Stone Age Mass Graves Reveal Green Sahara

iminplaya sends along a New Scientist article that begins: "One of the driest deserts in the world, the Saharan Tenere Desert, hosted at least two flourishing lakeside populations during the Stone Age, a discovery of the largest graveyard from the era reveals. The archaeological site in Niger [is] called Gobero... It had been used as a burial site by two very different populations during the millennia when the Sahara was lush... 'The first people who used the Gobero cemetery were Kiffian, hunter-gatherers who grew up to two meters tall,' says Elena Garcea of the University of Cassino in Italy and one of the scientists on the team. The large stature of the Kiffian suggests that food was plentiful during their time in Gobero, 10,000 to 8,000 years ago... All traces of the Kiffian vanish abruptly around 8,000 years ago, when the Sahara became very dry for a thousand years. When the rains returned, a different population, the Tenerians, who were of a shorter and more gracile build, based themselves at this site... 'The most amazing find so far is a grave with a female and two children hugging each other. They were carefully arranged in this position. This strongly indicated they had spiritual beliefs and cared for their dead,' says Garcea." The research article is at PLoS One.

Comments

Water = civilization

[pieterh]

Isn't the history of civilization generally based around water for animals, agriculture, transport, industry?

Maybe time to start treating our seas with respect. I was on a beach in Togo last week and every day the ocean washes up plastic bags.

Re:Water = civilization

[pitchpipe]

Isn't the history of civilization generally based around water for animals, agriculture, transport, industry?

Yup. In the United States, around 53% of the population lives near the coast[.] Also, look at any map and notice how many major cities are right on major rivers.

Maybe time to start treating our seas with respect.

I hope we do, though right now I'm pessimistic. See this

not too surprising

[gEvil (beta)]

I thought it was fairly common knowledge that the Sahara used to be a very lush and fertile plain between 10-15k years ago. Or at least that's what I was taught 15 years ago. Still, nice to find anthropological and archeological evidence of the people that lived there.

spiritual beliefs?

[techmuse]

Why does this imply spiritual beliefs? Maybe they just felt comfortable with the idea of being buried in the arms of someone they cared about.

Re:spiritual beliefs?

[umbra_dweller]

It doesn't necessarily imply complex spirituality on the order of modern religion, but it means that the people who buried them saw them as something other than sacks of meat, that they felt some connection to people even after death - a trait which not all animals share.

Re:spiritual beliefs?

[jabithew]

No it doesn't, Atheism refers to the disbelief in god or gods of any description. Hence Buddhists, for example, are atheist.

While that is its truest sense, it is usually followed up with a disbelief of mystical, spiritual, religious or any of the labels people use to categorise 'knowledge' which has no evidence in its favour. Rare is the atheist who rejects god only to move on and accept 'spirituality' and I suspect the breed is confined to America where evolved camouflage is necessary to avoid predatory evangelicals. I would even argue that the initial presentation of atheism in its strictest sense is somewhat misleading.

Incidentally, as an atheist, I would recommend the book "A Very Short Introduction to Atheism" for those who are atheist, think they might be or, god forbid, might actually want to understand their neighbour. The same series, incidentally, has very good books on everything from particle physics to Islam.

Re:spiritual beliefs?

[multisync]

Now, it seems to me that, intentional irony or not, someone who claims to be an atheist and uses the term "god forbid" loses some credibility.

BS. I used the term "voila" the other night when I served dinner. Doesn't make me a Frenchman.

Re:spiritual beliefs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap! The only reason you don't kill weaker people is because your holy book tells you not to?!?

You can't reason it out and come to the conclusion that it's wrong without examining a holy text and/or your local laws?!?

You, sir, are a scary scary scary person.

Re:full retard

[VoidEngineer]

You're looking at leader/follower relationship with a peculiar modernistic cultural/anthro/sociological viewpoint.

What about the goose or the duck at the head of a flock? Or an ant that finds food and lays down pheremones on its way back to the colony and heads back out to gather more? Sometimes leadership/follower relationships don't require any social or political identity angst. Sometimes, it's simply a matter of efficiency, luck, or natural optimization (i.e. birds expend less energy when they fly in a flock formation, and one of the birds has to take the lead to get the aerodynamics going correctly)

I dunno. You're applying this political identity angst to a topic which often doesn't need it. Occams razor and all that.