Kiffian
The Kiffian culture is a prehistoric industry, or domain, that existed between approximately 8,000 BC and 6,000 BC in the Sahara Desert, during the African humid period referred to as the Neolithic Subpluvial. Human remains from this culture were found in 2000 AD at a site known as Gobero, located in Niger in the Ténéré Desert. The site is known as the largest and earliest burial place of Stone Age people in the Sahara desert. Characteristics The Kiffians were skilled hunters. Bones of many large savannah animals that were discovered in the same area suggest that they lived on the shores of a lake that was present during the Holocene Wet Phase, a period when the Sahara desert was verdant and wet. The Kiffian people were tall, standing over six feet in height. A craniometric analysis by Sereno et al. suggests that this early Holocene population was related to the Late Pleistocene Iberomaurusians and early Holocene Capsians of the Maghreb, as well as mid-Holocene Mechta grou ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sahara Desert
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Sahara
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Gobero
The Gobero archaeological site, dating to approximately 8000 BCE, is the oldest known graveyard in the Sahara Desert. The site contains important information for archaeologists on how early humans adapted to a constantly changing environment. Gobero is located in the Ténéré desert of Niger, and is named after the Tuareg name for the region. It is the type site of the Holocene era Kiffian culture and Tenerian culture. Site The area was once the location of a freshwater paleolake named Gobero, approximately 3 km in diameter and, 3 m in depth. There are eight sites that make up Gobero: G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G6, G7, and G8, five of which (G1, G2, G3, G5, and G8) have funerary and habitation remains. Site G1 is a dune that rises from the lake basin to an elevation of 56.035m above sea level and extends east-west. It contains 19 excavated burials, 20 individuals in total. Site G2 is a hill between Site G1 and 3 that contained four burials. G3 is 300 meters Northwest of G1 and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tenerian Culture
The Tenerian culture is a prehistoric industry that existed between the 5th millennium BC and mid-3rd millennium BC in the Sahara Desert. This spans the Neolithic Subpluvial and later desiccation, during the middle Holocene. French archaeologist M.Reygasse first used the term Tenerian in 1934 with subsequent scholars producing a clearer definition. The Missions Berliet to the Aïr Mountains (Aïr Massif) in northern Niger produced the clearest definition prior to J. Desmond Clark's expedition to Adrar Bous in early 1970, the results of which were published in November 2008. Human remains belonging to the Tenerian culture were first found at Adrar Bous in the Aïr Mountains. Other Tenerian specimens were also discovered at Gobero, located in Niger in the Ténéré desert. This region was lush at the time, and Tenerians were specialized cattle herders who also occasionally fished and hunted. Discoveries at Gobero Gobero was discovered in 2000 during an archaeological expedition ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Niger
) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesRépublique du Niger, "Loi n° 2001-037 du 31 décembre 2001 fixant les modalités de promotion et de développement des langues nationales." L'aménagement linguistique dans le monde (accessed 21 September 2016) , languages = , religion_ref = , religion_year = 2012 , religion = , demonym = Nigerien , capital = , coordinates ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ténéré
The Ténéré (Tuareg: Tenere, literally: "desert") is a desert region in the south central Sahara. It comprises a vast plain of sand stretching from northeastern Niger into western Chad, occupying an area of over . The Ténéré's boundaries are said to be the Aïr Mountains in the west, the Hoggar Mountains in the north, the Djado Plateau in the northeast, the Tibesti Mountains in the east, and the basin of Lake Chad in the south. The central part of the desert, the Erg du Bilma, is centred at approximately . It is the locus of the Neolithic Tenerian culture. Name The name ''Ténéré'' comes from the Tuareg language, meaning "desert", in much the same way that the Arabic word for "desert", ''Sahara'', came to be applied to the region as a whole. Climate The Ténéré has a hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification ''BWh''), typical of the large Sahara Desert. The climate is hyper-arid, extremely hot, sunny and dry year-round and there is virtually no plant life. The av ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mechta-Afalou
Mechta-Afalou (Mechtoid) or Paleo-Berber are a population that inhabited parts of North Africa during the late Paleolithic and Mesolithic. They are associated with the Iberomaurusian archaeological culture. Mechtoids are believed to have been assimilated during the Neolithic and early Bronze Age by the makers of the ensuing Capsian culture. Craniometric analysis indicates that these Iberomaurusians were closely related to the early Holocene Capsians of the Maghreb (Tamazgha), as well as the early Holocene Kiffians of the Sahara. Iberomaurusian fossils excavated at the Afalou site were found to carry the mtDNA haplogroups H or U (3/9; 33%), J (2/9; 22%), H103 (1/9; 11%), H14b1 or JT (1/9; 11%), R0a1a (1/9; 11%), and T2b (1/9; 11%). All of these are Eurasian Haplogroups. Iberomaurusian fossils excavated at the Taforalt site were found to carry the Y-DNA haplogroups E-M78*(4/6; 66%), E-L618*(1/6; 16%), and E-M35(1/6; 16%). All individuals carried the mtDNA haplogroups U6(6/ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bantu Migration
The Bantu expansion is a hypothesis about the history of the major series of migrations of the original Proto-Bantu-speaking group, which spread from an original nucleus around Central Africa across much of sub-Saharan Africa. In the process, the Proto-Bantu-speaking settlers displaced or absorbed pre-existing hunter-gatherer and pastoralist groups that they encountered. The primary evidence for this expansion is linguistic – a great many of the languages which are spoken across Sub-Equatorial Africa are remarkably similar to each other, suggesting the common cultural origin of their original speakers. The linguistic core of the Bantu languages, which comprise a branch of the Atlantic-Congo language family, was located in the southern regions of Cameroon. However, attempts to trace the exact route of the expansion, to correlate it with archaeological evidence and genetic evidence, have not been conclusive; thus although the expansion is widely accepted as having taken place, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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African Humid Period
The African humid period (AHP) (also known by other names) is a climate period in Africa during the late Pleistocene and Holocene geologic epochs, when northern Africa was wetter than today. The covering of much of the Sahara desert by grasses, trees and lakes was caused by changes in Earth's orbit around the Sun; changes in vegetation and dust in the Sahara which strengthened the African monsoon; and increased greenhouse gases. During the preceding Last Glacial Maximum, the Sahara contained extensive dune fields and was mostly uninhabited. It was much larger than today, but its lakes and rivers such as Lake Victoria and the White Nile were either dry or at low levels. The humid period began about 14,600–14,500 years ago at the end of Heinrich event 1, simultaneously to the Bølling–Allerød warming. Rivers and lakes such as Lake Chad formed or expanded, glaciers grew on Mount Kilimanjaro and the Sahara retreated. Two major dry fluctuations occurred; during the Youn ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gabon
Gabon (; ; snq, Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (french: République gabonaise), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, it is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo on the east and south, and the Gulf of Guinea to the west. It has an area of nearly and its population is estimated at million people. There are coastal plains, mountains (the Cristal Mountains and the Chaillu Massif in the centre), and a savanna in the east. Since its independence from France in 1960, the sovereign state of Gabon has had three presidents. In the 1990s, it introduced a multi-party system and a democratic constitution that aimed for a more transparent electoral process and reformed some governmental institutions. With petroleum and foreign private investment, it has the fourth highest HDI in the region (after Mauritius, Seychelles and South Africa) and the fifth highest GDP per capita (PPP) i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nilo-Saharan
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50–60 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the centre; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east. As indicated by its hyphenated name, Nilo-Saharan is a family of the African interior, including the greater Nile Basin and the Central Sahara Desert. Eight of its proposed constituent divisions (excluding Kunama, Kuliak, and Songhay) are found in the modern countries of Sudan and South Sudan, through which the Nile River flows. In his book ''The Languages of Africa'' (1963), Joseph Greenberg named the group and argued it was a genetic family. It contains the languages which are not included in the Niger–Congo, Afroasiatic o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |