Ancient Burial in the Sahara Tell a Poignant Tale of Tragedy and Love

Around twelve thousand of years ago, the Sahara was green. It had a lush forest cover where people used to live in and die in. In the early 2000s, paleontologists hunting for dinosaur bones discovered a graveyard of two peoples that lives thousands of years apart, the Kiffians from the earlier green period, and the Tenerians from the later part. The inhabitants of the Green Sahara disappeared along with the forests. Around 3,500 years ago, the sands which once covered the Green Sahara reclaimed the land.

A photo by Mike Hettwer from the National Geographic site article on the Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara shows a woman and her two children buried with hands apparently clasped by the mourners in a display of love. One of the children's face is turned towards the elder one, as if saying, "Don't leave me, mother." It is not clear how the three died, but researchers speculate they all died on the same day. Pollen in the burial area showed that the "mother and children" were laid to rest on flowers.

You can view Hettner's photo of the excavation of the woman and child burial through this link.

View more of Mike Hettner's photos of the excavation of the burial site of the Tenerians and Kiffians here.

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Evidence of Lost Tribe in Philippines Seen in Confiscated Anthropomorphic Burial Jars

Little is known about the prehistory of the early inhabitants of the Philippines. But Dr. Eusebio Dizon of the National Museum (below left) had uncovered anthropomorphic (human-form) burial jars in the early nineties in Pinol and Maitum caves in Saranggani province in Mindanao that were established to have been made in 5BC. He had to go through rebel-controlled areas just to get to the cave were they were found.

Now, there appears to be a new but much older burial site, perhaps as much as 2,000 years old, and this is reputedly in the nearby town of Palembang in the province of Sulatan Kudarat. This was according to what was told to the Governor Rene Miguel Dominguez of Saranggani. Evidence of this surfaced when police confiscated sacks of snuggled broken pottery. Little did they know that they may have discovered evidence of one of the earliest tribes in the Philippines.

The pot sherds were cruder than those found in Saranggani but also had anthropomorphic depictions and were painted. Faces and arms were obviously a big part of the design. Dizon says the people who made the pottery were not associated with any of the current tribes because these do not depict human forms in their pottery. He said further research needs to be done but the exact location of the plundered site needs to be established. The task is not an easy one because of the presence of rebels.

Evidence of prehistoric tigers found in Palawan in the Philippines

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