ABSTRACT
Palaeoecological reconstruction of lacustrine sediments within Western Nubia provides information about climatic changes throughout the entire southeastern Sahara owing to the strongly continental position of the study area outside the groundwater outlets due to artesian uplift. From about 9300 – 4000 BP widespread freshwater lakes and wadis developed, containing fish, freshwater molluscs, ostracods, diatoms, and diverse savanna faunal species. Geochemical and isotope analyses as well as ostracod analyses show that a gradient of decreasing rainfall had developed in a northerly direction. During this early to mid-Holocene humid phase environments existed in Western Nubia that now occur at 13°N; the limit of the Sahelian zone must have shifted northward by about 600 km.
