Facial reconstruction of a 9,500-year-old man from Gobero, Ténéré Desert, Niger The Kiffian culture was an Early Holocene culture that existed in the Sahara during the African Humid Period, also referred to as the Neolithic Subpluvial. The site of Gobero is known as one of the largest and earliest burial sites of Stone Age people in the Sahara. The Kiffians were skilled hunters. The remains of numerous large savannah animals found in the same area suggest that they inhabited the shores of a lake that existed during the Holocene Wet Phase, when the Sahara was a lush and humid environment. Kiffian remains are notable for their height; the reconstructed individual (G3B8) was approximately 188 cm tall. The Early Holocene skulls from Gobero share a number of traits with populations of the Sahara and Maghreb from the Late Upper Paleolithic and Early Holocene and were therefore described as “Mechtoid” (Sereno et al., 2008). However, the published study does not distinguish anthropologically between “Mechtoids” from the northern and southern parts of the Sahara, although this distinction is clearly evident in other studies. It therefore remains unclear whether the features of the Early Holocene inhabitants of Gobero were predominantly Sub-Saharan or genuinely “Mechtoid.” Moreover, it is possible that the Middle Holocene group had an origin independent of that of the Early Holocene population (S. V. Drobyshevsky, Antropogenez). A more recent study by Christopher M. Stojanowski, Joel D. Irish, and Paul C. Sereno (2026) found that the inter-sample affinities suggest that the successive Gobero populations are dentally indistinguishable, indicating population continuity at the site despite significant climatic deterioration. Both the Early and Middle Holocene samples from Gobero share dental affinities with Nile Valley populations, particularly those from the multicomponent Sudanese site of al-Khiday. However, both samples also display intermediate affinities with northern and Sub-Saharan African populations. These results suggest that, for much of the Holocene, an admixed population inhabited the central Sahara, with a primarily East African/Nile Valley origin. Nevertheless, as the climate deteriorated, interactions with northern and Sub-Saharan African populations cannot be ruled out.