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.