Origins and Development of Herding in the Sahara

Archaeological information on the origins and development of herding in the Sahara comes from a few restricted regions, some of which, however, have provided a great harvest of data. This article focuses on three of them: the Egyptian Western Desert, the Libyan Central Sahara, and the Nigerien Southern Sahara, located respectively at the eastern (Egyptian Western Desert) and southern (Nigerien Southern Sahara) margins of the Sahara, and in its central part (Libyan Central Sahara). These regions occupy distinct geographical and environmental zones that represent different adaptational strategies by pastoralist people in the Sahara. Domesticated livestock entered the African continent from south-western Asia. Small livestock have no autochthonous species in Africa and, although wild aurochs lived in North Africa, multiple lines of evidence, including genetic data, rule out successful indigenous domestication of large livestock. When domestic herds and herders entered north-eastern Africa, the cultural milieu of the region featured complex groups of hunter-gatherers with a delayed-return economy, technical knowledge accumulation, and nearly sedentary settlement systems that were pre-adapted to incorporate new economic resources. A number of archaeological records, including rock art, funerary practices, and artifactual materials support the archaeological record of pastoral communities in the Sahara. Early herders acquired a few livestock and maintained a semi-sedentary settlement system, like late hunter-gatherers. Only much later, full-fledged pastoralists practiced longdistance nomadism across the Sahara and beyond.