This article from US NEWS & World Report discusses an art show displaying the rock paintings of ancient people from the Tassili N’Ajjer of Algeria deep in the Sahara. It depicts a time when the region was more savanna than desert. There are still echoes of this time that have remained to haunt us, I remember a scene from Naturalist David Attenborough’s series The Living Planet where he focused in on a lone acacia tree in the Air highlands of northern Niger[1], all that remains of the woodlands of ages gone by. Additionally, there are 10,000 foot mountain ranges in the heart of the Sahara that no doubt served as refugium from the encroaching desert, and still are important nodal points for the networks of the Tuareg people because of the presence of oases around their girdles.
The history of the Sahara should sensitize people to the fact that the earth has been subject to dramatic climatic shifts. We are after all currently likely in an interglacial and wild shifts in climate are not unknown historically.
fn1. The tree’s roots had struck a groundwater vein, allowing it to continue surviving in a climatic regime for which it was not adapted.
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