The name, Sahara makes one think of sand and heat, men and animals dying of thirst. But few knows that once upon a time, Sahara was a beautiful fertile land where rainfall was a common feature and trees grass and streams flourished. Many animals were found there.
This was Sahara, centuries ago. No one knows what transformed the green, pleasant Sahara into a horrid desert. Why did rainfall stop occurring? Were inhabitants responsible for the drastic change?
There are many queries which still surprise scientists and they are groping in the dark to search answers.
The scenic land of sand and heat with tall dunes and vast waterless regions was first described by Herodotus in about 430 B.C. He described it as a desert with hillock of salt and inhabited by people with strange and exotic customs.
More than 2000 years have passed since this description was alive but the picture has not changed. Spreading on an area of 3.3 million sq. miles, it has still some unknown areas which are inaccessible and has violent extremes of climate. The persistent drought has forced its population of 20 lakhs to dig wells at random. And this practice of digging wells frequently, has in its turn, lowered the level of the water table. Even the modern scientific methods have proved futile in reversing the trend.
The vast Sahara desert was not always like this. Many centuries ago, it was a green and fertile country. The Negroid people lived there. They hunted a large variety of land and water animals. The geological and archaeological factors reveal this fact. The cave and rock paintings found at Tassili N’ Ajjer highlight this bewildering spectacle. In fact, the number of rock paintings at this place is higher than it is found anywhere in the world.
Well, then the question arises as to what happened to the green fertile land? What caused it to become the perfect death land today?
The scientists reason it out due to the monsoon rains. According to the scientists, the Sahara fourished during pre-historic culture as the monsoon rains expanded far northwards. By 10,000 B.C., the climate remained wet for most of the part. But after that due to some unknown reasons, monsoon rains began to be less and an imbalance was created between rainfall and the rate of evaporation. As a result, the moisture soaked up by the sun’s rays was more than the moisture the land received from the clouds.
Environment was not only responsible for the deprived condition of the Sahara but human being also contributed to it. The increasing number of domestic animals destroyed plant life. Mountainous woodlands were burnt off and reduced to grazing land. Gradually vegetation degenerated – from savannah, it became steppe and from steppe it became desert. The only remnants left were paintings and artefacts which reminded later generations of the past glory of the vast desert land.
The journey into the Sahara’s glorious past came to be known during the 19th century when Europeans entered the desert. The first three adventurers were Dixon Denham, Hugh Clapperton and Walter Qudney. In 1826, Major Alexander Gordon Laing, a Scotsman crossed the Sahara and became the first European to reach the fabled city of Timbuktu. He was murdered there. In 1828, the Frenchman Rene Caillie, disguised as an Arab started from Timbuktu. He reached Morocco after facing torrid heat, whirlwinds, water shortage and often lured by the torment of the mirage.
Caillie’s journey was a remarkable one. From then on, followed the regular encroaching journeys of the French. Soon, Frenchmen embarked on colonial activity – military campaigns and building of trans-Sahara railways. For their excursions, they had to produce the defnite maps of the area. And the map revealed the true picture of the Sahara. It showed the high mountains, dotted with olives and cypresses. This map was prepared by the German explorer —Heinrich Barth. It was his fndings that sowed the seeds for archaeological research. Going by the Barth’s research, the Sahara period was divided into two—pre-camel and post-camel periods. French geologist, G.B.M. Flamand did comparative study of the cave engravings of Southern Oran in Algeria and supported the fndings of Barth that there existed in pre-camel and post-camel period.
By 1956, the scientific interest in Sahara grew. Numerous French expeditions were sent to Tassili N. Ajjer. On the fragmented plateau of Tassili N’ Ajjer, numerous paintings were discovered. The proper examination of the paintings revealed that the earliest one were probably made by a negroid ethnic group. Some primitive artefacts were also found at various places. These artefacts showed that the area, perhaps, was inhabited from the dawn of man’s existence.
Besides the art, research also unmasked the political history of the Sahara desert. It revealed the continuous struggle between the tribes. Due to the frequent appalling warfare, the population decreased, the kingdoms disintegrated. The reason for the warfare might have been acute droughts. Even in the 20th century, famine and drought are the two recurrent factors. In 1913, a terrible famine struck the region. In this famine, more than one million people died. Murder and fratricide occurred commonly.
However, gradually life began again. And then in 1972-74, another disaster hit the Sahara. Famine and influenza epidemic heightened the horror of the Sahara region and of the human beings there. Hunger made them commit the most dreadful acts—murder, loot, killing ones’ own children. Surprisingly, there are no statistics of the victims but it is assumed that international aid prevented the tragedy of 1913 famine.
Despite such catastrophies, the Sahara still exists. People are still living there. These people continue to practise the disastrous habit of their predecessors as they plunder the dwindling vegetation and sink deeper wells. Will they also face the fate of their predecessors? This is a question which haunts every scientist. People look up the sky and ask, “can Sahara ever be made what it was thousands of centuries ago, a fertile land.”
