Archaeologists from Macquarie University and Polish Academy of Science’s Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Culture have discovered 16 new rock art sites in the Sudanese Eastern Desert or the ‘Atbai.’ Almost all of the newly-discovered artwork, which dates back 4,000 years, features the presence of cattle.
Painted rock art at a site around Gebel Nahoganet in the Sudanese Eastern Desert. Image credit: Cooper et al., doi: 10.1177/03075133231211.
“It was puzzling to find cattle carved on desert rock walls as they require plenty of water and acres of pasture, and would not survive in the dry and arid environment of the Sahara today,” said Dr. Julien Cooper, a researcher at Macquarie University.
“The presence of cattle in ancient rock art is one of the most important pieces of evidence establishing a once ‘green Sahara’.”
The rock art discovered in Eastern Sudan also paints the desert as a grassy savannah, brimming with pools, rivers, swamps and waterholes and home to a variety of African savannah fauna such as the giraffe and elephant.
The idea of a ‘green Sahara’ has been proven in previous archaeological and climatic fieldwork and research, with experts referring to this as the ‘African humid period’ — a time of increased summer monsoon rainfall which began approximately 15,000 years ago and ended roughly 5,000 years ago.
Depictions of humans alongside the cattle could indicate the act of milking, suggesting the region was once occupied by cattle pastoralists until as late as the second or third millennium BCE.
After this point, decreasing rainfall rendered cattle pastoralism impossible.
Today, this region receives almost no annual rainfall.
Following the end of the ‘African humid period’, around 3000 BCE, lakes and rivers began to dry up, sand covered dead pastures and most of the human population left the Sahara for refuge closer to the Nile.
“The Atbai Desert around Wadi Halfa, where the new rock art was discovered, became almost completely depopulated. For those who remained, cattle were abandoned for sheep and goats,” the archaeologists said.
“This would have had major ramification on all aspects of human life — from diet and limited milk supplies, migratory patterns of herding families and the identity and livelihood of those who depended on their cattle.”
The team’s paper was published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.
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Julien Cooper et al. 2023. Rock Art Surveys in the Sudanese Eastern Desert: Results of the 2018-2019 Atbai Survey Project. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 109 (1-2); doi: 10.1177/03075133231211
