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This chapter is concerned with evaluating the antiquity of the domestication changes in northern Africa, considering the nature of the environments in which they arose, their social implications and the influence of climatic change on their later progress. The development of agricultural and livestock economies has taken place once in the Middle East and northern Africa, through a sequence of climatic changes which are not unique in themselves. Testimony to the scale of the climatic changes is provided by the deep pollen records from lake beds on the high mountains of East Africa. Naturally enough the wetter climate led to profound change, and particularly the extension of human settlement over most of the present Sahara. Livestock herding and agriculture appear to have started in northern Africa, during a climatic pulsation when conditions were much wetter across the Sahara and the Middle East than in the present day.