─The Jebel Sahaba necropolis in Sudan
For the colonialist model of education, the African continent has always been seen
as something less civilisationally developed. A good example is the oldest burial
complex in the Nile Valley known as the Jebel Sahaba cemetery, which is
estimated to be between 13400 and 18600 years old. Six decades ago, early
analysis of the skeletons showed traces of violence on the bones of at least half of
the individuals found buried. The graves also contained stone artefacts
characteristic of the Qadan culture (^) [ 35 ]; they were in the space on the bodies
where soft tissues had occupied and sometimes embedded in the bones themselves.
Because of their position, they were not funerary objects; moreover, the buried
individuals did not belong to the Qadan culture, but to another culture.
The artefacts found in the Nile Valley in the late Pleistocene and early
Holocene period indicate the coexistence of different cultural traditions in the area,
suggesting that there had been a certain fragmentation and isolation of human
groups. Furthermore, the existence of large burial sites indicates that a certain
degree of sedentism had developed and it is very likely that there was strong
competition between hunting, fishing and gathering groups as they had to cope
with the environmental changes that occurred at the end of the Last Glacial
Maximum (about 20 , 000 years ago) and the beginning of the African Humid
Period (between 16 , 000 and 6 , 000 years ago). Repeated episodes of violence
between culturally differentiated groups would have been a direct consequence of
this strong competition driven by environmental changes during this period. They
occurred around 15000 years ago, but, in different forms and on different scales,
they have not ceased to occur.
The Jebel Sahaba cemetery was first excavated in the 1960 s and has been
considered a testament to violence and organized warfare. The remains of the
burial site have recently been re-examined, and this new analysis published in the
journal Nature (^) [ 36 ] has drawn interesting conclusions. They have confirmed that