View of Takarkori shelter from the west. Credit: Savino di Lernia, 2020
Note from CiC added - The Holocene is the name given to the last 11,700 years* of the Earth's history — the time since the end of the last major glacial epoch, or "ice age." Since then, there have been small-scale climate shifts — notably the "Little Ice Age" between about 1200 and 1700 A.D.
Catfish and tilapia make up many of the animal remains uncovered in the Saharan environment of the Takarkori rock shelter in southwestern Libya, according to a study published February 19, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Wim Van Neer from the the Natural History Museum in Belgium, Belgium and Savino di Lernia, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, and colleagues.
Today, the Saharan Tadrart Acacus mountains are windy, hot, and hyperarid; however, the fossil record shows that for much of the early and middle Holocene (10,200 to 4650 years BP), this region was humid and rich in water as well as life, with evidence of multiple human settlements and diverse fauna.
Rock shelters within the Tadrart Acacus preserve not only significant floral and faunal remains, but also significant cultural artifacts and rock art due to early Holocene occupation of these shelters. In this study, the authors worked with the Libyan Department of Antiquities in excavating parts of the Takarkori rock shelter to identify and date animal remains found at this site and investigate shifts in the abundance and type of these animal remains over time.
Fish remains made up almost 80 percent of the entire find overall, which numbered 17,551 faunal remains total (19 percent of these were mammal remains, with bird, reptile, mollusc, and amphibian remains the last 1.3 percent). All of the fish and most of the other remains were determined to be human food refuse, due to cut marks and traces of burning—the two fish genera at Takarkori were identified as catfish and tilapia.
Based on the relative dates for these remains, the amount of fish decreased over time (from 90 percent of all remains 10,200-8000 years BP versus only 40 percent of all remains 5900-4650 years BP) as the number of mammal remains increased, suggesting the inhabitants of Takarkori gradually focused more on hunting/livestock. The authors also found the proportion of tilapia specifically decreased more significantly over time, which may have been because catfish have accessory breathing organs allowing them to breathe air and survive in shallow, high-temperature waters—further evidence that this now-desert environment became less favorable to fish as the aridity increased.
The authors add: "This study reveals the ancient hydrographic network of the Sahara and its interconnection with the Nile, providing crucial information on the dramatic climate changes that led to the formation of the largest hot desert in the world. Takarkori rock shelter has once again proved to be a real treasure for African archaeology and beyond: a fundamental place to reconstruct the complex dynamics between ancient human groups and their environment in a changing climate."
Second older post on same place.
MARCH 16, 2018, Entomologist confirms first Saharan farming 10,000 years ago, by University of Huddersfield
Takarkori rock shelter. Credit: University of Huddersfield
By analysing a prehistoric site in the Libyan desert, a team of researchers from the universities of Huddersfield, Rome and Modena & Reggio Emilia has been able to establish that people in Saharan Africa were cultivating and storing wild cereals 10,000 years ago. In addition to revelations about early agricultural practices, there could be a lesson for the future, if global warming leads to a necessity for alternative crops.
The importance of find came together through a well-established official collaboration between the University of Huddersfield and the University of Modena & Reggio Emilia.
The team has been investigating findings from an ancient rock shelter at a site named Takarkori in south-western Libya. It is desert now, but in the Holocene age, some 10,000 years ago, it was part of the "green Sahara" and wild cereals grew there. More than 200,000 seeds—in small circular concentrations—were discovered at Takarkori, which showed that hunter-gatherers developed an early form of agriculture by harvesting and storing crops.
But an alternative possibility was that ants, which are capable of moving seeds, had been responsible for the concentrations. Dr. Stefano Vanin, the University of Huddersfield's Reader in Forensic Biology and a leading entomologist in the forensic and archaeological fields, analysed a large number of samples, now stored at the University of Modena & Reggio Emilia. His observations enabled him to demonstrate that insects were not responsible and this supports the hypothesis of human activity in collection and storage of the seeds
The investigation at Takarkori provided the first-known evidence of storage and cultivation of cereal seeds in Africa. The site has yielded other key discoveries, including the vestiges of a basket, woven from roots, that could have been used to gather the seeds. Also, chemical analysis of pottery from the site demonstrates that cereal soup and cheese were being produced.
A new article that describes the latest findings and the lessons to be learned appears in the journal Nature Plants. Titled Plant behaviour from human imprints and the cultivation of wild cereals in Holocene Sahara, it is co-authored by Anna Maria Mercuri, Rita Fornaciari, Marina Gallinaro, Savino di Lernia and Dr. Vanin.
One of the article's conclusions is that although the wild cereals, harvested by the people of the Holocene Sahara, are defined as "weeds" in modern agricultural terms, they could be an important food of the future.
"The same behaviour that allowed these plants to survive in a changing environment in a remote past makes them some of the most likely possible candidates as staple resources in a coming future of global warming. They continue to be successfully exploited and cultivated in Africa today and are attracting the interest of scientists searching for new food resources," state the authors.
Research based on findings at Takarkori continues. Dr. Vanin is supervising Ph.D. student Jennifer Pradelli—one of a cohort of doctoral candidates at the University of Huddersfield funded by a £1 million award from the Leverhulme Trust—and she is analysing insect evidence in order to learn more about the evolution of animal breeding at the site.
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