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Large-scale climate change forms the backdrop to the beginnings of food production in northeastern Africa (Kröpelin et al. 2008).[ Hunter-gatherer communities deserted most of the northern interior of the continent during the arid glacial maximum and took refuge along the North African coast, the Nile Valley, and the southern fringes of the Sahara (Barich and Garcea 2008; Garcea 2006; Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). During the subsequent Early Holocene African humid phase, from the mid-eleventh to the early ninth millennium cal BP, ceramic-using hunter-gatherers took advantage of more favorable savanna conditions to resettle much of northeastern Africa (Holl 2005; Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). Evidence of domestic animals first appeared in sites in the Western Desert of Egypt, the Khartoum region of the Nile, northern Niger, the Acacus Mountains of Libya, and Wadi Howar (Garcea 2004, 2006; Pöllath and Peters 2007; fig. 1).

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Evidence from throughout the Sahara indicates that the region experienced a cool, dry and windy climate during the last glacial period, followed by a wetter climate with the onset of the current interglacial, with humid conditions being fully established by around 10,000 years BP, when we see the first evidence of a reoccupation of parts of the central Sahara by hunter gathers, most likely originating from sub-Saharan Africa (Cremaschi and Di Lernia, 1998; Goudie, 1992; Phillipson, 1993; Ritchie, 1994; Roberts, 1998).


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Conical tumuli, platform burials and a V-type monument represent structures similar to those found in other Saharan regions and associated with human burials, appearing in sixth millennium BP onwards in northeast Niger and southwest Libya (Sivilli, 2002). In the latter area a shift in emphasis from faunal to human burials, complete by the early fifth millennium BP, has been interpreted by Di Lernia and Manzi (2002) as being associated with a changes in social organisation that occurred at a time of increasing aridity. While further research is required in order to place the funerary monuments of Western Sahara in their chronological context, we can postulate a similar process as a hypothesis to be tested, based on the high density of burial sites recorded in the 2002 survey. Fig. 2: Megaliths associated with tumulus burial (to right of frame), north of Tifariti (Fig. 1). A monument consisting of sixty five stelae was also of great interest; precise alignments north and east, a division of the area covered into separate units, and a deliberate scattering of quartzite inside the structure, are suggestive of an astronomical function associated with funerary rituals. Stelae are also associated with a number of burial sites, again suggesting dual funerary and astronomical functions (Figure 2). Further similarities with other Saharan regions are evident in the rock art recorded in the study area, although local stylistic developments are also apparent. Carvings of wild fauna at the site of Sluguilla resemble the Tazina style found in Algeria, Libya and Morocco (Pichler and Rodrigue, 2003), although examples of elephant and rhinoceros in a naturalistic style reminiscent of engravings from the central Sahara believed to date from the early Holocene are also present.

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Large-scale climate change forms the backdrop to the beginnings of food production in northeastern Africa (Kröpelin et al. 2008).[ Hunter-gatherer communities deserted most of the northern interior of the continent during the arid glacial maximum and took refuge along the North African coast, the Nile Valley, and the southern fringes of the Sahara (Barich and Garcea 2008; Garcea 2006; Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). During the subsequent Early Holocene African humid phase, from the mid-eleventh to the early ninth millennium cal BP, ceramic-using hunter-gatherers took advantage of more favorable savanna conditions to resettle much of northeastern Africa (Holl 2005; Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). Evidence of domestic animals first appeared in sites in the Western Desert of Egypt, the Khartoum region of the Nile, northern Niger, the Acacus Mountains of Libya, and Wadi Howar (Garcea 2004, 2006; Pöllath and Peters 2007; fig. 1).

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Posts: 22249 | From: Omni | Registered: Nov 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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In this clip from Skeletons of the Sahara, National Geographic Explorer Paul Sereno discovers ancient skeletal remains in an enormous cemetery in Goboro in the Sahara desert. His team of archeologists try to solve a mystery about a lost civilization twice as old as the Egyptian pharaohs. Sereno finds the skeleton of a 10-year-old girl wearing a bracelet that provides insight into her past.

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The more recent population was the Tenerian, a more lightly built people who appeared to have had a diverse economy of hunting, fishing and cattle herding. They lived during the latter part of the green Sahara, about 7,000 to 4,500 years ago. Their one-of-a-kind burials often included jewelry or ritual poses - a girl wearing an upper-arm bracelet carved from a hippo tusk, for example, and a stunning triple burial containing a woman and two children in a poignant embrace.

"At first glance, it's hard to imagine two more biologically distinct groups of people burying their dead in the same place," said team member Chris Stojanowski, a bioarchaeologist from Arizona State University. "The biggest mystery is how they seemed to have done this without disturbing a single grave."

Although the Sahara has long been the world's largest desert, a faint wobble in Earth's orbit and other factors occurring some 12,000 years ago caused Africa's seasonal monsoons to shift slightly north, bringing new rains to the Sahara. From Egypt in the east to Mauritania in the west, lakes with lush margins dotted the formerly parched landscape, drawing animals, fish and eventually people. Separating these two populations was an arid interval perhaps as long as a millennium that began about 8,000 years ago, when the lake disappeared and the site was abandoned.

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Posts: 8907 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Ish Gebor:

Kiffian

Forensic reconstruction
Resin, University of Chicago and Project Exploration

https://web.archive.org/web/20160523161301/http://www.staabstudios.com/galleries/arch-7.html


Tenerean

Forensic reconstruction
Resin, University of Chicago and Project Exploration

https://web.archive.org/web/20160822053155/http://www.staabstudios.com/galleries/archaeology.html



Gobero People

Forensic reconstruction
Resin, University of Chicago and Project Exploration

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Posts: 26465 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Abstract

Background

Approximately two hundred human burials were discovered on the edge of a paleolake in Niger that provide a uniquely preserved record of human occupation in the Sahara during the Holocene (∼8000 B.C.E. to the present). Called Gobero, this suite of closely spaced sites chronicles the rapid pace of biosocial change in the southern Sahara in response to severe climatic fluctuation.

Methodology/Principal Findings
Two main occupational phases are identified that correspond with humid intervals in the early and mid-Holocene, based on 78 direct AMS radiocarbon dates on human remains, fauna and artifacts, as well as 9 OSL dates on paleodune sand. The older occupants have craniofacial dimensions that demonstrate similarities with mid-Holocene occupants of the southern Sahara and Late Pleistocene to early Holocene inhabitants of the Maghreb. Their hyperflexed burials compose the earliest cemetery in the Sahara dating to ∼7500 B.C.E. These early occupants abandon the area under arid conditions and, when humid conditions return ∼4600 B.C.E., are replaced by a more gracile people with elaborated grave goods including animal bone and ivory ornaments.

Conclusions/Significance
The principal significance of Gobero lies in its extraordinary human, faunal, and archaeological record, from which we conclude the following:

1 The early Holocene occupants at Gobero (7700–6200 B.C.E.) were largely sedentary hunter-fisher-gatherers with lakeside funerary sites that include the earliest recorded cemetery in the Sahara.

2 Principal components analysis of craniometric variables closely allies the early Holocene occupants at Gobero with a skeletally robust, trans-Saharan assemblage of Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene human populations from the Maghreb and southern Sahara.

3 Gobero was abandoned during a period of severe aridification possibly as long as one millennium (6200–5200 B.C.E).

4 More gracile humans arrived in the mid-Holocene (5200–2500 B.C.E.) employing a diversified subsistence economy based on clams, fish, and savanna vertebrates as well as some cattle husbandry.

5 Population replacement after a harsh arid hiatus is the most likely explanation for the occupational sequence at Gobero.

6 We are just beginning to understand the anatomical and cultural diversity that existed within the Sahara during the Holocene.

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Posts: 2828 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Elmaestro:

Quick question..
Do you know that our earliest West African Negroid can cluster with Iberomaurasians and Capsians? Do you know that Tenereans would look more stereotypically negroid than Kiffians though the former is related to predynastics and the later to Bantu's. How do you personally reconcile with these facts?

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Posts: 26465 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:

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Originally posted by Elmaestro:

Quick question..
Do you know that our earliest West African Negroid can cluster with Iberomaurasians and Capsians? Do you know that Tenereans would look more stereotypically negroid than Kiffians though the former is related to predynastics and the later to Bantu's. How do you personally reconcile with these facts?

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Any studies proving these claims (metric or nonmetric)??

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...Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests a westward expansion from the Nile Valley. Physical anthropological evidence suggests movement from the Maghreb south into the western and central Sahara. Climate data suggests a south to north movement of peoples as populations were drawn further north with an improving climate. This poster presents new evidence from the Holocene assemblage of Gobero combined with comparative data from Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene sites from west and east Africa in addition to the Nile Valley and Maghreb. Data are presented on craniometrics, dental morphology, limb bone proportions, and dental ablation patterns. Craniometric data suggest Early Holocene connections to the Maghreb, an inference supported by dental ablation patterns, with no similarity to the Iwo Eleru skull. Dental morphological data, however, suggest a mosaic of north and sub-Saharan African morphology. Consideration of limb bone proportions presents a tropically adapted body morphology consistent with sub-Saharan African affinities for all burials from Gobero. Both dental morphological and long bone data sets indicate population continuity throughout the Holocene sequences at Gobero, which contradicts the craniometric data. These different signals must be interpreted cautiously given the challenges with spatio-temporal variation and access to archaeological samples of the appropriate age for evolutionary comparisons

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Population movements throughout northern Africa during the Pleistocene- Holocene transition

Note, cranial data is contradicted by dental morphology and limb proportions and it was the Kiffian burials said to be most related to samples from the maghreb (a grouping of Iberomaurasians and Capsians.) And then there's Irish's poster on Kiffian non-metric dental affinity.


Tracing the Bantu Expansion from it's Source Irish 2016

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For an initial impression of affinities a full 36-trait MMD comparison was undertaken; the distance matrix is illustrated in Figure 4. Some affinities support the above origin/migration scenario in that the oldest, Western Sahara sample from Gobero (GOK) is close to some from West Africa to which they purportedly migrated (i.e., GHA, TOB and NIC samples); some grouping of Western and Eastern Bantu samples is evident.
Trait editing involved the initial removal of eight traits of small sample size (<10) or with no variation across samples. The remaining 28 percentages were submitted to PCA to identify additional traits of minimal discriminatory value or, conversely, those important for inter- sample variation. Nine components accounting for 100% of the variance were obtained, though only the first five yielded strong loadings, i.e., >|0.5| to facilitate editing; three more traits were deleted. Last, two more were dropped due to strong correlations. Thus, 23 traits (i.e., those not crossed out in Table 2) were used for the final MMD comparison.
These results are supportive of the Bantu origins/expansion scenario (Figure 5). GOK is nearest the next oldest West African Holocene (WAH) sample, and then to TOG, NIC and GHA. Western Bantu GAB and CON are next closest. All of these samples – on the left of the X axis -- share high-frequency traits that add morphological complexity: UC distal accessory ridge, UM2 hypocone, UM1 cusp 5, UM1 enamel extension, UM3 presence, LM1 6 cusps, LM1 deflecting wrinkle, and LM1 protostylid.

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Thus, in sum, dental affinities seem to support the origins/expansion scenario in the introduction. Taken together with other findings (i.e., archaeology, linguistics, etc.), including genetic study, the validity and specifics of this ancient “Great Migration” (July 1992) are actually becoming clearer with time, not less

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Posts: 1791 | From: New York | Registered: Jul 2016  |  IP: Logged |