A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert. The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilisations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.

Some 200 graves of humans were found during fieldwork at the site in 2005 and 2006, as well as remains of animals, large fish and crocodiles. The graveyard, uncovered by hot desert winds, is near what would have been a lake. It’s in a region called Gobero, hidden away in Niger’s forbidding Tenere Desert, known to Tuareg nomads as a “desert within a desert.”