Who are the Kiffian people?

Who are the Kiffian people?

The Kiffians were a prehistoric people who preceded the Tenerians and vanished approximately 8000 years ago, when the desert became very dry. The desiccation lasted until around 4600 BC, the period to when the earliest artifacts associated with the Tenerians have been dated.

What did Kiffians look like?

From their burials, we know that Kiffians were a tall, robust-boned people. They hunted with spears tipped with tiny bladelets (called microliths) and fished with harpoons carved from bone. They decorated their pottery with characteristic parallel wavy lines.

What types of artifacts were discovered from the Kiffian culture?

They exhumed eight burials and collected scores of artifacts from both cultures. In a dry lake bed nearby, they found dozens of Kiffian fish hooks and harpoons carved from animal bone as well as skeletal remains of massive Nile perch, crocodile and hippo.

Where is Tenere?

Ténéré, physiographic region of the Sahara extending from northeastern Niger into western Chad. Comprising the northwestern part of the Central Sudan depression, this vast level plain of sand extends over approximately 154,440 square miles (400,000 square km).

When did the African Humid Period begin to deliver more rain to present day northern Africa?

about 15,000-14,500 years ago
The humid period began about 15,000-14,500 years ago. The onset of the humid period took place almost simultaneously over all of Northern and Tropical Africa, with impacts as far as Santo Antão on Cape Verde.

What did Sereno and his team find in the Sahara Desert What is important about this site?

“Skeletons Of The Sahara” reveals scientist Paul Sereno’s amazing discovery of a prehistoric human burial ground in the middle of a forbidding desert. Six weeks into a three-month journey, his team makes an unexpected discovery: human bones, the remains of peoples who lived 10,000 and 5,000 years ago.

What is the loneliest tree in the world?

Tree
The lonely tree was planted around the turn of the 20th century by New Zealand’s then-governor, Lord Ranfurly. More than 100 years later, the introduced spruce is considered the most isolated tree in the world, after the former record-holder, the Tree of Ténéré in the Sahara Desert was mowed down by a drunk driver.

What happened to the Tree of Ténéré?

Today, visitors to the Tree of Ténéré only see a vaguely tree-like metal sculpture placed where the acacia once stood. Tragically, the original tree was run down in 1973 by a Libyan truck driver. The poor tree’s carcass now rests in peace at the national museum in Niamey, Niger.

What has Sereno discovered?

His team discovered the first dinosaur skull from India, the new meat-eater Rajasaurus (“princely reptile”). In a remote corner of the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia, he discovered a herd of 25 plant-eating dinosaurs that died in their tracks, mired in a sinkhole some 90 million years ago.

What happens to skeletons in the desert?

The team concluded that the skeletons were buried over four millennia, with most of the remains in the rock shelter buried between 7,300 and 5,600 years ago. The males and juveniles under the stone heaps were buried starting 4,500 years ago, when the region became more arid.

Who were the Kiffians?

The Kiffians, some of whom stood up to six feet tall, both men and women, lived there during the Sahara’s wettest period, between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago. They were primarily hunter-gatherers who speared huge lake perch with harpoons.

What is Kiffian ceramics?

Elena A. A. Garcea, an archaeologist at the University of Cassino in Italy, identified ceramics with wavy lines and zigzag patterns as Kiffian, a culture associated with northern Africa.

Did the Kiffian people live in the Sahara Desert?

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.

What was the difference between the Kiffians and Tenerians?

The bones and teeth showed that in contrast to the robust Kiffians, the Tenerians were typically short and lean and apparently led less rigorous lives. Perhaps, Dr. Stojanowski said, they had developed more advanced hunting technologies for taking smaller fish and game.