Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 The palaeo-ecology of the African continent: the physical environment of Africa from earliest geological to Later Stone Age times
- 2 Origins and evolution of African Hominidae
- 3 The earliest archaeological traces
- 4 The cultures of the Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age
- 5 The Late Palaeolithic and Epi-Palaeolithic of northern Africa
- 6 The Later Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa
- 7 The rise of civilization in Egypt
- 8 Beginnings of pastoralism and cultivation in north-west Africa and the Sahara: origins of the Berbers
- 9 The origins of indigenous African agriculture
- 10 Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period in Egypt
- 11 Early food production in sub-Saharan Africa
- 12 Egypt, 1552–664 BC
- Bibliographical essays
- Bibliography
- Index
- Fig. 3.5 The distribution of sites known or believed to be older than 1.5 million years (i.e. Oldowan). (Modified from J. D. Clark 1967.)
- Fig. 3.6 The distribution of sites known or believed to be between 1.5 and 0.7 million years (i.e. Early Acheulian and Developed Oldowan).">
- Fig. 3.7 The location of Earlier Stone Age and Lower Palaeolithic sites thought to be between 0.7 and 0.1 million years old (i.e. Acheulian plus Developed Oldowan/Hope Fountain).
- Fig. 3.16 The ‘Zinjanthropus’ site at FLK, Bed I, Olduvai Gorge. A plan showing the distribution of an old ground–surface which was uncovered by excavation. A dense patch of discarded artifacts and introduced stones (manuports) coincides with a dense patch of broken–up animal bones. (After M. D. Leakey 1971.)
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- References
8 - Beginnings of pastoralism and cultivation in north-west Africa and the Sahara: origins of the Berbers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- 1 The palaeo-ecology of the African continent: the physical environment of Africa from earliest geological to Later Stone Age times
- 2 Origins and evolution of African Hominidae
- 3 The earliest archaeological traces
- 4 The cultures of the Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age
- 5 The Late Palaeolithic and Epi-Palaeolithic of northern Africa
- 6 The Later Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa
- 7 The rise of civilization in Egypt
- 8 Beginnings of pastoralism and cultivation in north-west Africa and the Sahara: origins of the Berbers
- 9 The origins of indigenous African agriculture
- 10 Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period in Egypt
- 11 Early food production in sub-Saharan Africa
- 12 Egypt, 1552–664 BC
- Bibliographical essays
- Bibliography
- Index
- Fig. 3.5 The distribution of sites known or believed to be older than 1.5 million years (i.e. Oldowan). (Modified from J. D. Clark 1967.)
- Fig. 3.6 The distribution of sites known or believed to be between 1.5 and 0.7 million years (i.e. Early Acheulian and Developed Oldowan).">
- Fig. 3.7 The location of Earlier Stone Age and Lower Palaeolithic sites thought to be between 0.7 and 0.1 million years old (i.e. Acheulian plus Developed Oldowan/Hope Fountain).
- Fig. 3.16 The ‘Zinjanthropus’ site at FLK, Bed I, Olduvai Gorge. A plan showing the distribution of an old ground–surface which was uncovered by excavation. A dense patch of discarded artifacts and introduced stones (manuports) coincides with a dense patch of broken–up animal bones. (After M. D. Leakey 1971.)
- Plate Section
- Plate Section
- Plate Section
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- Plate Section
- Plate Section
- Plate Section
- References
Summary
Africa is truly Mediterranean only along its northern coastal fringe. This is broader in the west, in the Maghrib (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), than in the east in Libya, for here the desert reaches practically to the shoreline, the only exception being in Cyrenaica where certain characteristics of the Maghribian tell country reappear in modified form. The hinterland of the Gulf of Gabès (Petite Syrte) is desertic and, although it was never a complete barrier, it nonetheless forms an ecotone which has shown itself to be of considerable stability for thousands of years. To the west of this Herodotus placed the sedentary Libyans and contrasted these with the nomadic Libyans whom he described as living between the Nile and Lake Triton, to be identified with the great chotts (an Arabic word meaning grazing land) in the south of what is now Tunisia (Camps 1961a, Gsell 1914–28).
The countries of the Maghrib are the only ones in Africa that show a truly youthful topography, for the mountains belong within the Alpine system of orogenesis or mountain building. These structural features, together with their northerly latitude, explain why these countries appear to be more characteristically Mediterranean than their eastern neighbours. However, as soon as the traveller moves into the interior this illusion is quickly dispelled: the almost European-like countryside of the coast with its wild and cultivated species of Mediterranean plants and the forests of the Atlas tell give place to open country, now fully African in appearance, and thence to steppe and pre-desertic vegetation broken only occasionally by rare stands of trees in the Saharan Atlas.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Africa , pp. 548 - 623Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982
References
- 16
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