Khartoum – The journal “Quaternary Science Reviews” published a University of Milan study that describes how during the Holocene – the past 10,000 years – the water regime of the Nile changed, bringing about modifications in the physical and anthropic landscape along its shores. The research – conducted in collaboration with the University of Adelaide and the Sub-Saharan and Sudanese Studies Center – are part of the activities carried out by an international team in central Sudan. The research was conducted on the field and in a lab. The results demonstrate that the currently desert area at the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile actually was – during the early Holocene – very fertile, and thus an ideal place for the development of settled communities. For about 5,000 years, therefore, the banks along the Nile in central Sudan were lush and populated by fishermen-hunters-gatherers groups and then by farmers, with a monsoon rainy season that featured rains three times higher than today. (9Colonne)
