A Middle Pleistocene human occupation of an ancient humid basin close to the Chotts Region (N'Gaous, Algeria)

Abstract

N'Gaous-Kef Sefiane site is formed up by a succession of travertine, interbedded with sand and clay levels containing an archaeological record of typical Mode 2 lithic tools. The localities of N’Gaous and Kef Sefiane count each one with five extended and very rich occurrences of Mode 2 standardised artefacts, indicating an important pulse of huma impact over the region. This site is currently forty kilometres east from the Hodna sebkha in the North of Algeria. The existence of a great extension of travertine and clay in the whole region, over a territory more than 20 km in diameter allows us to propose the former existence of much more extended humid conditions during the wetter episodes of Middle Pleistocene. The hominin may have had access to this today semiarid region because the extension of the typical wet conditions of what the current literature is calling “Green Sahara”. In the published reconstruction of that region during the wet episodes of Middle Pleistocene Hodna basin seems to be part of a larger wet region including the Chotts in the border of Algeria and Tunisia, southeast of N’Gaous-Kef Sefiane. This large region may have played a key role in the dispersions and adaptations of hominins, connecting the Mediterranean part of North Africa with the South and East.