The Chad Basin National Park (Lake Chad Nigeria Section) occupies a total of 2,258sq.km and is located between Borno and Yobe states in the extreme north-eastern corner of Nigeria. The Lake Chad consists of cultural and natural values. The fishing, hunting and farming practices of the Sao people constitute the heritage of their descendants today. Their rich pottery and everyday objects also show that they were great artists. They left numerous ethnographic and archaeological remains which teach us that they lived mainly from fishing, hunting and farming.

The Sao people’s history is inseparable from the lake. The most ancient civilization known is the Sao Civilization, composed of people groups who certainly came from the Nile valley around the 5th century to populate the lake’s surroundings. The earliest human presence around the lake can be traced to the Paleolithic era. This cohabitation between Man and nature which has been perpetuated for centuries gives a true cultural landscape dimension to this vast lake. They shelter water plants such as papyrus and spirulina but also numerous animal species such as the migratory birds, which use these plains as resting areas.Ī peculiar feature of the Lake Chad is the profusion of hundreds of islands and small islands, of which numerous are inhabited by several communities such as the Kotoko, Mouloui, Barma, Boulalan, Babalia, Kanembou, Haoussa, who live from its resources and rely on the resilience of the lake to perpetuate their ways of life. Receding waters in dry season expose wide floodplains on the banks of the lake. Around the lake, sand deserts and water meet in a complex network of meanders which are sometimes cultivated. This ecosystem contains a great variety of wet zones which include open water, polders, temporary or permanent ponds, some of them being rich in natron. It is an endorheic lake fed mainly by the Logone Chari and Komadougou watercourses. The current area is around 17,000 km2 (measured during its high point at the end of the rainy season). Its geology has undergone variations which are the object of numerous controversies. Paleography informs us that the Lake Chad has been constantly evolving with respect to the environmental conditions. The Lake Chad is a vast area of fresh water located in the middle of sand dunes which covers territories in 4 countries: Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad. The paper includes a synthesis of the new data gathered in the Acheulean sites of the Escarpments in the course of the present research project and, finally, a regional interpretation of the early Acheulean of the Lake Natron. It also reviews some of the main discussions related to the Type Section technology, the bifacial hierarchical centripetal method hypothesis, and the Oldowan–Acheulean dichotomy for the attribution of the lithic samples in the framework of the archaeological record of Peninj. This paper presents a synthesis of the history of research in Lake Natron and the geology of the Peninj Group. As a result of this long-lasting scientific effort, the variety of geological, contextual, technological, and spatial information gathered so far can shed light on a number of aspects related to the early Acheulean record identified in the three different archaeological areas of Peninj (the Type Section, the North and the South Escarpments ).

In 2007, fieldwork was resumed in the area and a new project is currently in progress. Beginning with the seminal project led by Glynn Isaac in the decades of 1960s and 1980s, other research programs have been carried out in Peninj since then, particularly the landscape archaeology approach undertaken by M.

The Pleistocene record of Peninj, dated to 1.5–1.4 Ma and located on the Western shore of Lake Natron (Tanzania), is one of the classic archaeo-paleontological sources for the study of the early Acheulean in Africa.

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