Lakeside cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 years of holocene population and environmental change |
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Authors: | Sereno Paul C Garcea Elena A A Jousse Hélène Stojanowski Christopher M Saliège Jean-François Maga Abdoulaye Ide Oumarou A Knudson Kelly J Mercuri Anna Maria Stafford Thomas W Kaye Thomas G Giraudi Carlo N'siala Isabella Massamba Cocca Enzo Moots Hannah M Dutheil Didier B Stivers Jeffrey P |
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Affiliation: | Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. dinosaur@uchicago.edu |
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Abstract: | BackgroundApproximately 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 FindingsTwo 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/SignificanceThe principal significance of Gobero lies in its extraordinary human, faunal, and archaeological record, from which we conclude the following:- 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.
- 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.
- Gobero was abandoned during a period of severe aridification possibly as long as one millennium (6200–5200 B.C.E).
- 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.
- Population replacement after a harsh arid hiatus is the most likely explanation for the occupational sequence at Gobero.
- We are just beginning to understand the anatomical and cultural diversity that existed within the Sahara during the Holocene.
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