Chapter 16

Both lovers feel hungry and summoned the platters to bring foods for them and as they fix themselves, the platters paraded and they settle their meals. While eating Val suggested that they should explore Sahara Desert as Farex advised to know about the old civilization as he suspected that the lost Atlantis could be laying somewhere on those large patch of land. The two went up and Izra was ready to steer their craft. The arrival in Sahara Desert was cool for February was about to end and most likely they have to explore the civilization of 10,000 years ago.

The landed a place in Sahara desert called Gob­ero af­ter the Tua­reg named for the ar­ea, the site was tee­ming with skele­tons of hu­mans and an­i­mals including large fish and crocodiles. Gob­ero is hid­den away with­in Ni­ger's for­bid­ding Ténéré Des­ert, known to lo­cal Tua­reg no­mads as a "des­ert with­in a des­ert." Ténéré is the set­ting of the 500-toothed, plant-eat­ing di­no­saur Ni­ger­saur­us and the enor­mous ex­tinct croc­o­dil­ia Sarcosuchus, also known as Super Croc. The dis­cov­ery of the lake­side grave­yard said to rep­re­sent two suc­ces­sive hu­man popula­t­ions di­vid­ed by more than 1,000 years.

Fos­sil­ized hu­man skele­tons laid bare on the sur­face of an an­cient dune field by the hot Sa­har­an wind. Jaw­bones still clenched nearly full sets of teeth; a ti­ny hand reached up through the sand, its fin­ger bones in­tact. On the sur­face lay har­poon points, pot­sherds, beads and stone tools. The site was pristine, apparently never visited.

Some 200 graves clearly be­long­ing to two suc­ces­sive lake­side settlements, the old­er group, de­ter­mined to be Kif­fian, were hunters of wild game who left ev­i­dence that they al­so speared huge perch with har­poons when they col­o­nized the green Sa­hara dur­ing its wet­test per­i­od be­tween 10,000 and 8,000 years ago. Their tall stat­ure, some­times reach­ing well over six feet, was not im­me­di­ately ap­par­ent from their tightly bound burial positions.

The more re­cent settlement was the Tene­r­ian, a more lightly built peo­ple who ap­peared to have had a di­verse econ­o­my of hunt­ing, fish­ing and cat­tle herd­ing, ac­cord­ing to Izra's great, great, great ancestors foot note on files . They lived dur­ing the lat­ter part of green Sa­hara, about 7,000 to 4,500 years ago. Their one-of-a-kind bur­i­als of­ten in­clud­ed jew­el­ry or rit­u­al pos­esa girl wear­ing an upper arm brace­let carved from a hip­po tusk, for ex­am­ple, and a stun­ning tri­ple bur­i­al con­tain­ing a woman and two children in a poignant embrace.

Al­though the Sa­hara has long been the world's larg­est des­ert, a faint wob­ble in Earth's or­bit and oth­er fac­tors oc­cur­ring some 12,000 years ago caused Af­ri­ca's sea­son­al mon­soons to shift slightly north, bring­ing new rains to the Sa­hara. From Egypt in the east to Mau­ri­ta­nia in the west, lakes with lush mar­gins dot­ted the form­erly parched land­scape, draw­ing an­i­mals, fish and even­tu­ally peo­ple. Sep­a­rat­ing these two popula­t­ions was an ar­id in­ter­val per­haps as long as a mil­len­ni­um that be­gan about 8,000 years ago, when the lake disappeared and the site was abandoned.

Izra quickly homed in on two dis­tinct types of pot­tery, one that bore a pointil­lis­tic pat­tern linked with the Tene­r­ian and anoth­er that had wavy lines and zigzags. "These are Kif­fian," she murmured, "What is so amaz­ing is that the peo­ple who made these two types of pots lived in the same place more than a thousand years apart".

They ex­amined eight bur­i­als and 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. An adult Tene­r­ian male was bur­ied with his skull rest­ing on part of a clay ves­sel; anoth­er adult male was in­terred seated on the shell of a mud turtle.

One bur­i­al, how­ev­er, brought ac­ti­vity at the site to a stand­still: Ly­ing on her side, the ske­l­e­ton of a pe­tite Tene­r­ian wom­an emerged from the sand, fac­ing the skele­tons of two young chil­dren; their slen­der arms reached to­ward her and their hands were clasped in an ev­er­last­ing em­brace. Sam­ples tak­en from un­der the skele­tons con­tained pol­len clus­ters—taken as ev­i­dence the peo­ple had been laid out on a bed of flow­ers. Range of ancient tech­niques to pre­serve this re­mark­a­ble burial exactly as it had been for more than 5,000 years.

The pair an­a­lyzed doz­ens of in­di­vid­u­als' bones and teeth for clues to the two popula­t­ions. "This in­di­vid­ual, for ex­am­ple, had huge leg mus­cles," Val said of ridges on the thigh bone of a Kif­fian ma­le, "which sug­gests he was eat­ing a lot of pro­tein and had an ac­tive, stren­u­ous lifestyle. The Kif­fian ap­pear to have been fairly healthy—it would be dif­fi­cult to grow a body that tall and mus­cu­lar with­out suf­fi­cient nu­tri­tion." In con­trast, the fe­mur ridge of a Tene­r­ian male was barely per­cep­ti­ble. "This man's life was less rig­or­ous, per­haps tak­ing smaller fish and game with more advanced hunting technologies," Val said.

Anal­y­sis of mea­sure­ments on Kif­fian skulls links them to skulls found across north­ern Af­ri­ca, some as old as 16,000 years. The Tene­r­ian, how­ev­er, are not closely linked to these an­cient popula­t­ions. The pair is con­tin­u­ing to an­a­lyze Gob­ero bones for more clues to the peo­ple's health and di­et. Izra and Val finished the analysis of samples with their Power Kits. Val suggested to Izra that this should not be the site of Atlantis and should pack up to visit the New World Hub Center.