The Lower and Upper Later Stone Age of North Africa.

The North African Later Stone Age (LSA), its transition from the Middle Stone Age, its development and end are very peculiar and do not display substantial affinities with other contemporary cultures in the Mediterranean or the Nile Valley. Some groups were likely to have moved into the Maghreb and coastal Africa, where their culture survived until about 40 ka BP. However, beginning from that time, archaeological sites seem to be drastically reduced in many parts of North Africa. What happened to the Aterians? From an anatomical point of view, they were fully modern and therefore they had the cognitive skills to shift to more efficient technologies. Neanderthals were replaced by modern humans in Europe and south-western Asia, but this was not the case in North Africa. If Aterians undertook a cultural transition without having to deal with a competing species, why so few people lived in coastal Africa in the late Upper Pleistocene, where the climate was certainly not optimal, but definitely better than in Europe, where Upper Palaeolithic cultures rapidly flourished everywhere? What was “wrong” with North Africa, which until then had been able to offer a supportive environment to modern humans for the previous 100/150 ka?