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An international team carrying out satellite remote sensing in the Eastern Sudan deserts has discovered hundreds of huge ancient mass graves in the Atbai Desert, part of the Sahara Desert which stretches between the Nile in Nubia and the Red Sea. The research, published in African Archaeological Review, reveals many large, circular mass graves (which were found to contain the bones of people, cattle, sheep, and goats). They are often arranged around a main burial at the centre. The graves were surrounded by large, round stone enclosure walls – some 80 metres in diameter – and represent a consistent burial tradition across the region. The monuments, which would have required organised communal labour, were created by a local pastoralist culture dating to about the 4th and 3rd millennia BC.
Text: Sarah Griffiths / Image: courtesy of the Museo Castiglioni
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