Hundreds of huge ancient mass graves discovered in the Sahara Desert

This involved using satellite aerial imagery to systematically and painstakingly search for archaeological features in eastern Sudan’s Atbai Desert, a small part of the larger Sahara Desert.

Our team, which includes archaeologists from Macquarie University, France’s HiSoMA research unit and the Polish Academy of Sciences, hopes to tell the story of this desert region between the Nile and the Red Sea without digging.

A mysterious archaeological feature stands out. We continue to find huge circular mass graves filled with human and animal bones, often carefully arranged around a key figure in the center.

All of these “funeral” monuments, probably built around the fourth and third millennium BC, have a large circular enclosure, some up to 80 meters in diameter, in which humans and their cattle, sheep and goats were buried.

Our new research, published in the journal African Archaeological Reviews, reveals how we discovered 260 previously unknown closed tombs across nearly 1,000 kilometers of desert east of the Nile.

Who built them?

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Already known from examples excavated in the deserts of Egypt and Sudan, these large, circular burial monuments have long puzzled scholars.

What once seemed like an isolated example has now become a consistent pattern. It hints at a common nomadic culture across vast swaths of desert.

Most are located on the slopes of the Red Sea Mountains in modern-day Sudan. Unfortunately, satellite imagery alone cannot convey the full story of the builders of these walls that buried them.

Carbon dating and pottery from the few unearthed monuments tell us that these people lived around 4000-3000 BC, just before the Egyptians formed what we know as the Pharaonic Kingdom of Egypt.

But these “enclosed burial” nomads have little to do with the elegant farming Egyptians.

They live in the desert and herd livestock. They are Saharan nomads through and through.

New elite?

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Some enclosures show “secondary” burials arranged around the “primary” burial of a single person in the center – possibly a chief or other important member of the community.

For archaeologists, this is important data for identifying classes and hierarchies in prehistoric societies.

The question of when Saharan nomads became less egalitarian has puzzled archaeologists for decades, but most agree that a distinct “elite” class emerged around this time in the fourth millennium BC.

This is still a far cry from the vast divisions between rulers and ruled, and between pharaohs and peasants, that existed in societies such as Egypt. However, it brought with it the first traces of inequality.

animals are highly respected

Cattle seem to have been very important to these prehistoric nomadic peoples.

These nomads bury themselves next to their cattle to show their respect for the animals.

Thousands of years later, local nomads chose to repurpose these now “ancient” walls for their burial sites – sometimes nearly 4,000 years after they were first built.

In other words, prehistoric nomads created burial spaces that lasted for thousands of years.

What happened to these people?

No one can say for sure.

The few dates we have for these monuments are concentrated between 4000 BC and 3000 BC, at the end of a dry period in the once green Sahara Desert, a period that scientists call the “African Humid Period.”

From north to south, the summer monsoon gradually recedes, rainfall decreases, and the pasture area decreases. This resulted in nomads abandoning their thirsty livestock, increasing livestock mobility, migrating south or escaping to the Nile.

The vast majority of these monuments are located near watering points that were advantageous at the time. Rock pools near valley floors, lake beds and short rivers.

This tells us that the desert was already quite challenging and dry at the time the monument was built.

At some point, raising their precious livestock became unsustainable as grass and scrub gave way to sand and rocks.

In this period, owning large herds of cattle in this desert may have been a way to show off expensive and rare possessions—the equivalent of owning a Ferrari to prehistoric nomads. This may help explain why cattle are often buried with their owners in fenced burial monuments.

a bigger story

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These closed burials are just part of the great story of human adaptation to climate change across North Africa.

Raising cattle, goats and sheep transformed societies from the central Sahara to Kenya and Arabia. It changed the food they ate, the way they moved, and the hierarchy of their communities.

It is no coincidence that communities changed the way they buried their dead while adopting a pastoral lifestyle.

These cemeteries tell us that even dispersed nomads were highly organized people and experts at adapting to their environment.

Our findings reshape the story of the prehistory of the Sahara and the Nile.

They kick off the monumentalism of the Egyptian and Nubian kingdoms and paint an image of the region as more than just its pharaohs, pyramids and temples.

Sadly, many paddock monuments are currently being destroyed or vandalized due to unregulated mining in the area. These unique tombs have been around for thousands of years but could disappear in less than a week. GRS

GRS

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