Kiffian is the name given by archaeologists to a prehistoric culture thriving between about 10,000 and 8,000 years ago in the Sahara Desert. This was during a wet period of Saharan history known as the Neolithic Subpluvial. Human remains from this culture were found in 2000 at a site known as Gobero, located in Niger in the Ténéré Desert.[1]
They were skilled hunters, and the discovery of bones of many large savannah animals in the same area suggest that they lived on the shores of a lake that was present during a period when the Sahara was verdant and wet.[2] The Kiffian people were tall, often over six feet tall.[1]
Traces of the Kiffian culture do not exist after 8,000 years ago, as the Sahara went through a dry period for the next thousand years.[3] After this time, another culture, the Tenerians, colonized the area.