Journal of Water and Environmental Sciences (Jun 2019)
CLIMATO-MOBILITE PRE-HOLOCENE DES POPULATIONS SEPTENTRIONALES ARICAINES : IMPACT SUR LE CONTEXTE SOCIETAL SAHARIEN
Abstract
Within the last 22 ka BP of Mediterranean Late Pleistocene and Holocene periods, when unstable cold-dry recurrent climatic fluctuations are evidenced, several conditions were alternatively settled (Older Dryas episode/Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations/Heinrich event 1: 18.5-15 ka BP). Mild and humid episodes of Bölling-Alleröd interstadials were settled by 15-12.9 ka BP before a cold-arid Younger Dryas (12.9-11.7 ka BP). By Holocene, a moderate variability disturbing a climatic improvement labelled the African Humid Period (AHP) (9.8-5.5 ka BP) was stopped by an unevenly short cold-dry period (~8.2 ka BP), before the development of humid conditions (8-5-5 ka BP), followed by a progressive decreasing period of drier arid episodes (~4.5-3 ka BP), leading to landscape changes.In this climatic context dependent on African specificities, Holocene populations of Western Saharanand Sahelian environments with archaeological settlements (and graveyards) would be the result of ante-Holocene long distance mobility. Some of them are descendants of North-African Cro-Magnon groups (known as Mechta-Afalou). They are noticed until mid-Holocene along the Saharan Atlantic coast, on Algerian Hoggar foothills, and around lacustrine Northern Mali, while Melanoderm groups are settled on Tassili, Téfedest ridges, and hypothetical descendants of some gracile Mediterranean groups are present in Northern Mali, near lakes and rivers banks, until the final Holocene. What could be the societal consequences of this climate-mobility? Would it be possible to examine a potential “together way of life” and observe adapted regional behavior implying resilient strengths of a new dynamism?
