Stone Age Cemetery, Artifacts Unearthed in Sahara

[emad]

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News


Archaeologists have excavated a trove of Stone Age human skeletons and artifacts on the shores of an ancient lake in the Sahara.

The seven nearby sites include an extensive cemetery and represent one of the largest and best preserved concentrations of ancient skeletons and artifacts ever found in the region, researchers say.

Harpoons, fishhooks, pottery, jewelry, stone tools, and other artifacts pepper the ancient lakeside settlement. The objects were left by early communities that once thrived on the former lake's abundant fish and shellfish.

"They were living on a diet rich in catfish, mollusks, and shells," said Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist and National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1021_051021_sahara_artifacts.html

[ThingsGottaChange]

1. WOW! Most interesting. Thanks! n/t

[Bloodblister Bob]

2. Drastic climate change before the internal combustion engine. n/t

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. It's what resulted when Paul Bunyan chopped down the Sahara Forest.

[htuttle]

5. Are you under the impression...

...that anyone has said that climate change can only happen via human activity?

Nobody has ever said anything like that -- well at least nobody who knows anything about our planet has ever said anything like that.

[skids]

8. Actually yes.

Drastic climate changes did happen back before mankind. One such was the result of an earthquake releasing a huge amount of stored methane from the ocean floor, causing greenhouse warming.

But we get the blame for the latest.

[Up2Late]

10. Another tragedy like this is happening RIGHT NOW to the Aral Sea...

...and nobody in this country seems to give a damn. Why doesn't some one with the power to fix this mistake do something?!?!

Here's some BBC News stories from a few years ago, when we had a few world leaders who realized what a problem this is:

The Aral Sea tragedy

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/678898.stm>

Children play in a ship cemetery in the Aral Sea

For anyone who can't picture what the Aral Sea did look like,


Here's are some over simplified maps, similar to what we still see in most American made World Atlas' and on the BBC News website:


Scroll down to see some NASA satellite pictures of what it actually took like today, it's still getting worst.

Aral Sea research to help children

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/773449.stm>

Aral Sea poison dust danger

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/647732.stm>

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/287607.stm>

Here are some NASA satellite pictures of what it looks like today, actually it is even worst than this, the most recent photo in this gallery was taken in April, if you want to see a very recent, (but RAW and unprocessed) see the link below:


Click Thumbnail to go to the Aral Sea MODIS images


Click Thumbnail for RAW Image

You can then click the links on the left that say:
4km
1km
500m
250m
for a close look (they are much larger files though)
Also, if you click the 500m link, then the second thumbnail down or the link labeled Bands 7-2-1 you can see the IR false color image. With the 7-2-1 image, it is much easier to tell what is water (dark blue and black) plants (bright green) and recent burn scars, which show up as dark red or rust colored. (The 7-2-1 image is not usually available in the 250 meter resolution).

[McKenzie]

3. Another good link emad. Thnx n/t

[xchrom]

6. so cool!

it will be interesting to follow this wonderful story.

[On the Road]

7. Thanks -- I Think the Sahara Holds a Lot More Secrets

It seems to have been much more habitable 10,000 years ago. Grasslands and megafauna. People have lived there for many millenia, and the climate preserves anything that's buried.

I thought it was odd that you had to go deep onto the second page to find a more specific location than "the Sahara." The Sahara is bigger than the continental US, and the distance from one corner to the other is the distance from London to Outer Mongolia. Not very precise.

[htuttle]

9. I would wager that 10,000 years ago, the Sahara was a very busy place

It was very lush at the time, and being located in humankind's 'front yard', I think a lot of our very early development happened in what is now the Sahara.

[greyl]

11. 10,000 years ago = our very early human development?

Did I misunderstand something? :)

[htuttle]

12. Social development

Not biological development. :)

There are a couple of interesting pieces of evidence, this new find included, that seem to point to some big changes in how humans lived about 10-12,000 years ago. Settlements got bigger and there is the first evidence of megalithic construction, IIRC. I might be off by a few thousand years, but I'm pretty sure it was around the end of the last ice age.

[greyl]

13. What I'm getting at is the myth underlying your statement.

The myth is this: "Following 3 million years of evolution, humans began to live differently about 10,000 years ago."
A non-mythological way to say it would be: "About 10,000 years ago, our culture began. Meanwhile, on the rest of the earth, the vast majority of humanity hummed along unaware of the new & un-tested vision of the world that was soon to be spreading from near the fertile crescent."

;) hope you don't think i'm nitpicking

[htuttle]

15. I should have been more clear

I agree that the 'Mesopotamia-centric' view of the development of civilization is inaccurate (and biased).

What I'm referring to are the growing number of offshore artifacts found over the last few decades. Big stone things, but more primitive like Stonehenge, all dating back to before the end of the last ice age. And they aren't centered around the 'fertile crescent' either. I can think of evidence of megalithic construction off India, Japan, along the Black Sea and of course the apparent age of Stonehenge itself (which like the moundbuilder mounds of North America, seem to have already been there when the first recorded settlement of humans arrived...obviously there must have been an earlier society there).

Some of these sites are dubious right now, and may be at least partly natural stone formations (like the one off Japan), but all show some evidence of fairly large scale human usage. Meaning that people may have begun creating larger social organizations near abundant natural food supplies well before our earliest evidence of conventional agriculture -- which basically turns the fertile crescent story of civilization on it's head.

[greyl]

16. "...turns the fertile crescent story of civilization on it's head"

What will turn 'the fertile crescent story of saved humanity' on its head? :)

[moggie]

14. It's the skeleton people!

"A team of British and Egyptian archaeologists made a stunning discovery Monday, unearthing several intact specimens of "skeleton people" -- skinless, organless humans who populated the Nile delta region an estimated 6,000 years ago"

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29976