Neolithic Subpluvial

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The Neolithic Subpluvial was an extended period of wet and rainy conditions in the climate history of northern Africa. It began during the 7th millennium BCE and was strong for about 2000 years; it waned over time and ended in the 4th millennium BCE. Then the drier conditions that prevailed prior to the Neolithic Subpluvial returned; desertification advanced, and the Sahara desert formed (or re-formed). Arid conditions continued through to the present day.^[1]

During the Neolithic Subpluvial, large areas of North, Central, and East Africa had hydrographic profiles significantly different from later norms. Existing lakes had surfaces tens of meters higher than today, sometimes with alternative drainages: Lake Turkana, in present-day Kenya, drained into the Nile River basin. Lake Chad reached a maximum extent of some 400,000 square kilometers in surface area, larger than the modern Caspian Sea, with a surface level about 30 meters (100 feet) higher than its twentieth-century average. Some shallower lakes and river systems existed in the subpluvial era that later disappeared entirely, and are detectable today only via radar and satellite imagery.

North Africa enjoyed a fertile climate during the subpluvial era; what is now the Sahara supported a savanna type of ecosystem, with elephant, giraffe, and other grassland and woodland animals now typical of the Sahel region south of the desert. Clement and fertile conditions supported human settlement of the Nile Valley in Egypt, as well as neolithic societies in Sudan and throughout the region. The culture that created the rock art of Tassili n'Ajjer in southeastern Algeria flourished during the subpluvial period.

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^ Sources differ on specific date ranges, which necessarily varied over such a wide geographic expanse. Bard, p. 863, gives "9000–5000 BP," or 7000–3000 BCE, for the duration of the subpluvial. Wilkinson, p. 372, places the end of the subpluvial c. 3300 BCE.

[edit] References

Bard, Kathryn A., ed. Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London, Routledge, 1999.
Burroughs, William J., ed. Climate: Into the 21st Century. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Howell, Francis Clark, and François Bourlière. African Ecology and Human Evolution. London, Routledge, 2004 (reprint of the 1964 edition).
Wilkinson, Toby A. H. Early Dynastic Egypt. London, Routledge, 1999.