Graves Found From Sahara’s Green Period

[Adsos Letter]

Source: The New York Times

When Paul C. Sereno went hunting for dinosaur bones in the Sahara, his career took a sharp turn from paleontology to archaeology. The expedition found what has proved to be the largest known graveyard of Stone Age people who lived there when the desert was green.

In its first comprehensive report, published Thursday, the team described finding about 200 graves belonging to two successive populations. Some burials were accompanied by pottery and ivory ornaments. A girl was buried wearing a bracelet carved from a hippo tusk. A man was seated on the carapace of a turtle.

The sun-baked dunes at the site, known as Gobero, preserve the earliest and largest Stone Age cemetery in the Sahara, Dr. Sereno’s group reported in the online journal PLoS One. The findings, they wrote, open “a new window on the funerary practices, distinctive skeletal anatomy, health and diet of early hunter-fisher-gatherers, who expanded into the Sahara when climatic conditions were favorable.”

“Everywhere you turned, there were bones belonging to animals that don’t live in the desert,” he said. “I realized we were in the green Sahara.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/science/15sahara.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

---

There is an excellent series of photos accompanying this article.

Climate change...a gradual, but steadily occurring reality when the earth was lightly inhabited and "industry" was essentially non-polluting and lithic based.

Today...heavily populated planet and massive pollution from a technological explosion, much of which occurred over the last 150 years (as I understand it; I could certainly be wrong about the timeline).

Long past time for nations to stop waffling around about oil and get with a concentrated program of developing the technology to live in a sustainable fashion on the earth (I know I'm preaching to the crowd here).

Will the powers-that-be gain some kind of "comfort" from being in fancier tombs than the rest? Death is still death.

[Selatius]

1. The point is to win the game by being the man with the most stuff by the time you die.

Turtles carapaces and hippo tusks?

Hell, when our leaders die, they're gonna be entombed with Range Rovers, Leer Jets, Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, and an ATM card on the trip to the After Life. Oh, and maybe a few iPods so that they can listen to stuff on the way there.

[cliffordu]

16. With any luck they'll be cut from the gallows and drug through the streets

like Il Duce.

[BreweryYardRat]

43. Which in itself was probably inspired by the Roman Republic's methods...

...for dealing with treason that got civilians killed. Thrown off the Tarpaean Rock, impaled on a hook, and dragged through the streets down to the Tiber river, where the guilty party was promptly thrown in.

[Phredicles]

2. I have a pet theory that the Garden of Eden story is drawn from

the memory of the Sahara. It was once a nice place to live, and then it wasn't, and the people who lived there of course had to leave. The distribution of the Afro-Asiatic language family that includes the Semitic group (that includes Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic) are ranged around the edge of the Sahara, as if that had been their home.

[WhiteTara]

3. very interesting theory

It resonates. Thanks

[Adsos Letter]

5. Very interesting theory, indeed...

most myths, in the real sense of the term, relate to something tangible, some long-ago memory.

[mcg]

17. There is a theory that The Flood is based on real events,

there was a program on TV about it. They even speculated Noah was based on a real person and that The Arc was based on a barge that the guy operated. At the time of a big flood, he put lots on animals on this barge. I don't remember the details.

[McCamy Taylor]

21. Since all early settlements were built on rivers, they would have been prone to floods.

Smart civilizations built on mountains----you got water from ice melt and you were above the flood waters that way. Just ask the Kurds, Tibetans and Scots. However, being an estuary civilization allowed for more food production from alluvial soil, which meant you could do things like brew beer which meant you could store food for times of famine and it also meant trade by sea and a constant protein supply from fishing. So, in the end, the coastal civilizations ended up on top, even if they did have to rebuild every time a hurricane hit.

[Adsos Letter]

23. You may be thinking of "Ballard & the Black Sea: The Search For Noah's Flood"...

A National Geographic special investigating the possibility of the Black Sea as being the location...

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html

[fla nocount]

36. Poster will have to pull tongue from cheek to reply. n/t

[mcg]

46. Discovery Channel’s documentary on Noah’s Ark

is what I'm referring to, here's some info that someone remembers about it ...
http://charlestaylor.wordpress.com/2008/03/19/discover-the-real-noahs-ark/
" ... Thanks to clay tablets found in the ruins of what is believed to be a library from the ancient city of Babylon, archaeologists have found evidence that our ancient scriptures have been flooded with erroneous re-writes over the years. The Discovery Channel goes beyond the assumption that the word of God has been tampered with, and reveals a more realistic tale of Noah—the Shuruppak merchant who survived the great flood.

Discovery reveals it is impossible to build a boat as large as the Titanic from pitch and wood that would not collapse under its own weight. In all likelihood, Noah used smaller rafts tied together that were stacked three levels high. The Ark was merely a barge. ..."

[Nevernose]

57. It was a Babylonian nobleman you're thinking of

And since much of the Old Testament was adapted from earlier Babylonian myths (since the Hebrews spent quite a few years as "guests" of the Babylonians) it makes good sense; the Babylonian story is almost identical, except there are written records from the time indicating it was TRUE, insofar as there was a man who put all of his possessions on a boat to survive a flood.

I either saw it on that National Geographic channel (the one that's on channel 359 or something like that) or the documentary "The God Who Wasn't There."

There's also the theory of the Black Sea flooding, but that was so far back there are no written records. INterestingly enough, though, it coincides with the Tower of Babel story. Archaeolinguists suspect that the inhabitants were the original speakers of Proto Indo European, and they spread in all directions away from the Black Sea. The language begins separating about the time of that particular flood, and there are some very interesting parallels that survive to this day, e.g. the words for "horse" and other very basic concepts are similar in both German and Farsi, but the words for things conceptualized AFTER the flood (e.g. "wagon") are entirely different.

It's been a few years since I had any linguistics classes. Sadly, the details are all rather hazy these days :).

[gateley]

7. Echoing on the very interesting theory. VERY interesting.

How did you come by it?

[Phredicles]

49. Mostly from classes in comparative linguistics and mythology;

there's also been a lot of archaeological evidence unearthed that the oral traditions that the myths we know came out of tend to have more of a basis in the memory of actual events than was common to attribute to them in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

[webDude]

11. doesn't it mention about there being a sword of flames(sunlight?)..

put there so that Adam and Eve could not re-enter? Somewhere in Genesis?

[provis99]

14. interesting theory, but its wrong

the ancestors of the Semitic peoples of North Africa and the Middle East originate from Europe; they moved across the Gibraltar straits during the last Ice Age.

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Odin2005]

42. Uh, no. 20,000 years ago Europeans probably spoke languages distantly related to Basque and...

...North Caucasic languages like Abkhazian and Chechen.

[Chulanowa]

18. I share that theory

At least insofar that the Hebraic tribes came, not from Ur, but from some swampy spot on the North African coast. The religion they practiced had more in common with the religions of North Africa - particularly old Egypt - than with any of the Mesopotamian religions. Further, the Afro-Asiatic language group has about 375 distinct languages. Only five of them - Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Phoenician, and Maltese, exist outside of Africa. The language group undoubtedly surfaced there.

There's no rule that the Tigris and EUphrates rivers of the Eden story were the ones in Iraq today. Just like Wtyoming is named after a river in Pennsylvania, those two could be named after some African rivers.

[aquart]

25. Which doesn't account for why the Jewish holidays

have indoeuropean roots. We speak a Semitic language, got our religion you say from North Africa, and use indoeuropean to name the sacred days?

Lotta traffic there.

[Chulanowa]

29. Indeed, lots of traffic

Where do you get that the holy days have Ind-European roots, though? I'm curious

[aquart]

24. Python bones found there, too.

The snake in the tree was a python.

[paparush]

56. I was thinking 'Monty'. ;-) Bring out yer Dead!

[Cassandra]

40. I like Raine Eisler's theory...

that the story of the Garden of Eden is an allegory for the change from goddess religions, of which the serpent is a symbol.

[Odin2005]

41. Interesting observation about the Afro-Asiatic languages.

I though the same thing. Interestingly, some linguists have speculated that the Afro-Asiatic languages form a grouping along with several language families of Eurasia (including Indo-European, the language family English belongs to) called "Nostratic." This is interesting because it may be linguistic evidence that supports genetic evidence (the western Eurasian Y-DNA marker R1 found in some spots in central Africa) of a reverse migration from Eurasia back into Africa

[The River]

48. Actually

the Eden "myth" is symbolic of the archaic period during human evolution when we had not yet differentiated between self and not self. A state of being embedded in nature with an absence of conscious distinction.... between inside and outside, subject and object, self and environment.
Living as a part of nature, not yet aware of the separate self which causes us so much (joy)and
trouble today.

With the arising of the awareness of the separate self, partaking of the apple of self knowledge as it were, we became finite and destined to "die". Everything we have done since is shaped by that singular fact.

Alas, there is no "Paradise" under the asphalt. No idyllic time in the past when life was anything other than "short, dark and brutish". We have no choice but to continue evolve. Up from beasts but not yet gods, we are more than half way home.

[Cassandra]

4. Desertification occurred because of over-grazing.

Some years ago, a movie was being filmed in the Sahara and the crew roped off sections of the desert from goats and herders. They noticed that after some weeks with no grazing, some grass had started to grow back.

[Adsos Letter]

8. I need to go back and re-read the article...

I think they suggested that the lakes which these groups lived around disappeared during the last Ice Age, and that these reperesented hunter-gatherer cultures, and not pastoralists. Of course, animals can naturally overgraze an area on their own if their numbers get too large.

I'm not an anthropologist or expert on environmental issues...just fascinated with archaeology. :hi:

[XemaSab]

15. Desertification occurred due to shifting rainfall patterns

Nevada used to be a large series of inland freshwater lakes, then it became a desert.

This happened well before large numbers of sheep and cows were introduced.

[Adsos Letter]

19. That seems to be the way the article explained it...

shifting rainfall patterns. :hi: XemaSab

[jeff30997]

26. WTF?

I thought that Nevada became a desert because the Californians stole all the water to fill their pools and have lawn!!! Silly me. :)

But on a serious note,thanks for the info.

[Cassandra]

39. Having been reading Collapse by Jared Diamond...

I would say it was probably both. There were grazing animals, the population grew, and the ability to graze their animals was undermined by the shift in weather patterns. What had been an acceptable amount of grazing became unsustainable as the rate of regrowth became slower.

[Xithras]

52. Yes, but overgrazing/desertification can cause those patterns to shift too.

This is the leading theory as to what happened to the Arabian grasslands. Bare earth gets hotter than grass covered earth. Saudi Arabia (and much of Iraq and some of Iran) were once temperate grasslands that supported large populations of grazing animals, predators including lions, and even elephants. Humans moved in, quickly removed the sparse forests that did exist, and quickly began overpopulating the area. Too many people means too many grazing animals, which gradually denuded the ground over thousands of years.

Grass covered earth has two advantages. First, it holds water better when it rains. Second, the grass shades the earth and keeps surface temperatures lower. Weather pattern analysis' over modern urban areas has proven that higher surface temperatures lower rainfall totals through both evaporation (before the moisture strikes the ground) and through changes in air pressure. Reduced rainfall limits the ability of a dessicated grassland area to rebuild. When rain does come, the stripped nature of the ground allows the water to simply run off without penetrating. This dramatically reduces the amount of water available for plants to use, and has the added effect of washing away important topsoil.

After a few thousand years of this, golden grasslands can become permanent sandy deserts. When that happened, the ground itself became hot enough to drive all but the strongest rain fronts away.

There have been a few proposals to re-green the Arabian peninsula, but the Arabian governments seem to have little interest in doing so. A few oil rich billionaires have funded some test patches, but the culture there still idolizes the lifestyle of the desert nomad, and the first step in greening the desert is eliminating those very same herders. There simply is no widespread support for that.

[Ghost Dog]

27. Uncontrolled goats are a scourge.

They tend to pull what they graze on up by the roots.

The vegetation of the entire Mediterranean basin, for one, would be very different were it not for goats.

[jeff30997]

31. I know something that's an even more devastating scourge:

[Ghost Dog]

34. True, that.

:)

[More_liberal_than_mo]

38. The desert turns green

I used to make 3 to 4 trips a year across the Jordanian and Iraqi deserts between Amman and Baghdad. Several trips were during the winter and I noticed that almost all the rain in that region occurs during the winter months. Small shallow lakes form for weeks at a time and the scrub lands sprout large areas of brilliant green grass. The wadis even turn briefly into small creeks and streams. The nomadic tribes that live there move their herds of goats into the green areas and by the time the hot dry summer comes all the grass is gone and the desert returns.

[wordpix]

54. I saw desertification with my own eyes living in northern Alberta one year

In the northern plains of Canada, most of the farmers grow rapeseed for vegetable oil. The year I lived in n. Alberta, it never rained all spring and summer and crops were drying up. One day I went on a trip to a provincial park about one hr. away from this monocultural area, and as I drove closer to the park, lo and behold there were clouds, trees, and eventually, rain and wetlands. There were no mts. or major hills, however, to create a microclimate at the provincial park, and I could only conclude the rain and wet conditions were due to the fact that intact forests still existed near and at the park.

Driving back to monoculture land, everything went into reverse----the rain subsided, the wetlands and trees disappeared, the clouds gave way to sun beating down and I was soon back in the desertified monocultural zone.

I have no doubt humans created many of the earth's deserts.

[gateley]

6. This is fascinating -- thank you!! nt

[gateley]

9. In the slide show, it shows a woman embracing two children. They

found pollen under the skeletons, indicating they had been laid on a bed of flowers. :cry:

[Adsos Letter]

10. We have internalized the "nasty brutish and short" way of seeing life in the past...

(and I know I am paraphrasing, and taking Locke? Voltaire? out of context) but I believe love for on'es own family is probably pretty ancient...love has been defined and actualized many different ways in the past, but I believe grief over loss is universal, and probably quite ancient. :hug:

[14thColony]

30. That was Hobbes

[Posteritatis]

47. A society can know love and still have an average life expectancy of 25-30 years

Those don't conflict with one another.

[daleo]

12. Roman Empire was responsible for a lot of damage there

"The question of the fall of the Roman Empire has been debated for 1500 years, but new evidence suggests that the wealth and prosperity of Rome may have been the cause of its own downfall. According to a new theory, environmental damage, and particularly deforestation, to meet the needs of the luxurious elite caused a whole host of problems eventually weakening the Empire to the point that it could no longer stand."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2184473

The Romans' scientific knowledge was rudimentary. What's our excuse?

[Adsos Letter]

13. We don't have one....

we have the knowledge and ability to address the problems...we have no excuse.

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. This is about 600 miles, and 3000 years, away from the Romans

It's in Niger, not the Mediterranean coast that the Romans were in; and these people has gone long before Rome became a city, let alone an empire.

Then the rains and lakes of a fecund Sahara returned about 12,000 years ago, and remained, except for one 1,000-year interval, until about 4,500 years ago. Geologists have long known that the region’s basins retained mineral residue of former lakes, and other explorers have found scatterings of human artifacts from that time, as Dr. Sereno did at Gobero in 2000.

And, from another article:

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, ac­cord­ing to the re­search team. 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.

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080814_sahara.htm

The dates do, however, overlap with Egyptian civilisation - though the Nile is 1000 miles to the east.

[daleo]

45. I was making a more general point

That the classical civilizations of antiquity caused a surprising amount of ecological damage.

[Xithras]

51. Environmental destruction by humans stretches back thousands of years.

Just look at Europe. Once upon a time it was one massive unbroken forest with trees 20 foot at the base, stretching from the Urals to the Atlantic coast. A forest bigger than the pre-deforested Amazon. Crossing the channel, Roman accounts describe a Britain, Ireland, and Scotland covered in thick green forests. Over the past couple thousand years those forests have been whittled away, so that only a couple tiny pockets of that original forest remain today. We look at the austere highlands of Scotland, or the heather and countryside in Ireland, today and we admire their natural beauty...conveniently forgetting that before humans, those lands were forested and filled with wildlife.

Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan were forested as recently as a thousand years ago. Saudi Arabia was once grasslands. Afghanistan was forested up until just a few hundred years ago. India was forested across almost the entire subcontinent. The entire North African coast was a mix of grasslands and dry forest all the way into the Islamic period. The Egyptians used to graze their animals in the highlands above the Nile Valley where sand dunes now rule.

Some like to think that environmental destruction is a recent phenomenon of the industrial age. In reality, we've been trashing the place since we figured out how to domesticate animals and make axes.

[ChazII]

53. Times, they change

as for us humans.....

[Whoa_Nelly]

20. Am amazed!

Awesome photo!



In this grave, a Tenerian woman and two children,
about 5 and 8 years old, were posed in an embrace.
Pollen under the skeletons indicate that they were laid on top of flowers.
The bones show no sign of the cause of death.

[Blue_Tires]

55. probably a very tragic story behind that photo....

[jeff30997]

28. K&R

Thanks.:)

[Hekate]

32. kick

:kick:

[DU GrovelBot]

33. ## PLEASE DONATE TO DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND! ##

==================
GROVELBOT.EXE v4.1
==================



This week is our third quarter 2008 fund drive. Democratic Underground is
a completely independent website. We depend on donations from our members
to cover our costs. Please take a moment to donate! Thank you!

[jeff30997]

35. Here:

Take a quarter and go buy some booze!

[xchrom]

44. recommend

[catzies]

50. Utterly fascinating topic I've long been interested in, but didn't know much

about it, materially. This thread is fascinating!