Graves Found From Sahara’s Green Period

Paul Callistus Sereno, a famous American paleontologist, also a Chicago University scientist, known for his significant contributions to the fields of paleontology and Archaeology, recently discovered the largest Stone Age cemetery in Sahara while he was searching for some traces to prove the existence of dinosaurs in Sahara.

Sereno has to his credit the discoveries of many new species of dinosaurs on a number of continents. His most famous discovery is that of SuperCroc specimen which he found in the Tenere desert of Niger.

The cemetery he has found can provide a peep into the life and other details of the Stone Age people. Researchers are still investigating into the archetypes found in the expedition.

In the expedition, Sereno and a team of archaeologists discovered 200 graves of aboriginals belonging to two successive but different civilizations. The burials were found engendered with pottery, ivory ornaments, stone tools and human skeletons.

A bracelet carved from a hippo tusk was found on the arm of a girl’s skeleton. Similarly, a man’s skeleton was found seated on the carapace of a turtle.

The findings imply that the Sahara was a Greenland in past and over time it transformed into a desert.

Most amazing finding was that of the triple burial of a diminutive woman facing towards her two children embracing her, the presence of pollen grains in the grave suggests that the grave was decorated with flowers at the time of burial.

Thus, the findings are significant enough and give a lot details about flora and fauna of the Stone Age.

In fact, the sun-baked dunes did the wonder and preserved the graveyard, as reported by Dr. Sereno and his team in an online journal PLoS One. The report said the findings give an insight into the funeral practices, eating habits and different skeletal anatomy of Stone Age people and the climatic conditions of Sahara in the bygone era.

A discussion about the research was carried out in a news conference in Washington at the National Geographic Society.

At the site known as Gobero, earliest civilization which resided there was the one that belonged to the Kiffian culture, tall hunters of the Kiffian culture occupied the Sahara between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago.

The Kiffians used the tools such as harpoons made up of animal bones. Their successors were Ténérians who in addition to hunting and fishing, reared cattle also.

Dr. Sereno said “Everywhere you turned, there were bones belonging to animals that don’t live in the desert…I realized we were in the green Sahara.”
He further remarked, “It’s still weird for me to be digging up my own species.”