(May 13) The Nile is much more than a river. The Nile determines the history of the great Egyptian civilization and is still today the subject of studies and researches. The University of Milan and the Center for Sudanese and Sub-Saharan Studies are leading the archaeological and paleoenvironmental collaboration currently underway in central Sudan. Recently, the working group explored the western bank of the White Nile, near the confluence with the Blue Nile. These activities saw the extensive collaboration of the University of Adelaide. The main research results from the field and laboratory appeared in "Quaternary Science Reviews," in which the team describes how, about 10,000 years ago, the water regime of the River Nile changed, also detailing the consequences in terms of physical landscape and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers communities who lived along its banks. The region is currently desert, except for a green cultivated strip which corresponds to  the flooding areas of the Nile. The  geological and archaeological evidence also shows that during the Holocene (ie the last 10,000 years), the same region was densely populated by groups of fishermen-hunters-gatherers and farmers, whose survival was assured by water, which supported vegetation and helped feed numerous lakes frequented by wild animals. These conditions lasted for about 5,000 years, when the environment resembled, in some ways, to that currently observed further south, in Sudan and along many other large rivers in sub-Saharan Africa. (Red)

THE RESEARCH

Research has allowed to explore the variation in the interaction between man and the environment, noting that in this case, environmental conditions played a very important role in determining the destiny of the human community. In addition, the scientific methods applied in these archaeological sites highlighted, for the first time in Sudan, archaeological structures untouched by recent events. Among other things, the research team was able to reconstruct the spatial organization of the archaeological sites, defining the areas designated for residence, processing and cooking, and waste storage. In addition, it was possible to observe that fish represented the main source of food for the people of the Mesolithic, with occasional consumption of mollusks and mammals; some evidence also suggests the possibility that the exploitation of food resources had a seasonal pattern, with alternations between fishing in the Nile and the collection of shellfish, and hunting in the inland areas.