Background

• The archaeological site known as “Gobero” was discovered in Niger in 2000 by a team led by paleontologist Paul Sereno.
• Project Exploration first reported the discovery on its website to thousands of schoolchildren.
• Three expedition teams led by Sereno — 2003, 2005 and 2006 — have returned to Gobero since the original discovery.
• A scientific paper describing the site was published in the Public Library of Science, August 14, 2008.

Some 4800 years ago, this 11-year-old Tenerian girl was buried wearing an upper-arm bracelet carved from the tusk of a hippo, discovered by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno and his team. The Tenerian lived and buried their dead atop dunes near a lake in a region of the Sahara that was once greener that today. Photo © Mike Hettwer, courtesy Project Exploration.

Story Highlights

• Gobero documents a 5,000-year-long period of changing climate and changing cultures.
• More than 200 burials dated over a five thousand year period.
• New evidence of funerary, or burial, practices.
• New evidence of distinct skeletal anatomy of two different groups of modern humans.
• New evidence of health and diet of early Holocene hunter-fisher-gatherers.
• Exceptional fauna and pollen records.

A remarkable triple burial — containing a woman and two children five (left) and eight years in age with limbs entwined in embrace — was discovered at Gobero site during the 2006 field season. Underlain by flowers that left telltale pollen clusters in the sand, the trio died without any sign of injury skeletal injury and were ceremoniously posed and buried along with four arrowheads. This unique burial, a “Stone Age Embrace” radiocarbon dated as 5,300 years old, is reported in the September 2008 issue of National Geographic magazine. Photo © Mike Hettwer, courtesy Project Exploration.

A Picture of Ancient Life

• Gobero preserves the earliest and largest Holocene cemetery in the Sahara.
• Most archaeology sites from this time period in the Sahara represent short intervals of time with few, if any, intact human burials.
• Archaeologists had questioned whether the southern Sahara ever was an attractive locale for human occupation due to the scarcity of human remains. Gobero suggests that during the early Holocene (10,000 to 8000 years ago), a largely sedentary population thrived in the area and had skull features that strongly resemble populations elsewhere in the Sahara and along the northern coast of Africa.

Two People, One Cemetery

• Distinctive skull shape, stature and build, and differing funerary practices between the two groups suggest population replacement rather than gradual evolution from one body type to another.
• Most remarkable is the burial of as many as 200 humans, representing two distinctive cultures, with virtually no evidence of one burial disturbing another: it is as if they were aware of the location of nearby burials, even though they would have been rapidly obscured by blowing wind and sand.

Two distinct cultures lived and buried their dead at Gobero. These grave sites sometimes contained animal bones and jewlery. Photo © Mike Hettwer, courtesy Project Exploration.

Human Response to Climate Change

• Gobero documents social and biological change through time in response to climate change.
• Gobero was occupied by humans during humid times and abandoned under arid conditions; this site records evidence of human adaptation to severe climate change.
• An arid interval lasting as long as 1,000 years (from about 8,000 to 7,000 years ago), drove people from the Gobero area. When humid conditions returned, humans moved back into the area. Evidence of food resources at Gobero from garbage dumps (middens) suggests that dietary sources diversified under the stress of increasing aridity.

Holding up a belly plate from a soft-shelled turtle found in a Tenerian garbage dump, zooarchaeologist Hélène Jousse of the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, Austria, was amazed by the potpourri of animal species in burials and in the ancient lakebed. From teeth, bones and partial skeletons, she identified elephant, hippo, giraffe, hartebeest, warthog, lion, python, mud turtles and many more that thrived at Gobero during the Stone Age. Photo © Mike Hettwer, courtesy Project Exploration.

Gobero Geology and PaleoEnvironment

• Paleolake Gobero was a shallow freshwater lake fed by surface waters from the Aïr Mountains.
• Humans lived on, and buried their dead in, a dune that protruded into the lake.
• Burials were submerged when lake levels rose; resubmergence over time darkened and hardened the bones.
• Fifty-four animal species, 20 kinds of trees, 30 kinds of shrubs, grasses and algae (recovered from pollen) were preserved at the site.
• Fossil fish found in the lakebed sediments are most similar to those in the Chad Basin, at the center of which is a lake that persists today (Lake Chad).