The process leading to agriculture was very slow in the Eastern Sahara and farming, progressing inevitably to plant domestication was not the final goal. At least two important stages of selective cultivation without farming or genetic modification were successfully reached. They represent, respectively, cultivation with small-scale clearance and minimal tillage, and cultivation with larger-scale clearance and systematic tillage. Thus, cultivation is an elaborate form of plant exploitation without domestication.
At Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba, a new economy of intensive plant collection came into being, during the El Nabta/El Jerar humid interphase dated from around 8000 to 7300 years BP. During this period, numerous large, bell-shaped storage pits indicated intensive exploitation and preservation of fruits, tubers, and seeds, including large quantities of wild sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and two kinds of millet (Panicum turgidum and Echinochloa colona). In some particularly favorable years, sorghum may have been cultivated with the decrue, or dry farming, technique. This system requires sowing seeds over flooded land without irrigation, and collecting with a technique that implies cross-pollination, which, unlike self-pollination, prevents the propagation of the genetic changes typical of domestication. Such a technique could have required shaking the harvest into baskets, instead of using sickles or removing the entire plant.
At Farafra Oasis, a site in the Hidden Valley was located on the shore of an ancient water basin and exhibited numerous habitation structures with hearths containing numerous plant remains, including burnt cereal grains that have suggested independent protoagricultural activities. Three main occupation phases were identified, the earliest being dated between 7670 and 7320 BP, the second around 6750 BP, and the latest at 6190 BP. Grasses include Brachiaria, Cen-chrus, Digitaria, Echinochloa, Panicum, and Setaria, belonging to the millet group, and Sorghum, which represents 40.6% of the paleobotanical samples. The high frequency of Sorghum may be due to the large size of its grains, which could have been preferred for their size and better nutritional properties. Furthermore, Sorghum is particularly suitable for this semidesert environment as it can tolerate hot and dry conditions, as well as salty soils. The area with circular structures, stone-lined hearths, and over 180 plant samples, most of them belonging to Sorghum, was dated between 7100 and 6700 BP. As there are no signs of genetic change, it is most likely that the plants were collected by hand and exploited using soft material artifacts, such as wood, whereas stone tools were only used later. Tamerix and Acacia, which were exploited for fuel, could also have been used the manufacturing of wooden implements.
Cultivation practices began in the Western Desert at a significantly earlier date than in the Nile Valley. On the other hand, full domestication of sorghum and pearl millet took place in Africa in a still undetermined time, but not before the fourth millennium BP, whereas barley and emmer wheat were not local domesticates, but imported from southwest Asia into the Nile Valley. They are attested to in the Delta and lower Nile Valley from the end of the seventh millennium BP. However, as they required a humid habitat with constant fresh water, which was not available outside the Nile Valley, they were unsuitable for the Eastern Sahara.
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World History
