The Tassili N'Ajjer rock carvings and wall paintings in modern Algeria show a picture of a world in the Sahara that we would not recognize. Instead of vast gravel plains and lakes of sand, there are highly realistic scenes of people harvesting the fruit of date-palm trees, a village with a herd of cattle, people defending their flock of sheep from a lion attack, and scenes of religious ceremony. Some of the earliest carvings are at least 8000 years old.

A 6000 year-old wooden canoe has been found in northeastern Nigeria. Such finds of wooden artifacts are rare, but the once wetter climate of the region has since turned to semi-desert, and the dryness has helped prevent the wood from rotting.

These two maps ( I and II )show the dramatic changes in Africa before and after the ice age. During the ice age, with so much water frozen in the great ice sheets, the world was much drier. Note on the 18000 BC Africa map how few forests there are, with just a small area of tropical rain forest. Great changes had taken place by 8000 BC. There is only a small band of semi-desert in what would be the Sahara, with many large lakes. The central rain forest has expanded greatly. After this period, the Sahara began to get drier again. Compare Lake Chad, the large body of water shown in central Africa, to the size it has now.

Between 8000-4000 BC, the Sahara was much wetter and greener than today. Lakes were expanding. The area that is now arid desert was a rich savanna land supporting herds of wild buffalo (the now extinct ancestor of the modern cow), giraffe and elephants. People hunted hippotamus from canoes in flowing rivers where there are now only dry gullies.

Maps