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Humans Didn’t Speed Up the Drying of the Sahara, and in Fact They May Have Delayed It

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

upstart writes:

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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Original Submission

• On the subject (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 04 2018, @03:42AM

  by khallow (3766) on Thursday October 04 2018, @03:42AM (#743824) Journal

  I just noticed that you wrote "It's been explained to you before." Where has this been "explained" before? Googling for past discussion on the matter, I see only one such debate. Here [soylentnews.org]. We have the vague mention of flood myths, stoneworking, and arguments that there was a lot of time in which to build such civilizations. That's remarkably lousy as evidence.

  Others of us have consumed many resources on the subject, which bring forth very interesting questions; I invite you to look into the matter, if only for your own entertainment.
  
  Atlantis need not have been a civilization of glass coke bottles to have been a civilization of global influence and organization.

  None of these "resources" are ever mentioned just as they aren't mentioned here. What's the reason? Afraid we're look and publicly discover that these resources are written up by a bunch of frauds and nutcases?
  
  I notice that I made a number of serious objections that were completely ignored. For example [soylentnews.org]:

  [AC] There is ancient stonework that defies even our modern technology

  [khallow] Sorry, don't believe that.

  but we find the exceptional craftsmanship difficult to reproduce even with computer-controlled diamond-based cutters.

  In other words, we can do it just fine, it just takes some work to first figure out how to do it. One doesn't recreate centuries of lost stone-working knowledge overnight. This is basic engineering 101. When you start with a hard problem, break it up into a set of small problems that you can solve more easily. Not being able to perfectly emulate Incan stone-dressing and other ancient feats right off the bat isn't a big deal. It took them time to develop those skills and it would take us some time as well.

  This includes stonework [mis-]attributed to the ancient Egyptians, the Inca, the Romans, etc.

  Who else lives there? This leads to the biggest problem with the whole thing. No genetic commonalities between these regions. If you have a global civilization with that sort of exchange of knowledge, you have genetic exchange as well.

  I am rebutting here a classic, dishonest ploy. The claim that because we can't instantly figure out sophisticated stone-working techniques from the various civilizations of the ancient world, then that means someone other than the people living there must have built the object. It's got to be Atlantis! I recall the same thing said of aliens.
  
  Well two can play that game. It's now been explained to you why a global civilization, Atlantis or not, didn't exist: no genetic exchange of global scale, and no other commonalities of technology, culture, etc. One can't accept that truth and retain the theory, they can only ignore it.

  Parent