Читать книгу Igbo History Hebrew Exiles of Eri - Omabala Aguleri - Страница 17

At about 10, 000 B.C., the climate of the Sahara grew cooler, rivers; flowed and pasture appeared. The Sahara became an area of interchange of peoples, ideas and technology. This continued and was intensified b about 5, 000 B.C. when the “wet phase” ushered in a period of mellow fruitfulness. For about three thousand years the Sahara teemed with life and culture. Tropical peoples from the south mixed with Mediterranean peoples from the north.

These Sahara inhabitants raised herds of horned-cattle and by 3, 500 B.C., they were also practicing some form of primitive agriculture while their neighbors in the Nile Valley grew food by tilling, sowing and irrigation. Thus, the Sahara became the cradle of the African Neolithic Age and one could say that in developmental terms African civilization had passed another remarkable phase. The universal hand-axe of over a million years ago was replaced by better tools and weapons made by different types of men for different purposes. Egypt at this era belonged to the Sahara-Sudan region of wet phase, but it assumed a special position as a result of the presence of the River Nile and its linkage with the Near East and the Eastern Sudan.