Public talk on ancient civilisation in the northern Kalahari to be held at the Namibia Scientific Society
A public talk on the ‘Collapse of an Ancient Civilisation in the Northern Kalahari: A Dilemma of Climate-Induced Resource Degradation or Population Driven Resource Depletion?, will be held on 31 October at 19:30 at the Namibia Scientific Society.
Professor Katjiua, who is an Associate Professor of Land Management at the Namibia University of Science and Technology since 2009, will lead the talk and will focus on the presence of high human activities in the harsh central Namib Desert during the period 130 000 to 45 000 Before Present (BP), which is seen as an indication that the more productive ecosystems of the central Southern Africa were densely populated during the period.
He investigated the presence of human activities in the northern Kalahari of the eastern part of Namibia, by using Google Earth and MicroSoft Bing Maps to explore possible human induced artificial landscape features and found visible circular patterns, with diameters of 130m-215 m, on the Kalahari dune field.
He said it also relieved numerous flowery arrange patterns densely distributed over 392km, with the main centre located along the Eiseb paleo-channel and is composed of geometrically aligned circular structures around the main structure.
He explained that in the study two large earth dams with diameters of 320m and 370m were observed within 100m and 1440m of the main centre and the closest earth dam seemed to have been used to distribute water to residential areas through what looked like a network of channels from the aerial photos.
“When the period of aridity, age of dune development and accumulation and the presence of Middle Stone Age lithic artefacts in the study area are considered, I concluded that an ancient civilisation in the Northern Kalahari collapsed during the period of 27 000 to 23 000 years BP as a result of climate induced environment change,” he concluded.
