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2016-06-16 03:10:47 • ID: 1327
Ounanian-Points
This purely Hunter /Gatherer industry begins during the Pleistocene / Holocene Boundary. Archaeologically, the „Ounanian" sites appear as short term specialized camps.
Ounanian-points are wide spread in the Sahara with the oldest sites in Northern Mali, Southern Algeria, Niger, and central Egypt at ca. 10 k.a. BP. Their distribution in time and space may indicate a North to South expansion of Ounanian-hunters, perhaps equipped with bow and arrows.
These people may have observed the new abundance of large pray in the south (elephant, giraffe). Although Ounanian points are generally considered as arrowheads, this suggestion has yet to be verified. Some of these artifacts may have well served for other purposes. It appears that the expansion of aquatic resources in the Holocene made the Sahara attractive to populations with existing fishing and riverine hunting skills.
Their ability to hunt hippopotamus and crocodiles and to catch a wide variety of deepwater fish species would have propelled a rapid dispersal from east to west and into the central Sahara, to judge by the numerous branches of Nilo-Saharan in the east.
The archeological remains of this “aqualatic complex” are barbed bone points and a fish hook technology. Drake recently suggested that this people could have been Nilo-Saharan speakers, but linking linguistic data with “archaeological cultures” is sometimes misleading.