Twenty Stone Age skeletons have been found by archaeologists in and around a Libyan rock refuge in the Sahara desert, according to a recent study.

The burial site has been used for millennia, as evidenced by the skeletons’ 8,000 to 4,200-year age range.

Mary Anne Tafuri, a co-author of the study and an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, stated, “It must have been a site of memory.” It has been preserved and buried repeatedly, generation after generation, by people throughout history.

In the rock shelter, approximately 15 women and children were buried, while five men and children were buried in tumuli outside the shelter later, when the area became dry.

Twenty Stone Age skeletons were discovered by archaeologists in the Sahara Desert. The fact that the burials lasted for millennia suggests that the area was used as a cemetery by the locals. The findings, which are detailed in the March issue of the Journal of anthropological archaeology, indicate that the climate influenced cultural evolution.

Burials for millennia The Wadi Takarkori region of the Sahara desert was covered in scrubby vegetation and seasonal green patches from approximately 8,000 to 6,000 years ago.

According to Tafuri, stunning rock art depicts ancient herding animals like cows, which, in order to graze, require significantly more water than the current environment could support.

Between the years 2003 and 2006, Tafuri and her colleague Savino di Lernia began excavating the archaeological site.

At the same location, archaeologists also found huts, animal bones, and pots that contained evidence of the earliest fermented dairy products that were produced in Africa. [ See Images of the Stone-Ge Skeletons] Tafuri measured the skeletons’ concentrations of isotopes, or molecules of the same element with varying weights, to date the skeletons.

The crew came to the conclusion that most of the skeletons in the rock sanctuary were buried between 7,300 and 5,600 years ago, spanning four millennia.

When the area became more barren 4,500 years ago, males and children were buried beneath the stone mounds.

Tafuri expressed that cave artistic creations portraying goats, which require fundamentally less water for nibbling than cows, confirm the evaporating.

Based on a comparison of elements in the surrounding environment and isotopes in tooth enamel, which forms during early childhood, the ancient people also grew up close to where they were buried.

Culture shift The findings suggest that the same group of people used the burial site for millennia. Additionally, it showed a divided society.

Marina Gallinaro, a researcher in african studies at Sapienza University of????, wrote, “The exclusive use of the rock shelter for female and sub-adult burials points to a persistent division based on gender.” ome, who was not a part of the research.

One possibility is that women played a more important role in society in the past, and families may have even traced their lineage back to women.

However, men’s prominence may have increased as a result of the Sahara’s inexorable expansion into the region about 5,000 years ago, according to Gallinaro’s writing.

According to Luigi Boitani, a biologist at the Sapienza University of????, there are hundreds of sites in the region as a whole that have not yet been excavated. ome, who has chipped away at archeological locales in the area yet was not associated with the review.

“The region is an undiscovered fortune,” Boitani said.

The fragility of the area, which has been closed to archaeologists since the revolution that toppled Moammar el Gadhafi, is also highlighted by the new discovery.

Takarkori is exceptionally near the primary street that leads from Libya into adjoining Niger, so rebels and other famous political figures, like Gadhafi’s children, have every now and again went through the area to get away from the country, he said.