Late Prehistoric Cultural Adaptation in Southwest Egypt and the Problem of the Nilotic Origins of Saharan Cattle Pastoralism

Late Prehistoric Cultural Adaptation in Southwest Egypt and the Problem of the NiloticOrigins of Saharan Cattle PastoralismAuthor(s): William P. McHughSource: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 11 (1974), pp. 9-22Published by: American Research Center in EgyptStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40000769 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 11:55

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Research Center in Egypt is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toJournal of the American Research Center in Egypt.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.13 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 11:55:59 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=arce

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40000769?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Late Prehistoric Cultural Adaptation in Southwest Egypt and the Problem of the Nilotic Origins

of Saharan Cattle Pastoralism

William P. McHugh

Introduction

One might wonder what southwest Egypt has to do with the Nilotic origins of Saharan cattle pastoralism. Very briefly, the two areas are con- nected by suggestions that Saharan cattle pastoralism originated in or diffused through the Nile Valley from where it spread westward in late prehistoric times.1 The Gilf Kebir and Jebel 'Uweinat massifs, located about 600 km. from the Nile River in southwest Egypt and northwest Sudan, provide abundant evidence of the presence of cattle pastoralists in the late prehistoric period. The wadis of 'Uweinat con- tain hundreds of engravings and paintings of cattle and cattle-related activities. In the much larger area covered by the Gilf Kebir, paintings and engravings depicting domestic cattle are much fewer in number but no less definite in showing the former presence of the cattle pastoralists. The Gilf-'Uweinat area is the most easterly outpost of the widespread Saharan rock-art complex in which painted scenes of cattle and cattle-related activities predominate. There is a broad gap in the distribution of rock- art between the Nile Valley and the Gilf-

'Uweinat area. This fact has geographic, ecological, and historical implications which will be considered later in this paper.

The Gilf -'Uweinat area is strategically situated to cast light on various hypotheses which invoke a westward spread of cattle pastoralism from the Nile Valley. This problem cannot, of course, be solved solely on the basis of evidence from the Gilf Kebir and Jebel 'Uweinat even were the data from there as complete as we should like it to be. However, if our interpretation of the significance of this evidence is acceptable, then new hypotheses concerning the origins of Saharan cattle pastoralism may be formulated and tested.

The following sections will review the rock- art, artif actual, and settlement pattern evidence from the Gilf^Uweinat area. This data will be considered in the light of a model of cattle pastoralism derived from several African socie- ties and the geographic requirements of the fauna depicted in the rock-art. A brief characterization of the paleogeographic conditions of the Gilf-'Uweinat area when it was inhabited by cattle pastoralists will be presented. The implications of the cultural ecological model for the postulated spread of cattle pastoralism from the Nile Valley into the Libyan and Saharan zones will be outlined and specific hypotheses on the Nilotic origin of Saharan cattle pastoralism will be evaluated.

1 H. Rhotert, Libysche Felsbildev (1952); K. W. Butzer, Environment and Archeology (1964) ; R. Mauny, "L'Afrique et les Origines de la Domestication/' in Background to Evolution in Africa, ed W. W. Bishop and J. D. Clark (1967), 583-99; H. Epstein, TheOrigins of Domestic Animals of Africa (1971); J. D. Clark, The Prehistory of Africa (1970).

9



IO JARCE XI (1974)

Map 1.

The Gilf Kebir and Jebel Uweinat Massifs in the Southern Libyan Desert (2000 and 3000 ft. contours shown. Scale: one degree of latitude = ca. 68 statute miles or no km.)



LATE PREHISTORIC CULTURAL ADAPTATION II

Cultural Adaptation in the Gilf-'Uweinat Area in Late Prehistoric Times

Several kinds of evidence are needed for the development of a model of the cultural ecology of the late prehistoric inhabitants of the Gilf- 'Uweinat area. Ideally, the suite of evidence includes i) faunal remains, 2) botanical remains, including plant pollen, 3) geological and geo- morphological evidence relating to 4) sites of human activities with 5) artifactual remains (stone tools, ceramics, etc.), and 6) rock-art depictions of the wild and domestic animals and human activities, all of which are somehow datable. It must be admitted that the available evidence from the Gilf-'Uweinat area falls well short of the ideal. Nevertheless, an approach to reconstructing the paleogeographic conditions of the late prehistoric period and the cultural adaptive modes can be offered and checked against the available evidence.

The primary sources of evidence employed in this section are the two monographs on the rock- art of the area by Rhotert2 and Winkler,3 several reports on the geology and geomorphology,4 and my analysis of the artifactual remains collected by Oliver Myers from a wadi in the southern Gilf Kebir.5 The rock-art looms especially large in this reconstruction because it provides evidence of the native and domestic fauna present

in the area and of human activities related to these animals. Unfortunately, this evidence is not supplemented by faunal remains as none of the latter have been recovered from prehistoric contexts.

Winkler6 offered the first comprehensive survey and interpretation of the rock-art of the Gilf-'Uweinat area. He accompanied Major R.A. Bagnold on the latter's 1938 expedition to the area; Oliver Myers was the archaeologist on this expedition. Winkler surveyed the rock-art in several wadis in the eastern part of Jebel >Uweinat and at one site in the southern Gilf Kebir. He found that scenes with engravings of several species of wild animals (giraffes, ostriches, Barbary sheep, scimitar oryx, but no elephants), cattle, dogs, and humans were numerous on the exposed surfaces (rock walls, boulders) within the wadis. Paintings which featured cattle, human figures (mostly males), a few shelter-like designs and domestic scenes, and very few wild animals (and no dogs) were restricted to small caves and shelters along the wadis.

According to Winkler,7 both the paintings and engravings were the product of the same groups, the women being responsible for the paintings, the men being responsible for the engravings. Serious doubt has been cast on this interpretation by Monod.8 While it is not possible to order the Gilf-'Uweinat rock-art on the basis of super- impositions or other direct means, it is suggested that the mutually exclusive distribution of the engravings and the paintings and their different content represent activities of different periods of time. Similarly, the rare appearance of cattle in scenes depicting wild species and the predo- minance of cattle in some engravings and in the paintings suggest that temporal differences, as well as adaptive differences, exist in the rock- art. It would appear that cattle were not in-

2 Rhotert, Libysche Felsbildev (1952). 3 Hans A. Winkler, Rock-drawings of Southern Upper

Egypt II (1939). 4 R. F. Peel, "The Gilf Kebir/' Geog. /., 93 (1939),

295-307; R. F. Peel, "Denudational Landforms of the Central Libyan Desert/' Journal of Geomorphology, 4 (1941), 3-23; K. S. Sandford, "Geology and Geomor- phology of the Southern Libyan Desert/' Geog. /., 82 (I933)> 213-19; K. S. Sandford, "Geological Obser- vations on the Northwest Frontiers of the Anglo- Egyptian Sudan and the Adjoining Part of the Southern Libyan Desert," Quart. J. Geol. Soc. London, 9i (i935)> 323-81.

5 William P. McHugh, "Late Prehistoric Cultural Adaptation in the Southeastern Libyan Desert/' Diss. University of Wisconsin, 1971 ; McHugh, "Some Archaeological Results of the Bagnold-Mond 1938 Ex- pedition to the Gilf Kebir and Gebel »Uweinat, Southern Libyan Desert," Journal of Near Eastern Studies (in press).

6 Winkler, Rock-drawings II (1939). 7 Ibid. 8 Theodore Monod, "The Late Tertiary and Pleisto-

cene in the Sahara," in African Ecology and Human Evolution, ed. F. C. Howell and F. Bourliere (Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, 36 [1963]), 117- 229; McHugh, Diss. (1971).



12 JARCE XI (1974)

digenous to the area but were introduced from elsewhere well after the practice of engraving had begun.

On the basis of the foregoing arguments and

by comparison with the rock-art sequences developed for the Ennedi highlands in eastern Chad9 and Tibesti in northern Chad,10 the fol-

lowing chronology is suggested for the Gilf- 'Uweinat rock-art :

1. engravings featuring native species, armed humans, and dogs ;

2. engravings featuring native species and very rare cattle ;

3. engravings dominated by cattle often with decorated coats;

4. paintings dominated by scenes depicting cattle (often with conspicuous udders and mottled and piebald coats), archers and other male figures, a few females and children, domestic scenes (shelter-like structures with utilitarian objects), very rare wild animals and no dogs.

This chronology implies that two different adaptive modes were present at different times, one based on the hunting of wild animals, the other based on the herding of domestic cattle. Undoubtedly, other activities such as plant collecting supplemented hunting andpastoralism as is indicated by the milling equipment in the artif actual assemblages.

By using the geographic requirements of the fauna of the rock-art, a crude model of the late prehistoric environment of the Gilf-'Uweinat area can be outlined. I have developed this model elsewhere11 and will only summarize the salient features here. I assume, naturally, that the animals depicted in the rock-art were actually present in the Gilf-'Uweinat area. These species

were clearly of major concern to the hunter- artists and the pastoral-artists and were, by inference, vital for human existence. The presence of giraffes, ostriches, oryx, and other animals in the rock-art implies the existence of conditions adequate to their biological needs. A survey of the present day distribution of giraffes in Africa leads to the conclusion that this wide-ranging, specialized creature is at home in semi-arid, open steppe to woodland savannah zones which receive from 200 mm./yr. to 800 mm./yr. rainfall at the present time.12 Even where giraffes are found in areas at the lower end of this rainfall gradient, they are only a few days travel from areas at the high end of the gradient. Thus, the highly mobile giraffe can easily exploit very large areas and is probably not closely limited in its distribution by specific rainfall isohyets. Nevertheless, the present annual rainfall range which supports the vegetation required by giraffes should approximate the rainfall which the Gilf-'Uweinat area ex- perienced when giraffes were present there.

Ostriches (Struthio camelus) are found on the fringe of the desert, where grassy plains and scrub vegetation alternate with hard sandy areas, into moderately vegetated areas with low trees and brush.13 This is country which overlaps with the lower half of the rainfall range which supports giraffes. Although presently scarce along the southern Saharan border, ostriches are common enough in the grasslands and savan- nahs of East Africa to suggest that these are their normal habitats.

The scimitar oryx {Oryx dammah Cretzsch- mar), with its distinctive pair of long, simply curved, rearward-pointing horns, is fairly common in the rock-art of Jebel 'Uweinat and in a northern wadi of the Gilf. Presently, this species frequents the northern fringe of the Sudanic steppe from the Atlantic to the

Republic of the Sudan, the zone characterized by extensive grasslands broken with low trees

8 G. Bailloud's chronology outlined inMonod, op. cit., 187.

10 P. Huard's chronology outlined in Monod, loc. cit. 11 McHugh, Diss. (1971) and "A Model of Human

Adaptation in the Gilf-'Uweinat Area in Late Pre- historic Times/' in Quaternaire et la Prihistoire du Jebel 'Uweinat, by F. Van Noten and others. Annales, Muse*e Royal de FAfrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium (in press).

12 McHugh, Diss. (1971), 184-86; J. D. Clark, Atlas of African Prehistory (1967), overlays 4 and 29.

13 D. A. Bannerman, "Ostrich," in A New Dictionary of Birds, ed. A. L. Thomson (1964), 569-71.



LATE PREHISTORIC CULTURAL ADAPTATION 13

and brush.14 This zone receives from about 200 mm./yr. to 400 mm./yr. rainfall.

On the basis of the modern vegetation and pluviometric requirements of these three species, it is suggested that the Gilf-'Uweinat area received in excess of 200 mm. annual rainfall and perhaps as much as 600-800 mm. in some locales. At present, the 200 mm./yr. isohyet lies between about 140 and 150 N. Latitude in the central Sudan, seven degrees of latitude south of Jebel 'Uweinat.

Are this amount of annual rainfall and the associated vegetation patterns sufficient to meet the needs of the late prehistoric domestic cattle? Before answering this question, one point must be made. The cattle depicted in the Gilf- 'Uweinat rock-art exhibit none of the features which are diagnostic of most modern African cattle, e.g. neck or shoulder humps and dewlaps.15 Zebu and Zebu-derived cattle are numerically dominant in the semi-arid areas of Africa today, probably because of their well-known adaptive capabilities, e.g. resistance to certain diseases, ability to survive on nutritionally inferior plant foods, ability to withstand high temperatures and high levels of insolation.16 Indigenous African cattle breeds have been largely replaced by or hybridized with Zebu cattle during the last several millennia. It may be assumed then that Zebu and Zebu-crosses are better adapted to the bioclimatic conditions of the semi-arid areas of present day Africa than would be "pure- bred" descendants of indigenous prehistoric African cattle. If this is the case, I suggest that

the bioclimatic parameters which govern the distribution of African cattle today must be considered the minimal conditions which permitted extensive cattle pastoralism to be practiced in the late prehistoric period.

Cattle are demanding animals; they require water daily or nearly every day under present conditions. In semi-arid areas, the rainy season is one of prosperity for cattle pastoralists as their animals get fat and produce decent quantities of milk during this period. However, in the dry season, especially when surface water disappears and pasturage shrinks and becomes minimally nutritious, great stress is placed on the cattle, and great effort is often required of the cattle owners to supply water and to find even poor pastures. To make matters worse, temperatures climb to their highest levels in the last weeks of the dry season and only begin to subside with the onset of the reliable rains. Filling the needs of the cattle during the dry season is critical for their survival; presumably, this was the case during the late prehistoric period as well.

A limited survey of African cattle pastoralists including the Baggara Humr of western Sudan,17 the Wodaabe Fulani of northeastern Nigeria,18 and the Jie and Turkana from adjacent parts of Kenya and Uganda19 establishes the following minimal pluviometric requirements for cattle pastoralism: 1) a minimum of ca. 250 mm. annual rainfall and the presence of some areas within the territory of the pastoralists receiving ca. 600 mm. annual rainfall; 2) locales within the territory which retain water throughout the dry season (e.g. rocky formations, low-lying depressions, river beds); 3) relatively broad areas of pasture.20

This admittedly limited survey of African cattle pastoralism shows that the pluviometric requirements of domestic cattle fit nicely into the range which supports giraffes, ostriches, and oryx. In general, the same vegetation mosaic

14 L. Brown, Africa: A Natural History (1965), 64. 15 W. Deshler, "Cattle in Africa: Distribution,

Types, and Problems/' Geog. Review, 53 (1963), 52-8; H. Epstein, The Origins (197 1).

16 Major C. Wheaton-Smith, "Cattle Breeds- a Study- in Progressive Hybridization/1 in Man and Cattle , ed. A. E. Mourant and F. E. Zeuner (1963), 55-67; K. Schmidt-Nielsen, Desert Animals: Physiological Prob- lems of Heat and Water (1964) ; R. N. Sanders, "Animal Selection for the Tropical Environment/' in Tropical Pastures, ed. W. Davies and C. L. Skidmore (1966), 115-28; M. K. Yousef, L. Hahn and H. D. Johnson, "Adaptation of Cattle/' in Adaptation of Domestic Animals, ed. E. S. E. Hafez (1968), 233-45.

17 I. Cunninson, Baggara Arabs (1966). 18 D. J. Stenning, Savanah Nomads (1959). 19 P. H. Gulliver, The Family Herds (1955). 20 McHugh, Diss. (1971), 244.



14 JARCE XI (1974)

which supports these wild species will support domestic cattle. By assuming the existence of semi-arid climatic conditions in the late prehistoric period (alternation of rainy and dry seasons) and by applying the above requirements of domestic cattle to the Gilf-'Uweinat area, the wadis of 'Uweinat and the Gilf are identified as the locales where water was available during the dry season, and it was in these wadis that the pastoralists congregated with their cattle. Their presence there is manifest in the rock-art.

The pervious geological structure of Jebel 'Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir absorbed water in the rainy season and metered it out in the dry season. The cattle herds were probably moved about within the wadis for grazing or were led some distance outside onto the surrounding plains only to return for water during the dry season. During the rainy season, ephemeral pastures and pools of water attracted the

pastoralists away from the wadis and onto the plains for a period of several months. The danger of flash floods in the wadis must also have been recognized and avoided by the cattle pastoralists. During the rainy season, the Gilf- 5Uweinat pastoralists would have been widely dispersed across the plains exploiting the relatively plentiful grasses and water. They left faint traces on the plains which will be considered below.

What is the non-rupestral archaeological evidence for the above characterization of pastoral transhumance? Artifactual evidence of the occupation of the 'Uweinat wadis is virtually nil. De Heinzelin, Haesaerts and Van Noten21 report no artifact assemblages from within the 'Uweinat wadis. Oliver Myers22 recovered only very meager artifactual remains from two of the 'Uweinat shelters which had paintings. Perhaps such evidence has been flushed from these wadis

by the occasional torrents of the past several thousand years.

However, in two of the wadis of the southern Gilf Kebir, substantial artifactual remains were discovered by Myers. Only a limited collection was made in the Wadi Ard el Akhdar, but a systematic collection was made in the Wadi el Bakht where Myers spent several days collecting lithic and ceramic materials and in studying the geomorphic features related to these materials. Myers found four surface concentrations of lithic artifacts, two of which also contained pottery. Two of the concentrations were located on a sand dune which blocked the wadi and behind which were located lacustrine deposits.23 The concentration with the most pottery was located on the dried lake deposits, and the fourth concentration was located a few dozen meters below the blocking dune. Here then is good evidence of the association of artifactual remains with geomorphic evidence indicative of relatively humid conditions, an association which can be presumed to be contemporaneous.

A nearly identical situation obtained in the Wadi Ard el Akhdar. What are described as abundant "neolithic" remains (containing lithic artifacts and pottery) were found in close prox- imity to lacustrine deposits, the remnants of a second lake formed behind a blocking dune.24 It is clear that substantial and persistent bodies of water were present in these two wadis when they were occupied by the producers of the stone tools and the pottery. The immediate source of the water was probably the pervious sandstone formation that is the Gilf Kebir. Peel25 suggests that rain falling on the Gilf surface percolated through the sandstone formation and reappeared at the base of the cliffs as springs as one mechanism responsible for the formation of the wadis. If Peel's hypothesis is correct, it seems that the Gilf may have served as a giant

21 J. de Heinzelin, P. Haesaerts, and F. Van Noten, "Ge'ologie re*cente et prehistoire au Jebel Uweinat," Africa-Tervuren, 15 (1969), 120-25.

22 O. H. Myers, "The Sir Robert Mond Expedition of the Egypt Exploration Society," Geog. /., 93 (1939), 287-91.

23 O. H. Myers, "Notes concernant les gisements fouilles," unpublished manuscript in the Mus6e de 1'Homme, Paris; R. F. Peel, per. comm. and map made available to me.

24 Peel, Geog. /., 93 (1939), 306. 25 Peel, /. Geomorphology, 4 (1941), 17.




aquifer, storing water from local rains and dispensing it at the bases of the cliffs which lined the wadis.

Away from the Gilf and 'Uweinat massifs, the archaeological evidence for the presence of the cattle pastoralists is ambiguous. De Heinzelin et al.2Q have reported the presence of a number of archaeological sites on the plain near 'Uweinat with lithic and ceramic materials more or less encircling a broad basin which may have contained water. Bagnold27 reports the presence, some 30 to 50 miles east of the Gilf, of a chain of ancient lakes around which were found ex- tremely abundant "neolithic*' remains (e.g. querns, grinders, chipped stone tools, and hearths). Shaw28 collected "neolithic" stone tools and pottery from a broad area southeast of the Gilf and 'Uweinat. Unfortunately, these archaeological remains have not been published. Some are possibly the products of the cattle pastoralists if the ceramic similarities of some of Shaw's materials (which I examined in the British Museum and in the Pitt-Rivers Museum) with the 'Uweinat ceramics means anything.

It is not possible to positively identify the cattle pastoralists as the producers of the above mentioned archaeological assemblages. On slen- der grounds, the Wadi el Bakht materials may be attributed to the pastoral artists. The tenuous connections are: i) the presence of pottery in the Wadi el Bakht assemblages and the depiction of suspended containers (pots?) in some of the painted scenes ; drilled perforations in some of the sherds suggest they may have been suspended; 2) milling slabs (querns) are present in the Wadi el Bakht materials and possible representations of the same are depicted in one of the 'Uweinat paintings; 3) a couple of frag- ments of a unique lithic material, silica glass (whose only known source is in the Libyan Sand Sea north of the Gilf) , in the el Bakht assemblages and in the scrappy sample obtained by Myers in

one of the 'Uweinat caves. The near absence of outright hunting implements or components (e.g. stone arrowheads) in the el Bakht assemblages may indicate the unimportance of hunting for the producers of these remains, an interpretation not at variance with their presumed concentration on cattle pastoral activities.

Presumably, the hunter-artists left behind some evidence, other than the rock-art, of their presence in the Gilf-'Uweinat area. It is pre- mature to postulate that those assemblages containing ceramics are the exclusive products of the pastoralists. The notion that the hunters would have been too mobile to have been en- cumbered with pottery cannot be assumed auto- matically. However, the likelihood that the pastoralists possessed pottery seems the greater, especially if the designs in some of the paintings are properly interpreted as pots. In addition, the pastoralists could have used their cattle to transport their household goods and building materials from place to place, much as the modern Baggara cattle pastoralists do. Of course, there is no evidence to support this idea.

A major deficiency exists in our ability to date the rock-art and artifactual evidence. The chronology of the adaptive modes derived from the rock-art needs verification by other means. Unfortunately, no radiocarbon determinations are available or are likely to become available in the near future. No datable samples were recovered by the Belgian investigators at Jebel 'Uweinat.29 The age of the Gilf-'Uweinat rock and artifact assemblages can only be roughly estimated through tenuous cross-comparisons and by oblique arguments on the climatic phases of the late prehistoric period in northeast Africa.

In the Ennedi highlands of eastern Chad, ceramic-bearing levels of the early neolithic phase have been radiocarbon dated to ca. 5000 B.C.30 This phase presumably equates with the early phases of the rock-art of this area

26 de Heinzelin etal., A frica-Tervuren, 15 (1969), 123. 27 R. A. Bagnold, "An Expedition to the Gilf Kebir

and 'Uweinat, 1938," Geog. /., 93 (1939), 283. 28 W. B. K. Shaw, "An Expedition in the Southern

Libyan Desert," Geog. /., 87 (1936), 193-221.

29 F. Van Noten, per. comm. (Aug. 197 1). 30 G. Bailloud, per. comm. (July 1966); G. Camps,

G. Delibrias et J. Thommeret, "Chronologie absolue et succession des civilisation pr^historique dans le nord de TAfrique/1 Libyca, 16 (1968), 22.



l6 JARCE XI (1974)

which feature cattle.31 There are a number of other surprisingly early dates for ceramics, approaching or even pre-dating 6000 B.C., along the southern margin of the Sahara.32 If the earliest ceramic-bearing sites are properly attributed to the cattle pastoralists, this adaptive mode, which Butzer33 says is "the first verified example of nomadic pastoralism," was apparently widespread in the Sahara in the early fifth millennium B.C. At the site of Uan Muhuggiag in the Acacus Mountains of southwest Libya, Mori34 has discovered remains of apparently domestic Bos dated to about 5600 B.C. At Adrar Bous in the Tenere, Clark35 has recovered the complete skeleton of a domestic Bos which is radiocarbon dated to 3810 ± 5°° B-c- According to Clark,36 "it must now be accepted in any case that domestic cattle were present in the central Sahara by the beginning of the fourth and probably also in the fifth millennium, though it still has to be shown whether they were acquired by diffusion or were locally domesticated/'

Of course, the Gilf-5Uweinat rock-art featuring cattle need not be as old as it is further to the west; however, it seems reasonable to suggest that it dates to the fifth or fourth millennia B.C. Its great abundance at Jebel *Uweinat especially and its different phases indicate that it was produced over a fairly long period of time. Presumably, the cattle pastoralists abandoned the Gilf-'Uweinat area with the onset of the Saharan desiccation which is attributed to the third millennium B.C.

Karl Butzer has periodically reviewed the paleo-climatic evidence from northern Africa. He identifies "two or three moister interludes during the early and middle Holocene ....

Possibly three moisture peaks are indicated - ca. 8250 (97oo?)-64oo, ca. 5100-2200, and ca. 1600-500 B.C. - separated by drier interruptions, and followed, during the last 3 millennia, by conditions quite comparable to those of today/'37 It seems most logical to assign the Saharan cattle pastoralists, including the Gilf- 'Uweinat representatives, to the middle moist phase of Butzer's scheme. The climatic deterio- ration which began in the third millennium B.C. would have caused the Gilf-'Uweinat area to become increasingly uninhabitable for the cattle pastoralists, forcing their removal to areas where sufficient water and pasturage existed, presumably to the south as the summer monsoon rain belt migrated toward its present position.

The comparison of the artifact assemblages from the Gilf Kebir with those of other areas offers little help in dating the former. There are some typological and technological parallels with the Bedouin Microlithic industries of Kharga38 and with the Libyan industries of Dungul Oasis39 (e.g. some types of stone tools, blade technology). However, the Wadi el Bakht assemblages are largely distinctive when com- pared to the Nilotic and Saharan industries. The closest similarities, not surprisingly, are with the assemblages collected by the Belgian pre- historians from around Jebel 'Uweinat.40 (This assertation is based on an impression I developed from a one-day examination of the 'Uweinat materials at the Mus6e Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium, through the courtesy of Dr. F. Van Noten.) The Wadi el Bakht ceramics could easily be lost in the 'Uweinat ceramics although the latter are often more heavily decorated with impressed designs. Unfortunately, the 'Uweinat materials have not been dated, and it is therefore not possible to cross-date the Gilf materials on the basis of

81 Ibid. 32 Camps et al. (1968), 22-23, 26; F. Mori, Tadrart

Acacus (1965); K. W. Butzer, Environment and Archaeology (1971), 592.

83 Ibid. 34 Mori, Tadrart (1965) ; Butzer, Environment (197 1),

592. 85 J. D. Clark, "A Re-examination of the Evidence

for Agricultural Origins in the Nile Valley/' Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 37 (Dec, 1971), 53.

86 Ibid.

37 Butzer, Environment (1971), 584. 38 G. Caton-Thompson, The Kharga Oasis in Pre-

history (1952), 32-36, 158-64, pls. 94-99. 39 J. J. Hester and P. M. Hobler, "Prehistoric Settle-

ment Patterns in the Libyan Desert/' University of Utah Anthropological Papers, 92 (1969), 84-99.

40 de Heinzelin et al, (1969).



LATE PREHISTORIC CULTURAL ADAPTATION 1 7

their similarities with the 'Uweinat assemblages. Nevertheless, the pottery and blade technology of the Wadi el Bakht assemblages stamp these materials as late prehistoric, that is, early to mid-Holocene.

In summary, the Wadi el Bakht assemblages probably date to some period in the early to middle Holocene on the basis of their association with geomorphic evidence of locally humid conditions, the presence of pottery and a pronounced blade technology, and their tenuous assign- ment to the cattle pastoralists who could only have occupied the area when appreciably wetter than modern conditions prevailed there. The analysis of the Gilf-'Uweinat rock-art leads to the conclusion that cattle were not indigenous elements of the local fauna and were therefore introduced into the Gilf-'Uweinat area from elsewhere. The following sections will focus on the postulated Nilotic origins of the Saharan cattle pastoral complex.

The Chronological Argument

Traditional hypotheses concerning the origins of Saharan cattle pastoralism derive it from the Nile Valley.41 Mori42 and Beck and Huard43 argue for a Saharan locus of cattle domestication. In addition, the spread of cattle pastoralism from the Nile Valley into the Sahara has been attributed to Hamites.44 The Nilotic origins of

Saharan cattle pastoralism and the Hamitic responsibility for the westward spread of this adaptive mode can be challenged on several grounds.

Perhaps most damaging to all these hypotheses is the lack of temporal priority for the presence of domestic cattle in the Nile Valley. As indicated in earlier passages of this paper, evidence for cattle pastoralism in the central Sahara goes back to the early sixth millennium B.C. Evidence for assured cattle pastoralism in the Nile Valley dates, at the earliest, only to the latter half of the fifth millennium B.C., if we can accept the evidence from sites like Merimde, on the western edge of the delta,45 and the common attribution of domestic cattle to the Predynastic cultures of Egypt.46 Wild cattle were present in the Nile Valley during the late Pleistocene47 and were still present there in historic times.48 Gautier49 points out that wild cattle were one of the major species taken by the terminal Pleistocene hunters along the Nubian Nile but that this species becomes very rare in the Holocene-age assemblages. The significance of the drastic decline in cattle remains in these later sites is not understood; perhaps it relates to the decline of wild cattle in the Nile Valley in response to changing geographic conditions and/or human hunting pressures. The data of the Nubian sites raise the question of whether significant numbers of cattle were in fact in the

41 Rhotert, Libysche Felsbilder (1952); Winkler, Rock-drawings II (1939) ; Mauny, "L'Afrique et les origines," (1967); Butzer, Environment (1971), 592; J. D. Clark, The Prehistory of Africa (1970), 197, but see Clark, Proceedings, 37 (1971), 52 ff.

42 F. Mori, "Some Aspects of the Rock-art of the Acacus (Fezzan Sahara) and Dating Regarding It," in Prehistoric Art of the Western Mediterranean and the Sahara, ed. L. Pericot Garcia and E. Ripoll Perello (Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, 39 [1964]), 225-51.

43 P. Beck and P. Huard, Tibesti: carrefour de la prihistoire saharienne (1969), cited in Clark, Proceedings, 37 (i97i), 54-

44 Rhotert, Libysche Felsbilder (1952); Winkler, Rock-drawings II (1939), 36; H. Winkler, The Rock- drawings of Southern Upper Egypt I (1938), 24; Epstein, The Origins (1971), 522 ft.

45 Butzer, Environment (1964), 430; Clark, Pro- ceedings, 37 (I971), 35-

46 Ibid., 53, but see C. A. Reed, "A Review of the Archaelogical Evidence on Animal Domestication in the Prehistoric Near East," in Prehistoric Investigations in Iraqi Kurdistan, ed. R. J. Braid wood and B. Howe (i960), 119-45; Reed points out that the osteological evidence for domestic cattle in Predynastic Egypt is of questionable value since the identifications were not always made by competent specialists.

47 A. Gautier, "Mammalian Remains of the Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt," in The Prehistory of Nubia I, assembled and ed. F. Wendorf (1968), 80-99.

48 H. S. Smith, "Animal Domestication and Animal Cult in Dynastic Egypt," in The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals, ed. P. J. Ucko and G. W. Dimbleby (1969), 307-14.

49 Gautier (1968), 97-9.



l8 JARCE XI (1974)

Nile Valley proper during the early Holocene. We would prefer solid documentation of the

presence of wild, potentially domesticable cattle in the Nile Valley in early Holocene times before accepting this zone as a possible locus of domestication of cattle.

If the faunal remains in the latest prehistoric Nilotic sites do not impressively demonstrate the presence of wild cattle, the rock-art along the Nile and in the Red Sea Hills does indeed document the presence of cattle in these areas. Much of the widespread rock-art of the Red Sea Hills is the product of cattle pastoralists and is found as engravings often a hundred kilo- meters or more from the Nile.50 None of these

engravings are dated; they may be as old as those of the central Sahara but they need not be. Engravings of cattle are also common along the Nile and in the nearby wadis51 but, again, the age of these pictures is not known with any precision. Winkler52 attributed the cattle art to the Gerzean phase of the Predynastic culture

sequence of Egypt. Clark53 says that "domestic cattle, sheep and goat were certainly present in the settlements of Naqada I times and it is probable that a significant proportion of the same animals associated with the earlier Pre- dynastic settlements were also domestic forms. "

It seems then that it is not possible to identify domestic cattle in the Nile Valley or in the Red Sea Hills before the middle of the fifth millennium B.C.

In the central Sudan, the investigations of Arkell54 have revealed the presence of a pottery- making mesolithic people followed by neolithic people with a more evolved ceramic tradition and domestic sheep and goat. The latter culture is the earliest in the central Sudan with domestic

animals and a radiocarbon date of ca. 3200 B.C., which is much too late for Arkell, has been obtained on this Khartoum Neolithic culture. Arkell and Ucko55 suggest the Khartoum Neo- lithic culture is roughly contemporary with the Fayum Neolithic A culture, which is dated to the late fifth millennium B.C.56 Whatever the age of the Khartoum Neolithic, the fact is that no remains of cattle, domestic or wild, were in- cluded in the faunal inventory. The absence of cattle remains suggests that these animals were not locally present in the central Sudan during the middle Holocene. The Khartoum Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples, who hunted a wide variety of large mammals (including, in both periods, elephants, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, buffalo, wart hog, and others, and, in the neolithic period, giraffe, oryx, kudu, and roan antelope),57 would certainly not have avoided hunting wild cattle had this species been present in the area.

The foregoing survey of the late prehistoric evidence indicates that domestic cattle were probably not present in the Egyptian and Sudanese Nile Valley before ca. 4500 B.C. Wild cattle were present into historic times although we suspect their numbers may not have been great. For the Nubian Nile Valley, convincing evidence for the presence of domestic cattle in late prehistoric times is not present.58 No domestic or wild cattle are known from the late prehistoric mesolithic and neolithic sites of Khartoum although the latter has domestic sheep and goats. The widespread cattle art of the Red Sea Hills and along the Nile in southern Egypt and northern Sudan is not dated although a good deal of it is probably of pre-Pharaonic age. While it is possible that the early Holocene dwellers of the Nile Valley and its borderlands

50 H. Winkler, The Rock-drawings I (1938) ; W. F. E. Resch, Die Felsbilder Nubiens (1967).

51 Winkler, The Rock-drawings I (1938); J. H. Dunbar, The Rock Pictures of Lower Nubia (1941); P. Hellstrom, The Rock Drawings (1970).

52 Winkler, The Rock-drawings I (1938), 19. 53 Clark, Proceedings, 37 (1971), 53. 54 A. J. Arkell, Early Khartoum (1949) and Shaheinab :

An Account of the Excavation of a Neolithic Occupation Site (1953)-

55 A. J. Arkell and P. J. Ucko, "Review of Pre- dynastic Development in the Nile Valley," Current Anthropology, 6 (1965), 150.

56 Clark, Proceedings, 37 (1971), 34; F. Wendorf, R. Said, and R. Schild, "Egyptian Prehistory: Some New Concepts," Science, 169 (1970), 1168.

67 D. M. A. Bate, "The Vertebrate Fauna," in Arkell, Shaheinab (1953), 11 -19.

58 F. Wendorf, The Prehistory of Nubia II (1968), 1053; Butzer, Environment (1971), 587 ff.




were "experimenting'' with some of the local animal species, as Clark59 suggests, there is no evidence that they had achieved the domestication of cattle or any other species by 4500 B.C. Since it is possible that the Red Sea Hills and Nilotic cattle art dates to the sixth and fifth millennia B.C., we will proceed to other arguments against the Nilotic origins of Saharan cattle pastoralism.

The Geographic Argument

As shown earlier in this paper, where domestic cattle are presently raised in the Sudanic zone of Africa, they seem to require a minimum of ca. 250 mm. annual rainfall. In addition, under semi- arid conditions, there must be locales which retain water throughout the dry season. The pluviometric reconstructions of Butzer60 and Hester and Hobler61 attribute less than 50 or 100 mm. annual rainfall to the southern Libyan Desert during the early to middle Holocene period, except for the elevated areas of the Gilf Kebir and Jebel 'Uweinat. It is difficult to imagine cattle pastoralism spreading across country receiving such small quantities of rain. On the other hand, if the Gilf-'Uweinat area was receiving from about 200 to 600 mm. rainfall annually, as I have suggested,62 the entire southern Libyan Desert would have been receiving greater amounts of rain annually than Butzer and Hester and Hobler have allowed. But even these amounts would not necessarily have permitted the passage of cattle pastoralists across the southern Libyan Desert.

In the vast area between the Nile River and the Gilf-'Uweinat-Ennedi axis south to about 1 8° N. Latitude, the elevated formations which

could have served as major dry season refuges for the cattle pastoralists are completely lacking. Aside from the Gilf and 'Uweinat massifs, only a few isolated rocky formations occur in this vast zone63 and, while cattle engravings occur on some of them, none are located east of 270 E. Longitude.

To be sure, the cattle pastoralists could have ranged widely during the rainy season when water and pastures were relatively widespread, but they had to retreat to the reliable sources of water during the dry season. The absence of elevated, water-storing formations in the southern Libyan Desert between the Nile and the Gilf- 'Uweinat-Ennedi axis may then be a factor which operated against the westward spread of the cattle pastoralists.

It should be noted that several oasis depressions are to be found in the southern Libyan Desert which could theoretically have served as "way-stations" for the migrating pastoralists. However, what evidence exists, for instance, from Dungul Oasis in southern Egypt,64 reveals absolutely no indications of the presence of cattle pastoralists. Rather, dozens of sites at Dungul are attributed to hunter-gatherers oriented to the water-bearing playa environment. North of the latitude of the Gilf, in and around Kharga Oasis, Caton-Thompson65 found evidence of two late prehistoric adaptive modes, the first being oasis cultivators confined to the oasis floor, the second being wide-ranging hunter- gatherers whose sites were mainly on the plateau surface around the oasis depression. It may be suggested that the latter culture (the Bedouin Microlithic) and that of Dungul Oasis (the Libyan industries) were the typical adaptation to the

59 Clark, Proceedings, 37 (1971), 72-73. 60 K. W. Butzer, "Environment and Human Ecology

in Egypt during Predynastic and Early Dynastic Times," Bulletin de la Socidtd de Giographie d'Egypte, 32 (1959), 43-87, fig. 4; Butzer, Environment (1964), 450-51, fig. 83.

61 Hester and Hobler, Prehistoric Settlement Patterns," (1969), 163-5, figs. I54~55-

62 McHugh, Diss. (1971) and "A Model of Human Adaptation," (in press).

63 D. Newbold, "A Desert Odyssey of a Thousand Miles," Sudan Notes and Records, 7 (1924), 43-92 and "Rock-pictures and Archaeology in the Libyan Desert, "

Antiquity, 2 (1928), 261-91; Rhotert, Libysche Fels- bilder (1952); P. A. Clayton, "The South-western Desert Survey Expedition 1930-31," Bulletin de la SocUti Roy ale deGeographie d'Egypte, 19 (1937), 241-65.

64 Hester and Hobler, "Prehistoric Settlement Patterns" (1969).

65 Caton-Thompson, Kharga Oasis (1952), 32-40.



20 JARCE XI (1974)

eastern Libyan Desert of late prehistoric times. A similar adaptive mode in the Gilf-'Uweinat had apparently been replaced by the cattle pastoralists who did not, however, lay claim to the entire southern Libyan Desert zone.

On the basis of the presence of the material remains of the hunter-gatherers and the complete absence of evidence for cattle pastoralism in the zone between the Nile and the Gilf- 'Uweinat area, it seems reasonable to conclude that this area was not well-suited to cattle pastoralism. Lacking the geological formations which could have stored the water needed during the dry season, this vast area was not compatible with persistent cattle pastoralism or with the passage of cattle pastoralists.

To suggest, as an alternative hypothesis, that the cattle nomads skirted this geographic barrier on the south confronts the archaeological evidence from Khartoum which provides absolutely no indication of the presence of domestic cattle in the central Sudan in late prehistoric contexts. Perhaps the Khartoum area was unfavorable for cattle due to the presence of relatively dense vegetation and disease-bearing insects such as the tsetse fly. ArkelFs investigations at Khar- toum66 and Bate's67 identification of the faunal remains give evidence, as Arkell points out, that the Khartoum area was significantly wetter in mesolithic times than in neolithic times, which was in turn considerably wetter than the present period. These interpretations are in agreement with my suggestion that the summer monsoon rain belt was located much farther north in the early to middle Holocene than it is today. If this was the case, there may have been no "cattle corridor" across the north- western Sudan, for north of about 160 N. Latitude the southern Libyan and Nubian desert barrier precluded the passage of cattle, and south of 160 the tsetse infested zone68 accomplished the same result.

The Linguistic Argument

The final argument against the Nilotic or para- Nilotic origins of Saharan cattle pastoralism focuses on the identification of these migrants as Hamites. In the eastern Sudanic zone between the Nile and the Chad basin, there exists at present a large number of languages which are assigned by Greenberg69 to the Nilo-Saharan and Congo-Kordof anian language families. These indigenous African languages and the histor- ically late Arabic are then found across or just south of the zone through which the Hamitic cattle pastoralists are supposed to have passed. In view of the diversity of languages which today are spoken in the Sudanic zone between the Nile and Lake Chad, one wonders why no Hamitic languages are present. Our under- standing of the ill-conceived term "Hamitic" is that it includes the non-Semitic, Afroasiatic families (e.g. Chad, Berber, Ancient Egyptian, and Cushitic) of Greenberg' s classification. For a people who are postulated to have made such an important contribution to south Saharan and Sudanic cultures, it is surprising no linguistic traces of their passage remain.

Recognizing the same and other objections to the Hamitic hypothesis, MacGaffey70 proposes that the "correlation of linguistic and archaeological data suggests a westward migration of Nilo-Saharan speakers at approximately 3,000 B.C." This hypothesis is not, however, supported by any archaeological evidence that I am aware of. It is impossible to attribute the spread of the cattle pastoral complex to the Nilo-Saharan speakers at about 3,000 B.C. (MacGaffey does not connect the cattle complex to the Nilo- Saharan spread.) The present distribution of the Saharan family of the Nilo-Saharan group, centered on the northern Republic of Chad and extending into southwestern Libya,71 suggests the possibility that speakers of ancient Saharan

66 Arkell, Early Khartoum (1949) and Shaheinab (1953).

67 Bate, "The Vertebrate Fauna/1 in Arkell, Shaheinab (1953).

68 Mauny (1967).

69 J. H. Greenberg, Languages of Africa (Blooming- ton, Indiana, 1966).

70 W. MacGaffey, "Concepts of Race in the Historio- graphy of Northeast Africa," Journal of African History, 7 (1966), 1-17.

71 Greenberg, Languages (1966), 177, map.




languages may have been largely responsible for the production of the cattle rock-art in the central Sahara. The differentiation of the Nilo- Saharan family into its coordinate branches must have begun a very long time ago. To

suggest, as a guess, that the Saharan language group emerged with the expansion of the prehistoric cattle breeders in the seventh or sixth millennium B.C. is probably not unreasonable.

The Saharan desiccation beginning in the third millennium B.C. may have been a factor involved in the southern "retreat" of the Nilo- Saharan speakers from much of the southern Sahara, except where geographic conditions and new adaptive modes allowed them to remain

(e.g. in Tibesti and Ahaggar where sheep and

goat herding replaced cattle pastoralism). The ramifying effects of the Saharan desiccation contributed to the further differentiation of the Nilo-Saharan language family as populations moved into different environmental situations and, with the addition of domestic animals other than cattle and, at some time, agriculture, be- came differently adapted. These later move- ments and adaptive adjustments of the Nilo- Saharan speakers may have resulted in the splitting of the Congo-Kordofanian language family72 and formed the linguistic foundation for the later spread of the Eastern Sudanic speakers who have figured so largely in middle and upper Nile Valleys, from southern Egypt to Lake Victoria, in the last few millennia.

A complete development of linguistically- based arguments concerning the early and mid- Holocene culture history of the eastern Sudanic and southern Saharan zones is beyond the scope of this paper. The foregoing discussion is meant to sink the Hamitic hypothesis of the origins of the Saharan cattle complex (if it has not been already) and to suggest the possibility that early Nilo-Saharan speakers may have been involved in the independent domestication and spread of cattle in the early to mid-Holocene.

This suggestion does not require the corollary that cattle were domesticated in the Nile Valley or were spread from there. We must objectively and actively consider alternate hypotheses, and we must marshal all available evidence in evaluating these hypotheses. As a step in this direction, I have tried to cast doubt on the

hypothesis of the Nilotic origins of Saharan cattle pastoralism. The hypothesis of an in-

dependent domestication of cattle in the central Sahara needs much fuller treatment than given here. If this paper has made this hypothesis more plausible, it should be pointed out that it has neither disproven the Nilotic theory nor added substantively to the Saharan theory. Only vastly more field research guided by cultural ecological models of processual development can "prove" or disprove these hypotheses.

Summary

Early to mid-Holocene geographic conditions in the Gilf Kebir and Jebel 'Uweinat supported a varied Ethiopian fauna and domestic cattle. These massifs, because of their pervious nature and water-storing capabilities, provided dry season refuges which were critical for the survival of the domestic cattle. The rock-art reveals two adaptive modes, an earlier hunting mode followed by the cattle pastoral mode with the cattle being introduced from elsewhere.

Traditional hypotheses that the Saharan cattle pastoral complex, of which the Gilf- 'Uweinat area is the easternmost example, originated in or near the Nile Valley are coun- tered by the following arguments :

1. cattle pastoralism is probably a millennium or more earlier in the central Sahara than it is in the Nile Valley;

2. geographic conditions between the Nile and the Gilf-'Uweinat-Ennedi axis were not compatible with cattle raising due to the absence of major geological formations (i.e. elevated, rocky structures) which could have

provided water during the long, dry season; 3. no evidence for the early to middle Holocene

presence of cattle pastoralists exists between

72 M. Posnansky, "African Prehistory and Geogra- phical Determinism/' in Geographical Essays in Honour of K. C. Edwards, ed. R. H. Osborne, F. A. Barnes and J. C. Doorn-Kamp (1970), 215-23.



22 JARCE XI (1974)

the Nile Valley and about 270 E. Longitude ; the limited archaeological evidence in southern Egypt suggests that hunter-gatherer groups, such as the Bedouin Microlithic industry of Kharga's surrounding plateau and the Libyan industries of Dungul Oasis represent, were the typical occupants of this zone ;

4. a late prehistoric central Sudan locus of cattle domestication is challenged by the complete absence of evidence of Bos (wild or domestic) remains in the Khartoum Mesolithic and Neolithic sites even though domestic goats and sheep were present in the latter;

5. the hypothesis of the Hamitic spread of cattle pastoralism from the Nile Valley into the Sahara is disputed by the lack of linguistic evidence for this postulated migration; in the linguistically diverse eastern Sudanic zone, no "Hamitic" languages are to be found at present ;

6. the hypothesis that speakers of Nilo-Saha- ran languages spread westward (with cattle?) at about 3000 B.C. is not supported by archaeological evidence; a case can be made for iden- tifying ancient speakers of Nilo-Saharan languages (perhaps of the Saharan branch) as the producers of much of the central Saharan cattle art; subsequent desiccation of the southern Sahara, beginning in the third millennium B.C., may have been a factor in the differentiation

and spread of the Nilo-Saharan languages and in the disruption of the distribution of the Congo-Kordofanian language family.

This paper has attempted to emphasize the importance of cultural ecology in the development and evaluation of models of northeast African prehistory. Obviously, no definitive answer to the question of the origins of Saharan cattle pastoralism can be given on the basis of evidence from the GiLPUweinat area. However, by combining the biogeographic requirements of domestic cattle in present day semi-arid environments with the physiographic features of the Gilf-'Uweinat area and the archaeological evidence of human activities, a cultural ecological model of the cattle pastoral adaptive mode was developed. This model has been used as a basis for appraising hypotheses of the spread of domestic cattle from the Nile Valley in late prehistoric times. It suggests some ecologically- based arguments against the postulated Nilotic origins of Saharan cattle pastoralism and when combined with linguistic data refutes the Hamitic hypothesis, substituting in its place, the possibility of a central Saharan locus of cattle domestication.

Murray State University

Murray, Ky.



Documents

Late Prehistoric Cultural Adaptation in Southwest Egypt and the Problem of the Nilotic Origins of Saharan Cattle Pastoralism