Dark Side Archaeology: Climate Change and Mid-Holocene Saharan Pastoral Adaptation

High-resolution paleoenvironmental research allows us to pinpoint the tempo and amplitude of past climate changes. Abrupt climate events have axiomatically triggered cascades of adjustments, in vegetation, fauna, humans, and pathogens. This essay focuses on the abrupt end of the African Humid Episode (9000–6000 cal BP), ca. 5000 cal BP in the Sahara. Neolithic pastoralists, practicing transhumance between sandy lowlands and Saharan mountains, adopted new cultural practices: cattle burials and livestock bone deposits in built installations. Their ritual nature is indisputable. But ritual for what? If considered from the perspective of livestock zoonoses, such practices may point to the “dark side” of cultural adjustments—strategies to counter human and livestock diseases. Livestock zoonoses are constant sources of emerging infectious diseases (EID) in the present, as they were in the past. Sustained research on livestock and human health are of paramount importance given the accelerating rate of world urbanization.