LOOKING at the dusty Sahara desert now, you wouldn鈥檛 think that it could ever have been a lush, green home. The excavation of a graveyard on the shore of a driedup lake in Niger, though, suggests that at least two Stone Age peoples once lived there.
Paul Sereno, one of National Geographic鈥榮 explorers-inresidence, stumbled upon the 10,000-year-old site, called Gobero, during a dinosaur-hunting expedition in 2000. The 67 graves excavated so far reveal intriguing clues about these desert dwellers.
First came the Kiffian, who grew up to 2 metres tall and hunted wild game, the bones of which were found nearby. They vanished when the Sahara entered a dry spell about 8000 years ago, to be replaced by the shorter, leaner Tenerians when the rains returned a millennium later. Bones and artefacts imply that they herded cattle and hunted fish and wildlife.
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鈥淭he most amazing find so far is a grave with a female and two children hugging each other,鈥� says team member Elena Garcea of the University of Cassino in Italy. 鈥淭his strongly indicates they had spiritual beliefs and cared for their dead.鈥�
