Stone Age graveyard reveals Green Sahara
University paleontologist Paul Sereno went looking for dinosaurs during his 2000 expedition to Niger in North Africa. But in between some great dinosaur discoveries, he bumped into one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in the Sahara Desert.
At a location called Gobero, Sereno’s team discovered the richest collection of prehistoric human remains known anywhere in the Sahara. There, thousands of years ago, two distinct groups of people made their homes along the shores of an ancient lakebed. The freshwaters of Paleolake Gobero, which then sustained huge fish and crocodiles, is now bone-dry and buffeted by scorching sands.
It was a thriving prehistoric beach community—a veritable Green Sahara. “It seems from all the circumstantial evidence that these people were living there for a long time,” said Sereno, Professor in Organismal Biology and Anatomy.
Sereno announced the discovery during a Thursday, Aug. 14 news conference in Washington, D.C., at the National Geographic Society, which funds his research. Along with 14 co-authors, Sereno documents his findings in the journal Public Library of Science ONE.
The September issue of National Geographic magazine devotes an 18-page spread to the Gobero site. “Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara: How a dinosaur hunter uncovered the Sahara’s strangest Stone Age Graveyard,” proclaims the article’s headline.
200 Burials, 2 Cultures
Sereno’s team found approximately 200 burials at Gobero, a mixture of two different cultures.
The Kiffian people lived there during a lush period from 10,000 to 8,000 years ago, and the Tenerean from 7,000 to 4,500 years ago. During the intervening millennium, from 8,000 to 7,000 years ago, Gobero experienced a long drought that drove people from the area entirely.
The Gobero burials probably were an actual cemetery. It includes Africa’s first-known triple burial, where a Tenerian woman and her 5- and 8-year-old children, possibly the victims of disease, were laid to rest in a shared embrace. “There was no sign of trauma on any of the skeletons,” Sereno said, although there were two arrowheads resting beneath the woman.
Sereno considers that burial a national treasure of Niger, which led him to collect it with meticulous care. His team developed new techniques that will allow this burial to stand on end, both top and bottom sides exposed, with all of the bones and artifacts in their original positions.
“Now everyone can evaluate whether that woman was shot or not,” Sereno said. “There are no marks on the bone that we can see, but we preserve the evidence.”
Likewise, the team found a 10-year-old girl wearing an upper-arm bracelet made from hippopotamus tusk, and a man curled up with a turtle shell covering his rear end. When Sereno’s team found the man’s tightly flexed body, they had no idea what lay beneath.
The Kiffian were hunters and gatherers. They left behind few cultural remains, other than the bone harpoons they used to spear Nile perch measuring as much as long as 6 feet.
The Tenerean fished the lake with hooks fashioned from bone. They wore pendants made of hippopotamus tusk and ostrich eggshells. And they crafted delicate stone tools chipped from felsite, a volcanic mineral they got from the nearby Aïr highlands. Taking a sojourn to the Aïr to poke around, Sereno and his team found a felsite quarry littered with chips only 100 miles to the north of Gobero.
Connections Between the Kiffian and Tenerean?
What remains to be solved: Did the Kiffian evolve into the Tenerean, or did the latter migrate in and replace them? Sereno’s team suspects the latter. The Gobero site is rapidly eroding, and archaeologists are fortunate that any evidence survives for examination.
“The site presented a lot of challenges,” Sereno said. Among them: keeping a field team of 20 healthy and productively operating in remote desert, where temperatures can reach 125 degrees. In the end, Sereno and his associates accomplished their objective.
“We have preserved some incredible treasures from Gobero,” he said.
By Steve Koppes
