Sahara Desert Research Paper

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Africa is a continent that is divided in two very different types of climate, with the northern half being an expansive desert wasteland and the southern half experiencing some of the wettest climate known on earth. With the desert stretching to be as large as the United States, the Sahara is bound to hold a few secrets. The Sahara desert is the largest, hottest, and most barren part of the world and is also home to evidence that there was once life in the wasteland. Fossilized shells from sea and fresh water organisms as well as animal and human bones can all be found in the Sahara desert. Forty million years ago the Sahara was very much a different place. Present day, at “Wadi alhitan” in Arabic, Valley of the Whales, there is evidence …show more content…
Along with the relocation of the continent, the desert belt that wraps around the earth covers much of Africa. This desert belt contains strong winds that whip through the sand and are responsible for the carving of the yardangs. These structures are made up of what used to be the solid sea floor of the Tethys Sea forty million years ago. The wind in the Sahara picked up and became more powerful once the tropical swamp land turned into wasteland. Sand storms in the Sahara can last four days and the walls of the storms can reach to fifty stories high. The Sahara is the largest source of dust on the planet. This dust is often carried across the oceans and has even been known to reach Florida. Most of this desert dust falls into the oceans and then becomes part of ocean floor and then turns into sediments. Scientists have used these sediments as a sort of time capsule to read into the history of the Sahara. Peter deMenocal, an ocean geologist, was able to identify in these deep sea core samples that there was no Saharan dust deposits three million years ago. deMenocal helped solve the mystery of how old the Sahara desert really is, and how many times it has actually had major climate …show more content…
These artifacts include animal bones and stone tools which would suggest that humans would wait around the water source for animals to get close enough. Another example of humans living near these giant lakes is a cave and a hut foundation found by an archeologist. Inside the cave there are cave drawings of people swimming, animal droppings carbon dated back to six to ten thousand years ago, and human remains carefully buried in a lake side grave were also found. It is believed that this cave was used as an area of refuge to a settled farming community that were probably in the Sahara during one its last drastic change about seven thousand years ago. The drying of the Sahara and the migration of its people was a major contributor to the success of the Egyptian civilization. It was on the backs of these multi-cultured people that erected some of the most amazing structures built on
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