Satellite imaging and other evidence of a "Green Sahara" and an old Nile River

It has been found that there is a correlation between the arrival of domesticated goats and sheep, but mainly goats, and the onset of deserts. The pattern presents itself in the northern Sahara and in central India.
I'm sure if some looked very hard they could find the paper.

reply to post by Cherry0


[color=turquoise]A informative post. I remember seeing something about the Green Sahara several years back on National Geographic or Discovery. The program said that the Sahara could become green again should Earth's wobble revert to the way it leaned when the Sahara was Green, but that wouldn't happen for thousands
of years.

For some time now I have believed, and as you said there is evidence to support these similar ideas, that a great civilization lived in the middle of the continent, or in the Sahara Desert region of today. I suppose this was before 10,000 BCE, although it could have been much earlier still. In fact, I believe there is linguistic evidence to support the idea that peoples from this region migrated through the Indian Ocean and ended up populating the areas around Polynesia. Basically many different Pacific islands. It may have been mentioned on ATS in the past about the similarities in certain languages from all of these regions, including the languages that we know were spoken around the area in question.

I must admit however that as far as the Nile is concerned I know very little. It would stand to reason however that there must have been a major water source of this nature in the area of the Sahara, as it is said it was lush and tropical. Plus, people do not usually settle away from a water source, and major civilizations do not develop unless there is a major water source present. The Nile is a good candidate in my opinion. It seems likely that the last glacial maximum played a role in the region of the Sahara Desert. When that period ended, and there may have been other factors at work, this lush tropical environment dried up, and the people ended up moving east, settling in places like Egypt. This may very well have been how the Egyptian civilization seemed to spring up overnight, already being advanced...

reply to post by punkinworks10


I think that there have been a number of high profile discussions about the role of goats in desertification, most recently aiming to prevent such projects as 'goats to Africa'...and while clearly there is a correlation to the desertification of scrub, the effect is only applicable once the soil has lost it's sub-surface structure in terms of mycorrihizae and more importantly, humans permitting the over grazing. And before we completely demonise the goat (ignoring Baphomet entirely for the time being ) in temperate areas, goats are being used as a highly effective means of maintaining biodiversity, using specific species to tackle overgrown shrubbery from suffocating plants which ordinarily are struggling due to lack of light and moisture. Goats have their place, and as domestic animals, it is the human responsibility to properly managed that placing. Not the goats fault.

Originally posted by KilgoreTrout
reply to post by Cherry0

 

This is an interesting short piece about the work of Farouk El Baz which led to the tapping of a number of wells in the Sahara, the radar imagery of the former riverbeds is amazing, and as detailed, has been successfully used to access underground water repeatedly.

www.bbc.co.uk...

Another good documentary was one that covered the work of Sarah Parcak who has used satellite images to map Ancient Egypt...

From 2003 to 2004, Parcak used a combination of satellite imaging analysis and surface surveys in the possible detection of 132 archaeological sites, some dating back to 3,000 B.C.[3] In her latest work, Parcak tested several types of satellite imagery to look for water sources within the arid region of the Sinai, East Delta and Middle Egypt, determining possible archaeological sites.[3] According to Parcak this approach reduces the time and cost for determining archaeological sites compared to surface detection.[4]

In May 2011 the BBC aired a documentary, Egypt's Lost Cities, describing BBC sponsored research carried out by Parcak's UAB team for over a year using infra-red satellite imaging from commercial and NASA satellites.[5] The programme discussed the research and showed Parcak in Egypt looking for physical evidence. The UAB team announced that they had discovered 17 pyramids, more than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements outside Sa el-Hagar, Egypt.[6]

The release by the BBC of an announcement before the broadcast was criticised by the then Minister of State for Antiquities, Zahi Hawass. In a statement on his blog he wrote "I was very pleased to be involved with this project", but he criticized the announcement before the programme was broadcast, saying it had not yet been checked by his Ministry which is charged with approving any such announcements and pointed out inaccuracies in the article's content. Dr Hawass said "No one can say with certainty that the features displayed under the sand are actually pyramids".[7] The BBC sent a telegram to Hawass explaining that the announcement had not been approved or released by the BBC Satellite Project.[8]

en.wikipedia.org...

Unfortunately I cannot find a link to that, but what she found was that there were numerous signs of small settlement reaching out into the Sahara which over time had most likely been abandoned as activity became more and more clustered around the Nile. This indicates that the Sahara was once able to support small scale agriculture. Much like happened in China, with deruralisation, much of this land then suffered desertification due to not being maintained, although it probably began with the initial deforestation that is part of the neolithic mode of establishing argicultural settlements. Additionally, as we still see today, the urban sprawl often leads to smaller tributaries being blocked off or rerouted to make way for housing further increasing the dependency of those in outlying to move nearer to the major water source. All of which, combined, has a knock on effect in the creation of weather systems, thus diminishing rainfall, the removal of large bodies of trees being a pivotal factor in that respect, combined with the associated degradation of the mycorrhiza which helps transport nutrients and to 'bind' soil.

The current situation in Hungary provides a clear demonstration of this process in motion, that while the land can be maintained for many generations, will under certain climatic changes, find it hard to adapt to those changes, and result in the onset of desertification.

Thanks for the very informative post Kilgore. I'll have to check out that documentary (bookmarked it). It's possible I may have seen it before but I'll have to watch it to be sure. It may have even been the very thing that brought me to this personal research on the subject.

While I have a lot of respect for Zahi and his work, I noticed he seems to be a bit too quick to dismiss proposed theories or evidence (I don't mean the alien stuff either ). Here's one example: eutimes.net
Oh, and here's an article opposed to the link above: livescience.com
It seems overall, more testing and research needs to be done.

Smithsonianmag.com

Again thanks. I always enjoy reading your posts.