[Plantsci] FW: Seminar 4pm BSE 225 Tuesday Feb 14th: How fish swam across the green Sahara: implications for the peopling of the desert and the ‘out of Africa’ hypothesis

[Donna-Rae Marquez]

On Behalf of SNRE:

 

 

Nick Drake (King’s College London) will present a seminar titled:

“How fish swam across the green Sahara: implications for the peopling of
the desert and the ‘out of Africa’ hypothesis”

Location: Biosciences East 225

Date/time: 4pm Tuesday Feb 14th

Abstract

Evidence increasingly suggests that sub-Saharan Africa is at the center of
human evolution and understanding routes of dispersal “out of Africa” is
thus becoming increasingly important. The Sahara Desert is considered by
many to be an obstacle to these dispersals and a Nile corridor route has
been proposed to cross it. Here we provide evidence that the Sahara was not
an effective barrier and indicate how both animals and humans populated it
during past humid phases. Analysis of the zoogeography of the Sahara shows
that more animals crossed via this route than used the Nile corridor.
Furthermore, many of these species are aquatic. This dispersal was possible
because during the Holocene humid period the region contained a series of
linked lakes, rivers, and inland deltas comprising a large interlinked
waterway, channeling water and animals into and across the Sahara, thus
facilitating these dispersals. This system was last active in the early
Holocene when many species appear to have occupied the entire Sahara.
However, species that require deep water did not reach northern regions
because of weak hydrological connections. Human dispersals were influenced
by this distribution; Nilo-Saharan speakers hunting aquatic fauna with
barbed bone points occupied the southern Sahara, while people hunting
Savannah fauna with the bow and arrow spread southward. The dating of
lacustrine sediments show that the “green Sahara” also existed during the
last interglacial (∼125 ka) and provided green corridors that could have
formed dispersal routes at a likely time for the migration of modern humans
out of Africa.

 

Please publicize this as widely as you can as it not part of an official
seminar series. 

Best wishes and thanks for your support,

Dave



 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/plantsci/attachments/20120131/0e5765f7/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 131422 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/plantsci/attachments/20120131/0e5765f7/attachment.jpg>