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

The Sahara and the Old Kingdom

[mbone]

This article in Science Magazine indicates that the Sahara was fully formed by 2300 BCE

To me, the timing between that and the rise of the Old Kingdom in Egypt (~ 2600 BCE) is too close to be coincidental. I think we will find that people migrated from sites such Gobero to the Nile, and that precipitated the formation of political organization in Egypt.

Terraforming Earth

[dapyx]

We should forget about terraforming Mars. We should try to terraform Earth before that. This huge tract of land that is Sahara could be restored with some advanced technology to the greener place it once was. Are there any studies on the possibility of transforming Sahara?

Re:Water = civilization

[phulegart]

I'm not discussing what plant is better at making oxygen.

I'm discussing where most of our current oxygen comes from. Phytoplankton may or may not be less efficient than other plants at producing Oxygen. That fact is irrelevant, since the sheer volume of phytoplankton provides MORE than half (my bad, not "about half" like I said earlier) of the Oxygen that is produced on Earth.

References?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoplankton
Nasa's take on the stuff
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Phytoplankton/
This one claims two-thirds of the photosynthesis on the planet occurs within them
http://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/factsheets/phytoplankton.html

As a side note...
What started as a desire to create an Algae that would be the perfect fish tank decoration (one that fish would not eat, one that would flourish in a wide variety of waters and conditions, one that would proliferate easily) has turned into one of the world's greatest threats. One that could extinguish us.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/519228.html
In a nutshell, we made the stuff in Germany, it was studied at the Jacque Cousteau Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, and it got out... as it was first discovered in the Mediterranean under this very building. It is extraordinarily hard to kill, and it drives off all other sea life in any area where it grows. It drive off and suffocates other sea plant life, which drives off the little fish that eat that stuff, which drives off the larger fish that eat the small fish.
Go ahead. Search for Killer Algae. See what it has taken to eradicate the outbreak in a lagoon in Australia... and the outbreak in Southern California (I hear it is threatening the Florida coast in some spots). If we destroy the ocean's ecology, we are soon to follow. And apparently our desire for the perfect fish tank may be our downfall.

Also, it is possible to desalinate salt water, making it into fresh water. So sorry, I'm not with you that protecting our fresh water is more important. We've got to get on the ball and protect that which sustains our oxygen production, and ocean life. Else we die with lots of fresh water.