The Green Sahara

For thousands of years the Sahara was wetter, with lakes, grassland, hippos and crocodiles. People fished, hunted and later herded cattle there, and painted the life they saw on its rocks, until the desert returned.

Date: About 9000 to 3500 BCIII · Farming and the New Stone AgeIV · First cities and the Bronze Age
Place: Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria · Gobero, Niger · Wadi Sura, EgyptAfrica
Laid out as: A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons: 5 planned, none written yet
Themes: Environment, climate and disasters
Art, architecture and design
Farming, food and drink

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

IWhen the Sahara was green
IIFishers of Gobero
IIICattle herders
IVThe rock art of Tassili n’Ajjer
VThe desert comes back

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

Paul Sereno
Henri Lhote

Objects

Rock paintings of cattle
Harpoon points

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestry Our species and the Old Stone Age Farming and the New Stone Age First cities and the Bronze Age The Iron Age and growing states The classical world After the empires Medieval networks and empires Oceans crossed Revolutions and the first factories Industry, empire and world war The world since 1945

9000 BC to 3500 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

Senet, Ur and the first board games outline
Ancient Egypt written
Kerma, Napata and Meroë: the kingdoms of Kush outline
The Nok culture outline
The Bronze Age collapse outline

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?