Archaeological sites and palaeoenvironments of Pleistocene West Africa

Figures & data

Figure 1. Modern ecoregional biomes of Sub-Saharan West Africa and location of Pleistocene archaeological sites. Original ecoregional data from Olson et al. (2001).

Map of modern ecological regions of West Africa and Pleistocene archaeological sites. All unique ecological regions are grouped into coastal forests, low altitude forests, high-altitude forests, other forests, savannas, or mosaic biomes. At least one of each group of biomes contains several Pleistocene archaeological sites.

Figure 2. Satellite imagery of Anyama (1; a-b), Iho Eleru (2; d-e), Paloli (3; g-h) and Tanongou Valley (4; g-i) in Tanongou Valley. Below them are site photographs showing the mining activity which revealed Anyama (c), the dense forested environment which surrounds Iho Eleru (f), and the open forested environment of Tanongou Cave (i).

Satellite images and site photographs of Anyama in Ivory Coast, Iho Eleru in Nigeria, and Tanongou Valley in Benin.

Olson, D., Dinerstein, E., Wikramanayake, E., Burgess, N., Powell, G., Underwood, E., … Kassem, K. (2001). Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: A New Map of life on earth. BioScience, 51(11), 933–938. https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0933:TEOTWA]2.0.CO;2

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