Bordering on the sea and extending through the centre of the whole island there was a plain, which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and highly fertile (Critias 113c)

It brought forth also in abundance all the timbers that a forest provides for the labours of carpenters; (...) there was an ample food-supply (...) for all the other animals which haunt the marshes and lakes and rivers, (115a) or the mountains or the plains (Critias 114e-115a)

And the mountains which surrounded it were at that time celebrated as surpassing all that now exist in number, magnitude and beauty; for they had upon them many rich villages of country folk, and streams and lakes and meadows which furnished ample nutriment to all the animals both tame and wild, and timber of various sizes and descriptions, abundantly sufficient for the needs of all and every craft. (Critias 118b)

Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the earth -in winter having the benefit of the rains of heaven, and in summer the water which the land supplied by introducing streams from the canals. (Crit. 118e)

COMPARE TICHITT: A Mid-Holocene humid phase – also known as Nouakchottian – is documented to have taken place from ca. 5000 to 3000 BP [7], [8], [9], [13], [15]. It is during this period that the characteristic climatic pattern of two contrasted seasons, a more or less longer dry season and a generally shorter rainy season, appears to have developed. The later portion of the Late Holocene, particularly from 2500 BP on, was characterized by a shift toward increased aridity with successive drought episodes. These circumstances triggered the abandonment of the area for wetter regions in the south and east. How did Late Holocene people cope with the intrinsic unpredictability of climatic parameters such as seasonal variations, droughts, or flood during their more than 1500 years occupation of the area?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631071309000996⁠

Nouakchottian

https://lucaonadventure.com/akreijit-neolithic-sahara-desert/⁠

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355936433_Changes_in_the_West_African_landscape_at_the_end_of_the_African_Humid_Period⁠

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631071309000029⁠

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618206000401⁠

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374927308_Impacts_of_the_African_Humid_Period_termination_may_have_been_delayed_in_the_Atlantic_Sahara⁠

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631071309000996

https://youtu.be/t1oFObjqxEo?si=DDWicQFs6vymrjZi⁠

tumuli aquaduct across inner rings

Nouakhchottian rainwater drain in ocean

And in addition to all this, it produced and brought to perfection all those sweet-scented stuffs which the earth produces now, whether made of roots or herbs or trees, or of liquid gums derived from flowers or fruits. The cultivated fruit also, and the dry, which serves us for nutriment, and all the other kinds that we use for our meals—the various species of which are comprehended under the name “vegetables”— (115b) and all the produce of trees which affords liquid and solid food and unguents, and the fruit of the orchard-trees, so hard to store, which is grown for the sake of amusement and pleasure, and all the after-dinner fruits that we serve up as welcome remedies for the sufferer from repletion,—all these that hallowed island, as it lay then beneath the sun, produced in marvellous beauty and endless abundance. (Critias 115a-b)

Sandarac tree (Tetraclinis articulata) for 'thuya' woodcarving. A resin obtained from these trees is traded in the form of small elongated tears, which are used as incense. The Sandarac tree is endemic to the western Mediterranean region and native to northwestern Africa in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia HUBNER

Although today we know the Sahara as a vast and unforgiving desert which harbours barely any life, this has not always been the case Around the established time of 11.600 BP, at the end of the last ice-age, the Sahara was a cool, wet and fertile region during a relatively short span of time known as the African humid period. During this time, between 14.600 - 5.000 BP (Junginger et al., 2014)(Zerboni & Gatto), there were many rivers and large lakes throughout North Africa, including Mauritania, where the Richat structure is located. In 2017, a group of geologists demonstrated how gravitational and topological data support the existence of ancient paleolakes and paleoriver systems from this period, which now lie buried under the sand of the Sahara (Klokočník et al., 2017). Among these is the truly impressive lake Megachad, which at its height 6.000 years ago had a surface area of 340.400 square kilometres or 131.430 square miles (Leblanc et al., 2006). Just north of the Adrar plateau on which the Richat is located, an ancient mega-river once flowed, known as the Tamanrasset river. PALSAR imaging, a form of radar observation, revealed geomorphological evidence for the existence of a large paleodrainage, being the mouth of the Tamanrasset river where it emptied into the Atlantic ocean (Skonieczny et al., 2015). The riverbed was located in the Arguin basin and stretched between Cap Blanc to the north and Cap Timiris to the south, making the total system around 520 km or 323 miles wide. More inland to the west, the Richat structure falls exactly in the middle of this area, and would thus have existed along a very large downstream river system, flowing westward into the ocean. The river bed extends into what is now the bottom of the ocean along the Mauritanian coast, but due to the lower sea levels during the ice-age, before the flooding, these were coastal plains. This vast size of this fluvial region might explain why Plato referred to the body south of Atlantis as a ‘sea’.

During the African humid period, the continent of North and West Africa contained many different biomes, with mediterranean to sub-mediterranean climates to the north, by the mediterranean coast, to a large region of wooded grassland stretching from West Africa to Ethiopia, with the densest forestation in the south (Larrasoaña & Rohling, 2013). The areas around the many lakes, rivers and river delta’s likely provided local fertile hotspots and marshes. We can therefore conclude that the Richat structure and surrounding lands around the targeted time did indeed boast many different fertile biomes, like forests, plains, marshes, rivers, lakes, as well as mountains such as the Atlas mountain range in Morocco, the Hoggar mountains in Alger

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Loading books.openedition.org⁠

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NEOLITHIC: Because water is rarer, people settle using water points. The vegetation does not have the tropical exuberance: it is a savanna, grazed by large herds of oxen, because the Neolithic people are herders. They also know how to make pottery. Their activities are specialized. Perhaps, as in other regions, they became farmers, at least in the still humid Aouker region. All this implies sedentarization and exchanges, completing the Neolithic 'revolution'.

During the Neolithic there were many people in Mauritania: compare with the maps from earlier periods, which cover much longer times. In any case, it is likely that Neolithic Mauritania was more populated than it is today, at least in terms of 'humanized space'. Hugot estimates the population of the villages of the Aouker cliff at 400,000 people 15 HJ Hugot , The Sahara before the desert, op. cit., pp. 90-95 and p. 144.

Thanks to greater intellectual capabilities, man is now able to better control nature. He knows how to defend and organize himself better and above all he has solved most of his food problem by keeping the meat on his legs and having them guarded by dogs. He knows how to cook his food and how to store it, as well as water, in earthenware bowls and jars. Man has finally discovered the image: he engraves and paints on the rocks.

56Mauritania is therefore on a different scale than now, where three quarters of the land is vacant due to the drought. It was densely populated and the economy was prosperous.

57Nevertheless, the Neolithic Sahara died from drought: the evolution of the Neolithic sites, especially on the edge of the Aouker, shows that people always settled lower, towards the lake, then towards the pond, then towards the backwater, and finally towards the source.

The plentiful Neolithic men required many more tools; hunters use stone frames for their arrows; pastors need ropes and gourds; craftsmen, they need scrapers, drills, smoothers for leather, gouges, planes and chisels for wood…, artists, they need chisels, hammers, colored materials; growers, sometimes even real farmers, need hoes, axes, grinding stones and pestles...

65We are thus witnessing a miraculous diversification of craft production. Mauritania has almost all shapes, stone, bone or ceramic (and wood, which has not been preserved). All types, all processes, all materials, all sizes appear.

a) Stone tools 66A world separates the heavy hand axe, roughly cut, from the polished axe, a few tens of millimeters high and absolutely regular in shape. The Aterian, with its stalked points, makes a meager impression compared to Neolithic arrowhead fixtures, which are sometimes real jewels.

67While in the Paleolithic the specialization of activities becomes visible little by little, in the Neolithic a true craftsmanship develops. Many workshops have been discovered, sometimes run by notable artists, capable of working with such diverse materials as chalcedony, sandstone, phtanite, flint, quartzite, schist, granite or amazonite. The stone tools become more and more delicate and the retouching penetrates the entire piece, tapering, sharpening, adding barbs or fins. As for the axes, they are often polished, sometimes entirely, with skillful combinations of abrasives.

68The range of objects is extraordinary: the Sahara Neolithic saw extremely varied activities. The tools are blunt or sharp (axe, hatchet, pestle, pickaxe, knife, saw, slice, etc.); they are used for working wood and leather (chisel, gouge, chisel, plane, bevel, foil, etc.) piercing them (drill, drill, mortar, needle, arrow frame, etc.); they polish; contain (assemble, cut); they are anvil, net weight, stone throwing. They are sometimes complex: knife-saw, scraper-drill, chisel-planer... The variety of shapes satisfies typologists with ease. Some axes measure twenty millimeters; other thirty centimeters. The frames have ten to one hundred and twenty millimeters.

69The tools specialize considerably. For example, we must now distinguish the ax from the hermitte, which has a conspicuous platform perpendicular to the handle and is used to tear off particles of the ground or wood. The handle is an important invention because it extends the arm and allows a more powerful attack on the material.

However, the Neolithic 'revolution' was essentially based on three new activities: livestock farming, agriculture (or at least a 'protoculture'), which led to sedentarization and thus to construction and even architecture, as in the Aouker.

3. NEW ACTIVITIES 19 Although this house is controversial today. Cf. R. Mauny, The Dark Ages of Black Africa (...) 76‘Rural’ activities – livestock breeding and agriculture – emerged, it seems, four to five millennia before the Christian era. There was no single center of dissemination, even though the Near East probably experienced some progress from the Neolithic onwards. However, Africa was introduced to agriculture very early, from 6,500 years ago in Cyneraica and Fayoum. Gradually the techniques descend southwards, perhaps joining another birthplace of agriculture, the bend of the Niger 19.

77Long before cultures appear, reproduction appears. It was a revolution: the era of hunters is over, because the meat is now close, calm and moves to the combined rhythm of man and pasture. The Bovian period (3rd and 2nd millennia) is widely attested in Mauritania, especially by several petroglyphs, even if they do not have the artistic character of those of the central Sahara.

Enlarge original (jpeg, 18k) Engraved beef from Oudane (Oued Ifenouar)

78To be honest, we know very little about the way of life of herdsmen in Mauritania. Much like those of today, but with an area then largely to the north, they led their herds to pasture in water points depending on the regions and seasons. Life for traditional pastoralists has not changed much since then, especially since the 'bovidians' were undoubtedly the ancestors of the Fulani.

79The evolution of activities during prehistory generally led to the replacement of agriculture by pastoralism – and thus sedentarization by nomadism. With the discovery of a vast sedentary Neolithic civilization in Mauritania – the “Tichitt Neolithic” – some have taken the leap and spoken of an agricultural civilization. We are cautious these days

There was probably no plowing or sowing, but only clearing around the seedlings of cereals that were considered useful and that grew in abundance around the inland waters and during the wet seasons - so seedling selection, and not agriculture, which was a “protoculture ” forms. The evidence of a voluntary culture has not (yet?) been provided, even if the traces of cultivable plants are numerous and if the natural conditions of the time allow cultures to be imagined. However, the region where these traces were discovered – the Aouker – had a significant sedentary occupation in the Neolithic: more than a hundred villages, with truly architectural structures, demonstrate a presence for more than a millennium. HJ Hugot speaks of 400,000 people. Even if the figure is exaggerated, were they able to feed themselves without practicing crops...?

recent nature of the occupation of the dhar by a late Bovidian population that came from the east around 4,000 years ago and clung to the cliff and plain it overlooks, as one of the last places still moist from a drying Sahara

one fact is certain: the man of that time practiced barter, if only to exchange a piece of game for a bowl of berries. At another level, objects carved in material not found in the region have sometimes been discovered, such as the soapstone necklace found by N. Lambert in Medinet Sbat. Likewise, amazonite, from which countless beads are made, does not exist in Mauritania. A large number of examples make us think of a flow of exchanges, or at least of a circulation of raw materials, depending on the movements of the human groups involved.

108Let us continue with the barter that must have been established little by little between hunters, fishermen, breeders, farmers (?), potters, tailors, masons, artists, magicians... The division of labor implies exchanges. And when this division transcends the level of the social group (clan, tribe, village) and reaches that of the regional group, it is the entire civilization that practices the exchange of goods.

26 “A prehistoric road through the Sahara? », BIFAN, t. IX, 1947, pp. 341-357. — by the same author (...) 109Can we detect commercial ash in Mauritania? A famous hypothesis, formulated in 1947 by R. Mauny, admits that the petroglyphs and paintings of chariots and carts found in the Sahara are distributed in favored directions, generally North-South. Today we know about 450 images of (Vernet, 1979)

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhar_Tichitt⁠

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichitt_culture⁠

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/30844758_Time_Space_and_Image_Making_Rock_Art_from_the_Dhar_Tichitt_Mauritania⁠

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296128479_Holocene_chronology_of_the_Saharan_margin_coastal_Atlantic_and_western_Mauritanian_areas⁠

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317598353_Prehistoric_cooking_versus_accurate_palaeotemperature_records_in_shell_midden_constituents⁠

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263672907_African_Pottery_Roulettes_Past_and_Present_Techniques_Identification_and_Distribution⁠

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232873688_Dhar_Nema_From_early_agriculture_to_metallurgy_in_southeastern_Mauritania⁠

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298903332_Excavation_of_the_hill_FA_10_Banc_d'Arguin_and_its_contribution_to_knowledge_on_the_epipaleolithic_culture_of_Foum_Arguin_north-west_Sahara⁠

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313172872_Early_domesticated_pearl_millet_in_Dhar_Nema_Mauritania_Evidence_of_crop-processing_waste_as_ceramic_temper⁠

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292807245_The_Quaternary_of_Mauritania⁠

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https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Hydrologic-cycle-of-mountains-Source-US-Geological-Survey_fig1_316735734⁠

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