Lakeside cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 years of Holocene population and environmental change.

Approximately two hundred human burials on the edge of a paleolake in Niger provide a uniquely preserved record of human occupation in the Sahara under severe climatic fluctuation during the Holocene. Based on direct dating of human burials and midden materials, two occupational phases are identified that correspond with humid intervals in the early and mid-Holocene. The older occupants, which show affinities with Late Pleistocene inhabitants of the Maghreb, are buried in hyperflexed positions and compose the earliest cemetery in the Sahara (~7500-6200 B.C.E.). They vanish under arid conditions and are followed by a more gracile people with burials with grave goods, including ivory ornaments, when humid conditions return (~4600-2800 B.C.E.). A single lakeside locale called Gobero chronicles the rapid pace of biosocial change in response to severe climatic change.