10,000 Year Old People of the Sahara

Skull of Tenerian man being unearthed by UC paleontologist
The LA Times has an interesting article about an archaeological dig dated to 10,000 years ago in the western Sahara from a period when monsoon rains rendered the region green:

A chance discovery by a team of American scientists has led to the unearthing of a Stone Age cemetery that is providing the first glimpses of what life was like during the still-mysterious period when monsoons brought rain to the desert and created the “green Sahara.”

The more than 200 graves that have been explored so far indicate that, beginning 10,000 years ago, two populations lived on the shores of a massive lake, separated by a 1,000-year period during which the lake dried up.

Among the scientists’ most surprising discoveries has been a poignant burial tableau of a woman and two children with fingers intertwined, a find that is putting a surprisingly human face on the little-known people who enjoyed a brief visit to Eden in what is normally one of the most forbidding places on Earth.

The first to settle the area was a group of tall, powerfully built hunters, gatherers and fishermen called the Kiffian, University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno said at a news conference Thursday.

The group that followed the Kiffian was a physically smaller band of pastoralists called the Tenerian, who relied on fishing and hunting but also herded cattle, he said.

The article takes note of pottery fragments. 10,000 years sounds pretty old to me for pottery, especially in this area. Perhaps someone better informed than I could comment on this.

Here’s the snippet, unmentioned in other newspapers’ coverage of the story, that I found most interesting:

Among the Tenerian graves was a heart-rending burial tableaux: A young woman was lying on her side. Pollen under her body suggested that she was placed on a bed of flowers. Lying on their sides facing her were two young children, their fingers interlocked with hers, leaving a tangle of bones.

One girl in another Tenerian grave had an upper-arm bracelet carved from a hippo tusk, the first such find on a female. A male was buried sitting on the shell of a turtle, and another was interred with his head resting on a clay vessel. Researchers can only speculate about the reasons for such ritualistic poses.

It is not clear how they died. Two arrowheads were associated with the woman buried with the two children, Sereno said, but there is no evidence of trauma on her skeleton. The team is running DNA tests to confirm whether they are mother and children.

The emphasis is mine. It will be interesting to see who these people were and what their ethnic affinities might have been.

3 comments… add one
  • Katie Link

    Out of all the interesting things in this post, what really caught my eye was the excellent looking teeth on that skull…..

  • Yeah, shows you what no refined sugar in the diet will do.

  • Roy Lofquist Link

    I spent some time flying over the Sahara in the early 60’s. You really can’t comprehend how large and desolate it is until you’ve been there and seen the whole thing from 30,000 feet.

    There is a huge world out there. We have investigated an insignificant part of it. We’ll be having these kind of revelations for the next 1,000 years.

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