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posted by mrpg on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the humans-are-not-always-a-cancer dept.

Humans didn't speed up the drying of the Sahara, and in fact they may have delayed it

[...] The practice of early cattle farming, called “pastoralism,” has been blamed by some for the loss of vegetation and the shift from a green Sahara region to a dry desert. A team of scientists from University College London and King’s College London seek to dispel that notion with new climate models that show that the Sahara was destined to be a bone-dry desert regardless of human interaction.

[...] “The possibility that humans could have had a stabilizing influence on the environment has significant implications,” Dr. Chris Brierley of University College London and lead author of the work, said in a statement. “We contest the common narrative that past human-environment interactions must always be one of over-exploitation and degradation. The fact that societies practising ‘pastoralism’ persisted in this region for so long and invested both economically and ideologically in the local landscape, does not support the scenario of over-exploitation.”

The eventual collapse of the “Green Sahara” was caused by a dramatic decline in moisture over many years. Regular monsoons which blanketed the area in water eventually stopped, with less rain and thereby less vegetation to serve as the foundation for the rest of the ecosystem. Humans in the area would have done whatever they could to keep things going smoothly, but the long draughts would have been simply too much to overcome.

Submitted via IRC for chromas


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:05PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:05PM (#743736) Journal

    Another compelling landmark is the Richat Structure in western Africa. It's super-easy to find when you're looking in from space and seems to be about the right size for Atlantis, including what look like concentric rings.

    It's never been submerged in water. And it's the top of a salt dome. The concentric circles are layers of overburden rock that were lifted by the rising salt dome and eroded away. There's no sinking present there.

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