Human occupations and environmental changes in the Nile valley during the Holocene: The case of Kerma in Upper Nubia (northern Sudan)

A monumental cemetery built by eastern Africa’s first herders near Lake Turkana, Kenya

“…However, Turkana pillar sites lack obvious material cultural links to monumental sites in other regions. Forms of expression vary: cattle burials in the central Sahara (17), megaliths in the eastern Sahara (18), aggregate cemeteries in the southern Sahara and along the Nile (15,19,(21)(22)(23), built mortuary spaces in the Red Sea Hills (20) and around Lake Turkana (described here), and cairn and cremation treatments linked to early pastoralism in central Kenya (40,41). Together, these examples show that distinct forms of commemoration and mortuary treatment arose independently along the arc of herding's spread through Africa, each stimulated by local conditions and needs.…”

“…BP) and Gobero in the south-central Sahara (35 burials, ∼7,200-4,500 cal. BP) included personal adornments with some burials (15,19). As herding spread south and east amid increasing aridity after 6,500 cal.…”

Humans as Agents in the Termination of the African Humid Period

“…More secure contexts for domesticated animals in the Fayum Depression date to 7350 years BP and are associated with fish remains and a diverse array of mobility and settlement practices ( Figure 4F; Linseele et al, 2014). Further up the Nile River, low mobility pastoral economies inhabit the alluvial plain beginning 7300 years BP (Honegger and Williams, 2015). In the Acacus Mountains of southwestern Libya, strontium isotopes from burials are used to argue for a possible increase in mobility patterns through the Holocene as the climate became drier (Tafuri et al, 2006).…”

Holocene fluvial history of the Nile's west bank at ancient Thebes, Luxor, Egypt, and its relation with cultural dynamics and basin‐wide hydroclimatic variability

“…) and is corroborated regionally by the geological survey of Attia (), who similarly found coarse‐grained deposits >11 m below the present surface in the Luxor region. The onset of flood plain formation is thought to coincide with a reoccupation of the flood plain by humans in the Nile Valley (Honegger & Williams, ; Kuper & Kröpelin, ). If the 5000–2500 B.C.E.…”

“…The Nile valley has been occupied by humans during much of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene periods (Butzer, 1976;Honegger, and Williams, 2015;Said, 1993). Archaeological sites of prehistoric date are clustered on what is currently the desert edge (Honegger, & Williams, 2015;Takamiya, 2008;Vermeersch, Paulissen, and van Neer, 1990;Wendorf, & Schild, 1976), perhaps situated out of reach of turbulent Nile flows that prevailed during the earlier part of the Holocene (Butzer, 1998). The cultural migration into the Nile Valley broadly corresponds in time with the establishment of the modern (fine-grained) Nile flood plain after 6000 B.C.E.…”