Climatic Change and Cultural Change in the Sahara Over the Last 130 Ka

Man being very sensitive to environmental variations, the equilibrium of our societies is particularly fragile in those areas which suffer frequent and severe alterations of their biotope; the Saharo-Sahelian belts belong to these unstable zones due to the high variability of monsoonal precipitation (Fairbridge,1986).In the last ten years,an increasing number of observations on lake sediments,paleosols and anthropological material has allowed the correlation of their climatic evolution with the global changes recorded in oceanic and ice cores (Lorius et al.,1993 and Shackleton 1982),as well as with the dynamics of human populations and cultures.