[HN Gopher] Once lush Sahara was home to a surprisingly unique g...
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Once lush Sahara was home to a surprisingly unique group of humans
Author : gmays
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-04-10 13:16 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencealert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencealert.com)
| User23 wrote:
| I believe current evidence is that the Berber peoples have been
| in North Africa at least 12,000 years.
| csdvrx wrote:
| If you find that interesting, read about the African Humid
| Period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period
|
| The present day situation is fascinating:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period#Present-d... :
| there is an ongoing "greening" which seems caused by global
| warming and CO2 increases!
|
| However, a 2003 study estimated only 45% of the Sahara could be
| covered by vegetation, and a 2022 study found that it may not be
| sufficient to start another AHP: it just "lowers the threshold
| for orbital changes to induce Sahara greening"
| singularity2001 wrote:
| One of the few cases were indigenous were not replaced by
| neolithic newcomers but simply adopted their technology
| inetknght wrote:
| So this is only loosely related to the posted article, but I
| found the "great green wall" project from the U.N. to be _super_
| interesting. It makes me wonder if the same concepts can (and
| should?) be applied to other deserts, such as the American
| midwest.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xls7K_xFBQ
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Big bold projects by African dictators to leapfrog the economy
| has a truly atrocious track record. UN involvement makes it
| even worse.
|
| That said, if it will work long term in some of the countries,
| that would be great news.
|
| I'm glad that it's still possible to destroy an ecosystem in
| order to replace it with something better. That would never fly
| in the US. We also have no need to produce more food, and our
| deserts are mostly beloved natural wonders.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Big bold projects by African dictators to leapfrog the
| economy has a truly atrocious track record._
|
| Perhaps, yes. But the Sahara is expanding and reducing the
| livable area of land in those countries. That can only _add_
| to economic strife. On the other hand, building a green wall
| reduces or eliminates the expansion of the desert and also
| increases the amount of food available to those countries. I
| believe that would help reduce the strife between those
| countries. Yes there 's risk of abuse but I think everyone
| wants to be self-sufficient and anything towards that is
| laudable.
|
| > _UN involvement makes it even worse._
|
| Can you explain that further? The U.N. is terrible at
| directly preventing conflict (just look at Ukraine) but I
| think it has a decent track record of helping countries build
| their infrastructure.
|
| > _I 'm glad that it's still possible to destroy an
| ecosystem_
|
| What? You think building green savannahs is destroying an
| ecosystem?
|
| > _That would never fly in the US._
|
| I don't know about _never_ but I do think it 'd certainly be
| difficult.
|
| > _We also have no need to produce more food_
|
| I disagree. I think we have no appetite to produce more food
| right now, but the way we're currently growing food is rather
| asinine.
|
| > _and our deserts are mostly beloved natural wonders._
|
| Mostly, yes. But I think there's plenty of deserts that
| aren't quite natural wonders.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Can you explain that further? The U.N. is terrible at
| directly preventing conflict (just look at Ukraine) but I
| think it has a decent track record of helping countries
| build their infrastructure
|
| Some UN agencies are very effective, particularly the ones
| that are basically run by Americans, such as the World
| Bank. The more third world countries participate in any
| given agency, the more of a tire fire it is.
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| Could you be more imperialist?
|
| Let's see some examples of well-run UN agencies 'staffed
| by Americans'. I guarantee you they are a cesspool of
| corruption and bigotry.
| rayiner wrote:
| Incorrect. Source: am a third worlder, my dad was exiled
| from the third world for being too conscientious and
| punctual and spent his career working with UN agencies.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _The more third world countries participate in any
| given agency, the more of a tire fire it is._
|
| I don't know about other U.N. agencies.
|
| But I find Andrew Millison's youtube blogs [0] to be
| quite interesting on the subject. His blog about refugees
| [1] for example.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/@amillison
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfiH9T-iR3E
| Xorakios wrote:
| The Sahara has generally been contracting for the last few
| decades as the "greener" Sahel band expands north due to
| higher average rainfall (individual years vary, and the
| effect is stronger in the west than the east).
|
| A Google search will likely list articles citing the 2018
| study from UofMaryland that showed approximately a 10%
| increase in the Sahara's area from 1902-2012, ignoring the
| portions of that study that said that breaking down by
| decade showed a reversal in the 1980's. https://journals.am
| etsoc.org/view/journals/clim/31/9/jcli-d-...
|
| Google maps timeview has a fun animation if you search for
| Sahara Desert. https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/
| graemep wrote:
| > Big bold projects by African dictators to leapfrog the
| economy has a truly atrocious track record.
|
| This is a multinational project with clear benefits.
|
| It is very different from flashy projects like airports no
| one uses.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| According to Wikipedia the wall was reported to be 15% complete
| in 2019, but found to be actually just 4% complete in 2020,
| then reportedly 18% in 2022 and 30% last year.
|
| Given that is started over 15 years ago and there seems to be
| significant differences between what countries report and what
| was actually done when the UN commissioned a report in 2020,
| it's anyone guess what progress has actually been made.
|
| In my opinion it's probably around 10% or low teens now and
| would be lucky to double that by the end of the project in
| 2030.
|
| The project will probably report a much higher number when it
| actually finishes.
|
| Hopefully it will be funded to continue. It's probably one of
| the most important global events environmental projects of the
| 21st century.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa)
| CobaltFire wrote:
| If you dive into the report that states the 4% number it's
| measuring something entirely different than the other
| numbers, and agrees with the 18% in 2022 number.
|
| Specifically the higher percentages are in reported land
| reclamation out of the 100Ha goal, which was at 17.8Ha in the
| 2020 report. The 4% is a composite of all targets for the
| 2030 goals, of which the GGB is only one metric.
|
| Be careful in taking these types of articles at face value.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plains_Shelterbelt
|
| It's not a wall, but similar idea
| inetknght wrote:
| Oh that's a wonderful place to start learning about some of
| this in the U.S.A.! Thanks :)
| thenthenthen wrote:
| There are some projects in China:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China)
| shantara wrote:
| I love this reconstruction of green Sahara map:
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/cchurchili/40921572803/
| accrual wrote:
| Amazing. I wish we had a way to actually see what it was like.
| Although it's turning green again now, Antarctica also was once
| closer to the equator and was apparently quite lush.
| begueradj wrote:
| A large part of the human history remains unknown because the
| Sahara is very difficult to explore and study. Who knows, maybe
| entire city states are hidden here and there within endless
| quantities of sand.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| You're probably right:
|
| https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/SpaceArchaeology
| pjmlp wrote:
| Most likely enough stuff for some adventure movies, the kind of
| wearing hats or summer shorts heroes. :)
| user070223 wrote:
| Indeed, one great path to finding those lost civilizations is
| to follow river vallies, Atlas pro[0] says there is no
| consensus on past rivers/bodies of water as evident by
| different maps of the region, but one can follow (underwater)
| river sediment which were deposited to the sea. During oil
| search such area was found in Cap Timiris, Mauritiania.
| Satelite radar image of the area from 2015 did reveal those
| rivers beds, Tamanrasset River seems to be the biggest, with a
| big drainage basin. Trees and shrubs indeed grow there.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-dZj1ZdRtY
| ls612 wrote:
| I would think satellite observations would have thoroughly
| mapped the immediate subsurface by now regardless of it being
| hard to explore conventionally.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Subsurface? No. Sahara is too vast and research is expensive.
| They can barely get funding to do that sort of work where
| they already know there is a Mayan temple under their feet.
| antognini wrote:
| There are around 10,000 megalith structures in the Sahara, most
| of which were constructed between 3000 and 2000 BC, when
| desertification was well underway. A large number of these were
| discovered within the last 20 years using Google Earth. The
| megaliths come in a wide variety of shapes (there are around 40
| categories), but the more sophisticated megaliths have a keyhole
| shape [1].
|
| Like the better known megaliths in Europe they tend to have
| astronomical alignments and have been used as funerary monuments.
| Most of the megaliths point east and have male skeletons, but the
| few megaliths with female skeletons are oriented towards the
| west.
|
| (Shameless plug, but for anyone interested in learning more about
| this sort of thing I have a podcast about the history of
| astronomy and one of the episodes is about the astronomy of
| Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa [3].)
|
| [1]: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Two-keyhole-
| structures-i...
|
| [2]: https://songofurania.com/episode/029
| easytiger wrote:
| I'll have to listen to the podcast later but what's the
| predicate for the determination of their age?
| antognini wrote:
| It has been a while since I looked at the papers but I
| believe it's carbon dating of the human remains buried at the
| megaliths.
| gaiagraphia wrote:
| Fascinating looking at the valleys across the Sahara, and
| imagining rivers once running through them.
|
| There's some fascinating fuel for imagination when you focus on
| the Sahara, and some very surprising features and remnants of
| life hanging on. The best example is Siwa, which is an utterly
| magical place to visit, and feels like a real edge of
| civiliation.
|
| Climate change is always spoken about with negativity in the
| mainstream narrative. However, I always wondered whether more
| heat = more evaporation = more rain = more life; bringing regions
| like the Sahara (and periphery regions like the Sahel) back to
| life .
|
| Makes you wonder whether - in an alternate timeline - if a Mongol
| messenger hadn't been backstabbed, Baghdad hadn't been sacked,
| and the Islamic world went on to become today's centre of
| science, finance, development, etc, wohether our current
| perception of climate change would be seen as a global positive
| and catalyst for life?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The issue with climate change is that we have invested a lot of
| time and money farming our crops where they are, not in the
| sahel. So as places such as farming regions in western India
| fall further into desertification this leads to food insecurity
| rather than a shifting of labor around what is most suitable to
| farm given climate change. Some life will in fact "win" given
| climate change increasing temperatures and metabolism but this
| won't be human life. It will be microbial or insect life that
| will probably go on to plague us with a greater abundance.
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