A western riverine route for human migration to North Africa in the Abbassia Pluvial

Interesting study on paleo-rivers of the Sahara providing insight for a likely route for Homo sapiens to cross the Sahara towards NW Africa.

Tom J. Coulthard et al., Were Rivers Flowing across the Sahara During the Last Interglacial? Implications for Human Migration through Africa. PLoS ONE 2013. Open access → LINK [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0074834]

Abstract

Human migration north through Africa is contentious. This paper uses a novel palaeohydrological and hydraulic modelling approach to test the hypothesis that under wetter climates c.100,000 years ago major river systems ran north across the Sahara to the Mediterranean, creating viable migration routes. We confirm that three of these now buried palaeo river systems could have been active at the key time of human migration across the Sahara. Unexpectedly, it is the most western of these three rivers, the Irharhar river, that represents the most likely route for human migration. The Irharhar river flows directly south to north, uniquely linking the mountain areas experiencing monsoon climates at these times to temperate Mediterranean environments where food and resources would have been abundant. The findings have major implications for our understanding of how humans migrated north through Africa, for the first time providing a quantitative perspective on the probabilities that these routes were viable for human habitation at these times.

Figure 2. Simulated probability of surface water during the last interglacial.
This figure details Archaeological sites, and an annual probability that a location has surface water. The archaeological data are derived from a number of sources (including [42], [66], [67], [68]. The findspots are characterised by Aterian and Middle Stone Age artefacts such as bifacial foliates and stemmed Aterian points and/or typical ‘Mousterian’ points, side scrapers and Levallois technology. Most are represented by surface scatters but where stratified examples exist these can be shown by dating (OSL and U-series techniques) and geomorphological setting to belong within MIS 5e [41], [42].

As discussed in other occasions, it seems likely that some genetic remnants of those early migrations are still visible in at least some NW Africans.

See also:

• North African autosomal genetics through the prism of ADMIXTURE.
• Major upheaval of human Y-DNA phylogeny: we are all 'A' now (on some very ancient lineages shared by West and North Africans).