This somewhat misleading name — more fully and correctly ‘the aquatic civilization of middle Africa’ — has been proposed to designate a widespread series of cultural adaptations to the high lake and river levels which prevailed over a wide area of what is now the southern Sahara and Sahel between the 8th and the 3rd millennia bc. Certain features of the relevant assemblages do show strong inter-regional similarities, notably the barbed bone harpoon-heads and the pottery, which is characteristically decorated with parallel wavy lines. It is likely that pottery was an independent invention in the southern Sahara in about the 7th millennium, and the harpoons clearly represent a common response to the rich supplies of fish which formed the most readily available source of food. However, other aspects of the assemblages, notably the chipped stone industries, are clearly rooted in local traditions, and the homogeneity of these widespread sites should not be exaggerated. First investigated at Early Khartoum, sites of this type are now known as far to the southeast as the Lake Turkana basin in Kenya, as at Lowasera. To the west, related material is found as far distant as Kourounkorokale in Mali. The greatest significance of the ‘aquatic civilization’ lies in the settled life-style of its people, for this provided the background for the subsequent adoption of food-production (see African food-production).
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied