I understand it was more of a very wet swamp.
Regardless, that area has been so thoroughly inhabited for so long, I would think any primative encampment would be nigh impossible to uncover.
That's long been a point of confusion for me. My understanding is that the Sahara was a grassland until a relatively modern era - modern enough that hominid rock drawings indicate as much - and that the Mediterranean basin was closed on the western end as well. If recollection serves, it was the flooding of the Mediterranean that is held to have changed the climate of the Sahara and turned it into desert. Yet, I've never seen any hominid migration routes that just cross over the Sahara and Mediterranean into Europe.
Of course, plenty of critters don't walk someplace just because they can. They keep to their range for one reason or other, and hominids definitely had a range during the epochs in question, but it's just a little point of confusion on my part. I'm not sure I have the timelines right in my head.