We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
This bibliography presents a list of titles that help the reader to understand the African prehistory from the time of the first hominids in the Plio-Pleistone up to the spread of iron technology after c.500 BC. The Greek school at Alexandria gathered important records and it was there that Eratosthenes, about 2000 BC, made the first scientific measurement of the circumference of the earth. Neolithic man has left behind him fewer skeletal remains than did his predecessors whose large Epi-Palaeolithic cemeteries at Afalou bou Rhumel, Taforalt and Columnata have each been the subject of important research. The sole work concerned with the physical anthropology of the Neolithic peoples deals only with the Saharan regions and, in addition, devotes considerable space to the protohistoric populations. Both in the Atlas and the massifs of the Sahara, the Neolithic saw an extraordinary flowering of rock art.
This bibliography presents a list of titles that help the reader to understand African prehistory. The initial and main impetus for the study of African prehistory has come from two directions: on the one hand from French geologists, palaeontologists and archaeologists working in the Maghrib and later in the Sahara, who applied the western European terminology; and, on the other hand, from investigators in South Africa who introduced their own terminology because of the morphological differences between the artefact assemblages from Africa and Europe and the lack of reliable means of dating and making correlations over such great distances. For the various geographic regions of the continent there are a number of monographs providing detailed and/or specialized information. The development of food production is more generally associated with the so-called 'neolithic' occurrences in northern and West Africa and in the East African Rift.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.