Editing History of Niger (section)

==Prehistoric Niger==
[[Image:1997 278-10 Sahara glyph.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|Ancient rock engraving showing herds of giraffe, ibex, and other animals in the southern Sahara and Niger]]
Humans have lived in what is now [[Niger]] from the earliest of times. 2 to 3.5 million-year-old [[Australopithecus bahrelghazali]] remains have been found in neighboring [[Chad]]. Little is known of the prehistory of the societies that inhabited the south, the home of the vast majority of modern Nigeriens.<ref name="Haour2003">Anne C. Haour. One Hundred Years of Archaeology in Niger. Journal of World Prehistory. Volume 17, Number 1, June 2003, pp. 181–234(54)</ref> The deserts and the mountains of the north, though, have garnered attention for the ancient abandoned cities and prehistoric rock carvings found in the [[Aïr Mountains]] and the [[Ténéré]] desert.

Considerable evidence indicates that about 60,000 years ago, humans inhabited what has since become the desolate [[Sahara Desert]] of northern Niger. Later, on what was then huge fertile grasslands, from at least 7,000 BCE there was pastoralism, herding of sheep and goats, large settlements and pottery. Cattle were introduced to the Central Sahara ([[Ahaggar]]) from 4,000 to 3,500 BCE. Remarkable rock paintings, many found in the Aïr Mountains, dated 3,500 to 2,500 BCE, portray vegetation and animal presence rather different from modern expectations.<ref name="Shillington">Shillington, Kevin (1989, 1995). ''History of Africa, Second Edition''. St. Martin's Press, New York. Page 32.</ref>

One discovery suggests what is now the Sahara of northeast Niger was home to a succession of [[Holocene]] era societies.  One Saharan site illustrated how sedentary hunter-fisher-gatherers lived at the edge of shallow lakes around 7700–6200 BCE, but disappeared during a period of extreme drought that may have lasted for a [[millennium]] over 6200–5200 BCE.  Several former northern villages and archaeological sites date from the [[Green Sahara]] period of 7500–7000 to 3500–3000 [[BCE]].<ref>
Peter Gwin. [http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/green-sahara/gwin-text/1 "Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100903071614/http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/green-sahara/gwin-text/1 |date=3 September 2010 }} National Geographic Magazine (September 2008) Accessed 28 June 2010.
</ref> When the climate returned to savanna grasslands—wetter than today's climate—and lakes reappeared in what is the modern [[Ténéré]] desert, a population practicing hunting, fishing, and cattle husbandry. This last population survived until almost historical times, from 5200 to 2500 BCE, when the current arid period began.<ref>
[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002995 Sereno PC, Garcea EAA, Jousse H, Stojanowski CM, Saliège J-F, et al. (2008) Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change. PLOS One 3(8): e2995. ] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081216015910/http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002995 |date=16 December 2008 }} {{doi|10.1371/journal.pone.0002995}}.
</ref>

As the Sahara dried after 2000 BCE, the north of Niger became the desert it is today, with settlements and trade routes clinging to the Air in the north, the [[Kaouar]] and shore of [[Lake Chad]] in the west, and (apart for a scattering of oases) most people living along what is now the southern border with [[Nigeria]] and the southwest of the country.

===Probable ancient regional ecology===
North Africa enjoyed a fertile climate during the subpluvial era; what is now the Sahara supported a [[savanna]] type of ecosystem, with [[elephant]], [[giraffe]], and other grassland and woodland animals now typical of the [[Sahel]] region south of the desert. Historian and Africanist [[Roland Oliver]] has described the scene as follows:

<blockquote>[In] the highlands of the central Sahara beyond the [[Libyan desert]],... in the great [[massif]]s of the [[Tibesti]] and the [[Ahaggar Mountains|Hoggar]], the mountaintops, today bare rock, were covered at this period with forests of [[oak]] and [[walnut]], [[Lime (fruit)|lime]], [[alder]] and [[elm]]. The lower slopes, together with those of the supporting bastions – the [[Tassili]] and the [[Tadrart Acacus|Acacus]] to the north, [[Ennedi]] and [[Aïr Mountains|Air]] to the south – carried [[olive]], [[juniper]] and [[Aleppo pine]]. In the valleys, perennially flowing rivers teemed with fish and were bordered by seed-bearing grasslands.<ref>[[Roland Oliver|Oliver, Roland]] (1999), ''The African Experience: From Olduvai Gorge to the 21st Century'' (Series: History of Civilization), London: [[Weidenfeld & Nicolson|Phoenix Press]], revised edition, pg 39.</ref></blockquote>

===Metalworking technology===
{{Main|Iron Metallurgy in Africa}}

A 2002 [[UNESCO]] published study suggested that iron [[smelting]] at [[Termit Massif|Termit]], in eastern Niger may have begun as early as 1500 BC.<ref>
[http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=3432&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html Iron in Africa: Revisiting the History] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081025192915/http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID%3D3432%26URL_DO%3DDO_TOPIC%26URL_SECTION%3D201.html |date=25 October 2008 }} – Unesco (2002)
</ref> This finding, which would be of great importance to both the history of Niger and the history of the diffusion of [[Iron Age]] [[metalworking]] technology in all of sub-Saharan Africa, is as yet contentious.<ref name="Haour2003" /> Older accepted studies place the spread of both [[copper]] and Iron technology to date from the early first Millennium CE: 1500 years later than the Termit Massif finds.<ref>Duncan E. Miller and N.J. Van Der Merwe, 'Early Metal Working in Sub Saharan Africa' Journal of African History 35 (1994) 1–36; Minze Stuiver and N.J. Van Der Merwe, 'Radiocarbon Chronology of the Iron Age in Sub-Saharan Africa' Current Anthropology 1968.</ref>