteries to contemporary foggara construction and the creation of pioneer farming settlement in the Tāqallit region. Significant additional details of the foggara systems were recorded through a combination of satellite image interpretation, surface observation and se...

The 'Burials and Identity' team of the Desert Migrations Project carried out two main excavations in the 2009 season, at the monumental Garamantian cemeteries of TAG001 and TAG012, by the Taqallit headland. In addition, a detailed survey was made of cemeteries and other sites on the west side of the Taqallit headland, to set the two main cemetery excavations in context. A total of over 2,100 individual burials was recorded in this small area of a few square kilometres. This cemetery survey was combined with further research on the well-preserved foggara systems in this area, which originate at the escarpment among the cemeteries and run in a north-westerly direction towards the valley centre, where some additional Garamantian settlement sites were also located. The foggara research also involved excavation at four locations to try to elucidate issues relating to the dating of these. A total of 22 burials was investigated at TAG001, an imposing cemetery of stone-built stepp...

The ‘Burials and Identity’ team of the Desert Migrations Project carried out two main excavations in the 2009 season, at the monumental Garamantian cemeteries of TAG001 and TAG012, by the Taqallit headland. In addition, a detailed survey was made of cemeteries and other sites on the west side of the Taqallit headland, to set the two main cemetery excavations in context. A total of over 2,100 individual burials was recorded in this small area of a few square kilometres. This cemetery survey was combined with further research on the well-preserved foggara systems in this area, which originate at the escarpment among the cemeteries and run in a north-westerly direction towards the valley centre, where some additional Garamantian settlement sites were also located. The foggara research also involved excavation at four locations to try to elucidate issues relating to the dating of these.A total of 22 burials was investigated at TAG001, an imposing cemetery of stone-built stepped tombs th...

The ‘Burials and Identity’ team of the Desert Migrations Project carried out two main excavations in the 2009 season, at the monumental Garamantian cemeteries of TAG001 and TAG012, by the Taqallit headland. In addition, a detailed survey was made of cemeteries and other sites on the west side of the Taqallit headland, to set the two main cemetery excavations in context. A total of over 2,100 individual burials was recorded in this small area of a few square kilometres. This cemetery survey was combined with further research on the well-preserved foggara systems in this area, which originate at the escarpment among the cemeteries and run in a north-westerly direction towards the valley centre, where some additional Garamantian settlement sites were also located. The foggara research also involved excavation at four locations to try to elucidate issues relating to the dating of these.A total of 22 burials was investigated at TAG001, an imposing cemetery of stone-built stepped tombs th...

ABSTRACT Survey and excavation by the Burials and Identity team of the Desert Migrations Project (DMP) focused in 2011 on the so-called Royal Cemetery of the Garamantes close to the Jarma escarpment, a few km south of Old Jarma. This Late Garamantian cemetery contains two distinct zones (GSC030 and GSC031) of monumental rectangular stepped tombs, which were plaster-coated and fronted by massive offering tables and stelae. Previous dating evidence has suggested they span the fourth to sixth centuries AD. However, many questions remain about the cemetery and the overall recording of the monuments had hitherto been left incomplete. The 2011 work focused on the excavation of one of the larger monuments in GSC030 and several of the smaller tombs in the neighbouring GSC031, along with an overall survey of both cemetery areas and a detailed record of the stelae and offering tables still present in considerable numbers. In addition, the team made a survey along the escarpment between the Royal Cemetery and Zinkekra, completing and uniting the various surveys carried out by the DMP around Zinkekra, Watwat and the Jarma Escarpment. A survey of foggaras and settlement in the ad-Dısa embayment was also undertaken.

Survey and excavation by the Burials and Identity team of the Desert Migrations Project (DMP) focused in 2011 on the so-called Royal Cemetery of the Garamantes close to the Jarma escarpment, a few km south of Old Jarma. This Late Garamantian cemetery contains two distinct zones (GSC030 and GSC031) of monumental rectangular stepped tombs, which were plaster-coated and fronted by massive offering tables and stelae. Previous dating evidence has suggested they span the fourth to sixth centuries AD. However, many questions remain about the cemetery and the overall recording of the monuments had hitherto been left incomplete. The 2011 work focused on the excavation of one of the larger monuments in GSC030 and several of the smaller tombs in the neighbouring GSC031, along with an overall survey of both cemetery areas and a detailed record of the stelae and offering tables still present in considerable numbers. In addition, the team made a survey along the escarpment between the Royal Cemet...

Survey by the DMP Burials and Identity team around the Tāqallit headland in 2009–2010 has revealed in exceptional detail a well-preserved Garamantian landscape, comprising extensive cemeteries, foggara irrigation systems and numerous oasis settlements. However, this remarkable survival of the Garamantian landscape was found in 2010 to be under direct and imminent threat of destruction. This report describes the landscape features recorded and the steps taken to try to preserve the evidence from obliteration in the face of modern agricultural development. Important new information was recorded about the date and furnishing of some key types of Proto-Urban tombs, linking with a refined view of the relationship of these cemeteries to contemporary foggara construction and the creation of pioneer farming settlement in the Tāqallit region. Significant additional details of the foggara systems were recorded through a combination of satellite image interpretation, surface observation and se...

Survey by the DMP Burials and Identity team around the Tāqallit headland in 2009–2010 has revealed in exceptional detail a well-preserved Garamantian landscape, comprising extensive cemeteries, foggara irrigation systems and numerous oasis settlements. However, this remarkable survival of the Garamantian landscape was found in 2010 to be under direct and imminent threat of destruction. This report describes the landscape features recorded and the steps taken to try to preserve the evidence from obliteration in the face of modern agricultural development. Important new information was recorded about the date and furnishing of some key types of Proto-Urban tombs, linking with a refined view of the relationship of these cemeteries to contemporary foggara construction and the creation of pioneer farming settlement in the Tāqallit region. Significant additional details of the foggara systems were recorded through a combination of satellite image interpretation, surface observation and se...

In Algeria's Tassili National Park, I have found two compass-shaped structures that align with each other, and they also align with the summer and winter solstices. These two  compass-shaped structures resemble in form, and possibly in function, the two compass-shaped structures that I described in another recent paper. The site described in this paper is located 34 kilometers southeast of the site described in my previous paper. Link: https://www.academia.edu/s/ba7952aad5/an-ancient-observatory-in-algeria-marks-the-summer-and-winter-solsticesodt

Die Studie behandelt die Neolithisierung des Mittleren Niltals hinsichtlich zweier Teilaspekte: (1) als eine chronologische Sequenz, welche die Basis zur Rekonstruktion des Prozesses in seiner Langfristigkeit (7000−4500 calBC) bietet und (2) als eine Bewertung der Zeitlichkeit und Kausalität, die der Einführung domestizierter Spezies in das Arbeitsgebiet um 5000 calBC zugrunde liegen. Da chronologische Präzision eine unabdingbare Voraussetzung beider Ansätze darstellt, werden die 274 vorliegenden Radiokarbondaten einer kritischen Revision unterzogen und erstmals einheitlich kalibriert. Neben den Datierungen sind 60 prähistorische Fundplätze in detaillierter Form in einem Katalog erfasst. Zur Überwindung bekannter Probleme berücksichtigt die überarbeitete Chronologie Formations- und Transformationsprozesse arider Gebiete sowie die Möglichkeit der Vermischung von mehrphasigem Fundmaterial auf den holozänen Nilterrassen. Vor dem Hintergrund frühholozäner klimatischer und hydrographischer Szenarien ist der Wandel der Subsistenzstrategien von Jagd-Fischfang-Sammeln zu Viehzucht-Wildbeutertum in den Kontext eines tiefgreifenden sozialen Wandels eingebettet, der die Neudefinition von Raum, die Veränderung von Bestattungssitten/Jenseitsvorstellungen, die Etablierung eines Tauschnetzwerks, u.a. für Tiere und Tierprodukte, mit einer Orientierung zur Küste des Roten Meeres und zum ägyptischen Niltal hin sowie die Einführung neuer Objekttypen/Darstellungsformen von Prestige einschließt.

The study deals with the Neolithisation in the Middle Nile valley in two respects: (1) as a chronological sequence that allows to reconstruct this process of transformation in the long term (7000−4500 calBC), and (2) as an assessment of temporality and causality implicit to the introduction of domesticated species into the study area by 5000 calBC. As for both objectives chronological precision is an indispensable prerequisite, the significance of 274 available radiocarbon dates is critically evaluated while all dates are consistently calibrated for the first time. Beside their datings, 60 prehistoric sites are discussed in detail in the catalogue. To overcome known problems, the chronological revision involves formation and transformation processes specific to arid environments, as well as the possibility of multi-period find admixtures at Holocene Nile terraces. Against the background of Early Holocene climatic and hydrographic scenarios, the change of subsistence modes from hunter-fisher-gatherer to pastoralists-forager is embedded in the context of a fundamental social transformation including the re-definition of space, the alteration of burial customs/concepts of afterlife, the establishment of exchange networks oriented towards the Red Sea coast and the Egyptian Nile valley through which animal and animal products are traded, as well as the introduction of new object types/displays of prestige.

Reconnaissance survey in the Murzuq area, some 150 km south-east of Jarma, was carried out as part of the 2011 field programme of the Desert Migrations Project, with separate funding from the Leverhulme Trust for this element of work entitled the ‘Peopling the Desert Project’. This survey was designed to provide field verification of details of settlement systems identified and mapped from high-resolution satellite images in an area of c. 600 km2 immediately east of the oasis town of Murzuq. Examination of high-resolution QuickBird and Ikonos satellite imagery has permitted identification of a large dossier of more than 200 sites (fortified buildings known as qsur, other settlements, cemeteries, wells, fields/gardens and linear irrigation works called foggaras). The majority of these sites have never been previously noted or mapped and the date of the sites was unknown at the outset, though they clearly pertained to the historic periods. While further study of the finds and scientific dating evidence is required, the initial results of the brief field visit have major implications for our understanding of Garamantian and early Islamic settlement in south-eastern Fazzan.