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A glittering geographic tour of the remarkable history, peoples,
climate, creatures, sights and sounds of the largest and most
austere desert on earth. Ten thousand years ago, the Sahara was a
temperate grassland - petrified trees mark where forests used to
stand, and former riverbeds are rich in the petrified bones of
hippos, elephants, zebras and gazelles. Then a slight shift in the
earth's axis transformed it into the greatest desert in the world
with astonishing speed. Massive sand dunes are continuously formed
and dissolved by fierce winds, making the ever-shifting topography
of the desert more uncertain and hazardous to navigate. The
inhabitants of this desolate terrain barely eke out a living.
Throughout the millennia, diverse populations have struggled to
make this severe landscape home. Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle
chronicle the desert's nations and peoples and legacies they have
left to the sand: stone circles older than Stonehenge; Roman
aqueducts; remnants of Greek fields and vineyards, and the ruins of
palaces and temples along the Royal Road, a once busy trading route
for gold and salt, resources that fuelled the economies of the
great empires of Old Africa before centuries of conquests,
religious wars and tribal turf battles destroyed them. Illuminated
by written testimonies of past travellers, 'Sahara' conveys the
majesty, mystery and abundance of the desert's life in an evocative
biography of the land and its people.
In the parched and seemingly lifeless heart of the Sahara desert,
earthworms find enough moisture to survive. Four major mountain
ranges interrupt the flow of dunes and gravel plains, and at
certain times waterfalls cascade from their peaks. Even the sand
amazes: massive dunes can appear almost overnight, and be gone just
as quickly. We think we know the Sahara, the largest and most
austere desert on Earth--yet it is full of surprises, as Marq de
Villiers reveals in his brilliant and evocative biography of the
land and its people.
"If you traveled across the United States from Boston to San Diego,
you still wouldn't have crossed the Sahara," writes de Villiers,
painting a vivid picture of this most extraordinary place. He
charts the course of Atlantic hurricanes, many of which are born in
the Tibesti Mountains of northern Chad, and offers a fascinating
disquisition on the physics of windblown sand and the formation of
dunes. He chronicles the formation of the massive aquifers that lie
beneath the desert, some filled with water that pre-dates the
appearance of modern man on Earth. He marvels at the jagged
mountains and at ancient cave paintings deep in the desert, which
reveal that the Sahara was a verdant grassland 10,000 years ago--a
cycle that has been repeated several times.
Woven through de Villiers's story is a chronicle of the desert's
nations and people: the Berbers and Arabs of the north; its black
African south, whose ancestors peopled the greatest empires of Old
Africa; and the extraordinary nomads--the Moors, the Tuareg (the
famous "blue men"), and the Tubu--who call the desert home today.
Illuminated by the eloquent written testimonies of past travelers,
" Sahara" is a glittering geographic tour conveying the majesty,
mystery, and abundance of life in what the outside world thinks of
as the Great Emptiness.
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