Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change

et al. (2008) Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change. PLoS ONE 3(8): e2995. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002995 Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change Paul C. Sereno 0 Elena A. A. Garcea 0 He le` ne Jousse 0 Christopher M. Stojanowski 0 Jean-Franc ois Salie` ge 0 Abdoulaye Maga 0 Oumarou A. Ide 0 Kelly J. Knudson 0 Anna Maria Mercuri 0 Thomas W. Stafford 0 Jr. 0 Thomas G. Kaye 0 Carlo Giraudi 0 Isabella Massamba N'siala 0 Enzo Cocca 0 Hannah M. 0 Moots 0 Didier B. Dutheil 0 Jeffrey P. Stivers 0 Henry Harpending, University of Utah, United States of America 0 1 Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago , Chicago , Illinois, United States of America, 2 Dipartimento di Filologia e Storia, University of Cassino , Cassino, Italy, 3 Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Wien , Austria , 4 School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University , Tempe , Arizona, United States of America, 5 Laboratoire d'Oce anographie et du Climat Expe rimentations et Approches Nume riques, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France, 6 Direction de L'Education, Culture, Science et Technologie, Economic Community of West African States Commission, Abuja, Nigeria, 7 Institut des Sciences Humaines, Universite de Niamey, Niamey, Re publique du Niger, 8 Dipartimento del Museo di Paleobiologia e dell'Orto Botanico, Universita` di Modena e Reggio Emilia , Modena, Italy, 9 Stafford Research Laboratories , Inc., Lafayette, Colorado, United States of America , 10 Burke Museum of Natural History , University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America , 11 Ente per le Nuove Tecnologie, l'Energia e l'Ambiente, Rome, Italy, 12 Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Antropologiche e Archeologiche dell'Antichita` , University of Rome ''La Sapienza , '' Rome, Italy, 13 Muse um national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, France, 14 Federal Way, Washington , United States of America 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 midHolocene 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. - Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Introduction The greening and ultimate desiccation of the Sahara rank among the most severe climatic fluctuations during the Holocene [1]. Driven by variation in orbital insolation and magnified by feedback between monsoonal rainfall and vegetation [2], ecosystem succession in the Sahara is well known from many lines of evidence such as pollen spectra [3], paleolake levels [46], and, most recently, high-resolution paleolake sediment cores [7]. Human adaptation during this period of climate fluctuation is best known in the Eastern Sahara to the west of the Nile valley. This region witnessed continuous occupation from 8500 B.C.E., when hunter-gatherers using a distinctive Epipaleolithic tool kit expanded across open grass savanna habitats, to about 3500 B.C.E, when aridification drove pastoralists from most areas of the desert [8]. Occupational patterns in low-lying regions elsewhere in the Sahara most closely resemble the Eastern Sahara during the early Holocene (,80007000 B.C.E.), when pottery-producing hunter-fisher-gatherers resided beside paleolakes, utilizing a tool kit including microliths and harpoon points and fish hooks of bone [911]. By the mid-Holocene, occupational histories diverge in the Central and Western Sahara [12] as a result of distinctive local humid-arid cycles [1315], diversified economies and lifestyles tied to ephemeral paleolakes [10], upland refugia [16] and rivers [17], and marked variation among the human populations themselves [10,18,19]. Despite increasing knowledge regarding occupational succession in the Sahara from early to late Holocene [8,10,11,16,17], that record is based on individual sites that typically preserve short intervals of occupation, include few if any intact burials, and rely largely on indirect dating of human remains and artifacts [20]. We report here on a new site complex called Gobero located at the western tip of the hyperarid Tenere Desert in the southern Sahara in Niger (Figures 1A, 2). Approximately 200 burials ranging in age over five millennia are present in the upper level of several paleodunes that are situated adjacent to a paleolake deposit. Gobero preserves the earliest and largest Holocene cemetery in the Sahara, opening a new window on the funerary practices, distinctive skeletal anatomy, health and diet of early Holocene hunter-fisher-gatherers, who expanded into the Sahara when climatic conditions were favorable. The site complex also preserves numerous mid-Holocene burials, some indicating funerary rituals wi (...truncated)