Dairy products in the Libyan Sahara (Takarkori)
Productos lácteos en el Sahara libio (Takarkori)
- Date
- c. 5000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Takarkori rock shelter, Tadrart Acacus, Fezzan, Libya
- Credited to
- Green Sahara pastoralists
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Milk-fat residues in pottery from Takarkori and Uan Muhuggiag show that pastoralists of the wet Sahara milked their livestock in the fifth millennium BC (Dunne et al., 2012). It is the earliest direct evidence of dairying in Africa.
Coordinates are approximate. The Acacus also holds the 'Takarkori woman' mummy (c. 5600 BC), whose DNA published in 2018 belongs to a highly divergent North African lineage.
What it led to
- a North African pastoral economy based on milk, preceding its spread through the Sahel and East Africa
- selection for lactase persistence in African pastoral populations
- setting of the pastoral rock art of the Acacus