Saturday, July 22, 2006
Ancient humans 'followed rains'
Prehistoric humans roamed the world's largest desert for some 5,000 years, archaeologists have revealed.
The Eastern Sahara of Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad was home to nomadic people who followed rains that turned the desert into grassland.
When the landscape dried up about 7,000 years ago, there was a mass exodus to the Nile and other parts of Africa.
The close link between human settlement and climate has lessons for today, researchers report in Science.
'Even modern day conflicts such as Dafur are caused by environmental degradation as it has been in the past,' Dr Stefan Kropelin of the University of Cologne, Germany, told the BBC News website.
technorati tags: prehistoric, humans, desert, sahara, egypt, libya, chad, nomadic, nile, africa, rains, science, cologne
Add to: CiteUlike | Connotea | Del.icio.us | Digg | Furl | Newsvine | Reddit | Yahoo
