A Green Sahara?

     Everybody knows about the Sahara desert. It’s a big sand pit about the size of the U.S, but now there is a new light that has been cast on this sand box. According to the series, How the Earth was Made on the History Channel; the Sahara may have been a lush Greenland about 10,000 years ago. This just so happens to coincide with when humans just started to migrate out of Africa. It was originally thought that we crossed over a land bridge into the middle east, but now there is proof that we may have walked along the shores of mega lakes that were in the middle of the “desert”. Our proofs are human bones, fossils and settlements.

      We have found many bones from sea creatures, from shells to whales in the middle of the Sahara. We have also found human bones dating back thousands of years in the desert. Lastly, we have found whole settlements in caves, and sometimes we find proof of little teepee like houses. In these places, caves in particular, we find drawings in rock. These are drawings of people fishing and hunting, but towards the back of these rocks or caves, we find pictures of rain. We see that our ancestors were praying for rain. Those prayers were not answered, because the Sahara was beginning its shift back into a desert. These villages were forced to migrate. They had no idea where water was, so most of them died out except for those who had escaped into Eurasia and those who found lakes such as Lake Victoria.

      You may be wondering how the Sahara goes from lush grassland to sand dunes, and I have an answer for you. Every few thousand years, the earth wobbles on its axis. This makes the sunlight warm Southern Africa instead of northern Africa. This means the Monsoons move north, and voila, a green desert. Of course this wobble wont happen for quite a few years, so get used to the Sahara desert, It’s going to be here a while.