A humid corridor across the Sahara for the migration of early modern humans out of Africa 120,000 years ago

Abstract

It is widely accepted that modern humans originated in subSaharan Africa Ϸ150 -200 thousand years ago (ka), but their route of dispersal across the currently hyperarid Sahara remains controversial. Given that the first modern humans north of the Sahara are found in the Levant Ϸ120 -90 ka, northward dispersal likely occurred during a humid episode in the Sahara within Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e (130 -117 ka). The obvious dispersal route, the Nile, may be ruled out by notable differences between archaeological finds in the Nile Valley and the Levant at the critical time. Further west, space-born radar images reveal networks of-now buriedfossil river channels that extend across the desert to the Mediterranean coast, which represent alternative dispersal corridors. These corridors would explain scattered findings at desert oases of Middle Stone Age Aterian lithic industries with bifacial and tanged points that can be linked with industries further to the east and as far north as the Mediterranean coast. Here we present geochemical data that demonstrate that water in these fossil systems derived from the south during wet episodes in general, and penetrated all of the way to the Mediterranean during MIS 5e in particular. This proves the existence of an uninterrupted freshwater corridor across a currently hyperarid region of the Sahara at a key time for early modern human migrations to the north and out of Africa.Middle Stone Age ͉ Eemian ͉ neodymium ͉ paleochannel ͉ sapropel

Middle Palaeolithic find spots with Nubian cores from the Southern Negev and the Arava, Israel

“…Past climatic records indicate that during glacial and interglacial periods between MIS 6 and MIS 4 the central Negev was mostly dry (Amit et al 2006;Vaks et al 2007), whereas short humid episodes (Negev Humid Periods, (2017) NHP), possibly resulting from a northern shift of the African Monsson system, occurred during interglacial times (Blome et al 2012;Kutzbach & Liu 1997;Larrasoaña et al 2013;Torfstein et al 2015;Vaks et al 2010). The last of the NHP (NHP-1) is dated to 142-109 ka and was synchronous with pluvial periods in the Sahara, the Egyptian Desert and the Arabian Peninsula (Osborne et al 2008;Osmond & Dabous 2004;Petit-Maire et al 2010;Rosenberg et al 2011;Yehudai et al 2017;Vaks et al 2006;. Terrestrial corridors between the Negev and Arabia, along which there were sufficient water sources, have been suggested to exist during MIS5 (Breeze et al 2016).…”

Differences between the last two glacial maxima and implications for ice-sheet, δ18O, and sea-level reconstructions

“…flooding into the basin from the Nile and other (now dry) North African river systems (e.g., Rohling et al, 2002Rohling et al, , 2004Rohling et al, , 2014Rohling et al, , 2015Larrasoaña et al, 2003;Scrivner et al, 2004;Osborne et al, 2008;Hennekam, 2015). Such times are identified in Mediterranean sediment cores based on sharply delineated intervals of low surface-water oxygen isotope (d 18 O) anomalies (Fig.…”

The chronostratigraphy of the Haua Fteah cave (Cyrenaica, northeast Libya) — Optical dating of early human occupation during Marine Isotope Stages 4, 5 and 6

“…Isolated tanged pieces have been found by the CPP project in the environs of the cave and an industry with pedunculates was excavated in the Hagfet et-Tera cave at the western edge of the Gebel Akhdar, w175 km from the Haua Fteah (McBurney and Hey, 1955;McBurney, 1960). It has been suggested that the first systematic occupation of North Africa by modern humans was probably as a result of a northward movement across the Sahara in MIS 5, when wetter climates created a string of major lakes across what is now desert (Armitage et al, 2007;Osborne et al, 2008;Garcea, 2010c;Drake et al, 2011). Given the topographic isolation of the Gebel Akhdar, separated from the Maghreb by the hyper-arid Gulf of Sirte desert, there is at least as strong a case for Egypt and/or the Levant (where early modern humans at Qafzeh and Skhul possibly date to ca.…”