Not So Long Ago the Sahara Desert Was Tropical

A thousand years back and we get to the Norman Invasion.  Two thousand back and we're killing Christ.  Six thousand years ago, the Sahara was tropical.  (Science Daily:  6,000 years ago the Sahara Desert was tropical, so what happened?)

The article isn't just another diatribe on global warming since the researchers were examining weather patterns in a different way.

The two researchers have looked into precipitation patterns of the Holocene era and compared them with present-day movements of the intertropical convergence zone, a large region of intense tropical rainfall.  Using computer models and other data, the researchers found links to rainfall patterns thousands of years ago.

"The framework we developed helps us understand why the heaviest tropical rain belts set up where they do," Korty explains.

"Tropical rain belts are tied to what happens elsewhere in the world through the Hadley circulation, but it won't predict changes elsewhere directly, as the chain of events is very complex.  But it is a step toward that goal."

- Science Daily

Six thousand years is not too long ago in human history since the Pyramids were going up five thousand years ago and Egypt must have been a resort fun spot about that time, at least if you were a Pharaoh.

It was a surprise to me to hear the Sahara was so different in such recent times.  I really didn't have any solid idea of when it became a desert but A Long Time Ago.  Apparently it wasn't so long at all.

This article isn't steering toward Beware of Global Warming As We Will All Die.  The weather change in the Sahara was local and not global so it's a specifically different thing.  It probably relates to global warming insofar as the changes are likely to be quite a bit more radical than simply going to hot summers.

Lucy is one of the favorite fossils in archaeology since she lived a bit more than three million years ago and was one of the earliest proto-humans.  There's a legend that she died falling out of a tree and that's received a contentious reaction from archaeologists.  (Science News for Students:  ‘Cousin’ Lucy may have fallen from a tree to her death 3.2 million years ago)

Whether Lucy did or did not croak falling out of a tree doesn't matter much just now since our interest is the time scale.  Three million years is a mote of dust in the context of evolution on the planet but that's also the period from the early hominids to present.  At that time we were still animals but today, ostensibly, we are more than that.

There were some remarks about the time Lucy spent in trees but of course she did.  Trees are the easiest places to find food and some of them even grow it for you.

Going from three million years relative to six thousand years and we drop down another order of magnitude in the scale of motes of dust.  That time period was a nit in Earth's history and yet the biggest and most fearsome desert in the world came out of it.

There are all kinds of trips in this since Ethiopia is not much South of Egypt and it's probably been in a green belt through the entire time but it's not far short of where the Sahara extends now.  Ethiopia has been the location for excavation of the oldest human fossils and the Olduvai Gorge is where Richard Leakey (cough) made his bones.

Note:  no, I'm not sorry for that.  If you pun, do it without regret.

Since the Sahara is not far North of Ethiopia, what's the probability the area of the desert is loaded with ancient fossils ... but they're buried under the sand.

For today's independent study, where did the Sahara get the sand.  Presumably it wasn't buried under yards of sand back when it was tropical so how did all that appear.

There's plenty of kozmik for this one since the most ancient humans were in Ethiopia and it, therefore, must be the general area of Eden.

Our hypothesis on this one is the evidence of the preponderance of the fossils from Ethiopia is circumstantial and the case isn't proven until ...

Ed:  we find out what's under the Sahara!

Right you are, Watson.

What we need to do is review the spoken history of Africa which has been passed down through the tribes for all these years.  We want to find any reference to the Great Northern Civilization.

Ed:  will the hypothesis this time be there was a civilization in the area of the Sahara and it got wiped out by the weather change such that it was buried by the sand and disappeared?

Outstanding, Watson.  You may make detective yet.

Ed:  we will need ground-penetrating radar to search.

Now you're on it.  Let's find it.  Just think of the book deals.  We can call it "Searching for Eden" and we'll make millions.