They also practiced mummification of their dead a good thousand years before the Egyptians started the practice and 1500 miles to Egypt’s west. A 30-month-old mummified black boy was recently discovered in Libya dated to 3,500 BC, but the origins of mummification must have been hundreds or even thousands of years earlier, as the technique was very sophisticated “eviscerated” mummification. Evisceration entails incisions to remove the organs, and then the use of preservatives to stop the body decomposing. This boy was buried with an ostrich eggshell necklace, indicating they followed some form of ritual or ceremony.

Cats and donkeys originated in Africa together with dogs, apparently derived from jackals that have not survived. Jackals were highly revered and featured as headgear in some of the rock art dated to 4,500 BC.

The climate fluctuated with some lengthy dry and wet spells but then slowly became drier, reducing the size of the lakes and oases over hundreds of years. Lake Chad was at a maximum around 4,000 BC and a minimum by 2,000 BC. People gradually migrated towards the Nile Valley taking their culture with them. It is likely that, together with pottery design and mummification, the cattle cult and the reverence for jackals were also part of the culture that was passed to the Egyptians, who subsequently worshipped Annubis, the god having a jackal’s head. There is also said to be a possible language link. By around 3,000 BC their remarkable civilisation had disappeared beneath the sand.

6.3 America

As stated earlier, there is evidence of Mongoloid people south of the ice pack in North America around 13,000 BC, and some evidence in Mexico of coastal immigrants before 21,000 BC. There is reliable evidence of settlements about 13,000 BC in Blue Fish Cave in the Yukon and the Meadowcroft rock shelter in the North East of North America. At this time the vast grassy plains developed, and animal life was very prolific. The rolling grasslands were teeming with giant bison with horns spanning 2 metres, camels, moose, various large cats, mammoth and three types of mastodon. By 11,000 BC various groups had settled in North and South America; exemplified by the substantial village in Chile with timber buildings draped with animal hides. The southernmost tip of South America was colonised by about the same date by hunter-gatherers exploiting forest resources, so the spread of modern man was quite rapid. Technology developed to match local resources, so there were the fine stone “Clovis” spear points to hunt bison on the plains, barbed harpoon heads in coastal areas and stone tipped darts for wildfowl in predominantly mountainous areas. On the Plains evidence of mammoth kills have been dated to 11,000 BC, but the warmer climate probably exacerbated by human hunting caused them to die out by about 9-10,000 BC. Horses also disappeared until reintroduced by Europeans after Columbus.

There were great problems round the world when these larger prey became scarce or died out, as much more effort was required per kilo of meat to catch smaller prey. This put much more pressure onto gathering plants, which in turn put pressure on people to improve plant productivity. So around 8 to 10,000 BC people in Central America started to investigate new ways of producing food and manipulating plants – the first American experiments in plant domestication. People in some regions came to rely on migratory wildfowl, non-migratory prey, shellfish and the local collection of wild plants, leading to semi-permanent settlements. On the West Coast of North America and the South East Coast of South America, fishing became the mainstay, while in Meso-America (part of Mexico and Central America), the Andes and Amazon Basin, hunter-gathering became supplemented by early cultivation. Far fewer animals were domesticated in America than West Asia. Turkeys were domesticated in North America and spread into Meso-America, while in South America they used llamas and alpacas as pack animals and for wool, and ate guinea pigs and dogs. In the Americas it was a longer and slower process to domesticate successful food plants and much later that permanent village farming life was achieved compared with West Asia. Both these characteristics may have been because of the lower population density and relative quantity of available wild food.