Archaeological data testify tothe flourishing cultural development of Late Prehistoric communities during the last favourableinterval in North Africa, before the large-scale desertification process that affected the Sahara around 3500 BC.This interval was also the moment for major transformations in the long-term history of Africa, with the adoption of pastoralism that made North African populations shift from a hunter-gatherer to a semi-nomadic pastoralist way of life. Based on the fieldwork I have conducted in the Eastern Sahara, this series of lectures aims to explore post-Pleistocene adaptations through the lens of transformations of the social world. How did the last hunters and the first pastoralists perceive and conceive the world and their relation to the world? What changes in their worldviews accompanied the development of the earliest African pastoralism?

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