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

Re:Fuck shit piss cunt

[maxume]

You could go tell your mom that you are getting angry at the internets again.

Re:This what happened.

[MightyMartian]

Paleo-Cons are people like Buchanan and Paul who condemned the war and the Patriot Act from the start.

Buchanan is a nut who for a while had a following sufficient to gain some influence over the Republican Party, until everyone finally had had enough of his complete and utter insanity and collectively decided it was better to ignore him.

Paul is a Libertarian, and therefore, by definition, in a constant state of "full retard".

Re:spiritual beliefs?

[multisync]

Yeah, I found this quote to be a bit of a leap:

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.

To me it indicates they had strong secular beliefs and cared for their wives and children. But I guess if you are predisposed to believe something, you start to see it in everything. I think it's called projection. I think the person who made that comment was projecting his world view on this poor, 8000-year-old family who were probably simply arranged that way by a grieving husband and father.

Re:Water = civilization

[h4rm0ny]

"If I didn't do it, somebody else would." That argument has been attached to a lot of crimes in human history.