Fish Swam the Sahara, Bolstering Out of Africa Theory

Live Science ^ | December 29, 2010 | Charles Q. Choi

[decimon]

Fish may have once swum across the Sahara, a finding that could shed light on how humanity made its way out of Africa, researchers said.

The cradle of humanity lies south of the Sahara, which begs the question as to how our species made its way past it. The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, and would seem a major barrier for any humans striving to migrate off the continent.

Scientists have often focused on the Nile Valley as the corridor by which humans left Africa. However, considerable research efforts have failed to uncover evidence for its consistent use by people leaving the continent, and precisely how watery it has been over time is controversial.

Now it turns out the Sahara might not have been quite as impassable as once thought - not only for humanity, but for fish as well.

"Fish appeared to have swam across the Sahara during its last wet phase sometime between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago," researcher Nick Drake, a geographer at King's College London, told LiveScience. "The Sahara is not a barrier to the migrations of animals and people. Thus it is possible - likely? -that early modern humans did so, and this could explain how we got out of Africa."

Using satellite imagery and digital maps of the landscape, the researchers found the Sahara was once covered by a dense network of rivers, lakes and inland deltas. This large waterway channeled water and animals into and across the Sahara during wet, "green" times. [See digital map of ancient Sahara]

[JimSEA]

My objection is to the way studies are presented in the news. I don’t really question the idea that most of our ancestors originated in Africa. Overemphasis of isolated studies does no one any good. You may recall the assertion that dry woodlands prompted bipedal ape evolution while now this seems to have come after bipedal apes roamed the rainforest.

[tumblindice]

Yeah, Chuck did the same thing to Aragorn’s forest. Really P.O.’d a lot of Ents.

[SonOfDarkSkies]

The cradle of humanity lies south of the Sahara, which begs the question as to how our species made its way past it...

DUHHHH!

The easiest way past the Sahara is to follow the banks of the Nile from Lake Victoria!

[JRios1968]

Now, that’s ENTertainment!

[Vigilanteman]

Just a couple of random observations:

1. A mere 2400 years ago or so when Rome and Carthage were squaring off for dominance of the then-known world, much of North Africa was tropical or savanna. Hannibal's famous elephants weren't carted over the Sahara Desert, they were native to the Numadian Empire, roughly what is modern-day Algeria and Morocco.
   
2. All those Roman chariots and charging elephants evidently stirred up so much dust that the tropics turned arid and the savanna turned into the Sahara desert.
   
3. Other scientists believe the African continent once abutted South America, so man could just as easily have walked to modern Brazil as crossed the Sahara (which didn't exist in its present form) or floated down the Nile.

[muawiyah]

They ate the fish and drank the water. I think the Saharan pluvials are not timed by the Ice Ages in general but rather lag behind the period of greatest glaciation ~ which affects Earth's wobble.

California also has recurring pluvials.

[anymouse]

[RnMomof7]

Maybe during the flood of Noah

[SunkenCiv]

thanks ADemocratNoMore for the link in FReepmail.

How Earth’s orbital shift shaped the Sahara
Physorg Earth Sciences | December 21, 2010 | Anuradha K. Herath
Posted on 12/21/2010 10:03:52 AM PST by LucyT
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2645897/posts

[SunkenCiv]

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[Erasmus]

Really P.O.’d a lot of Ents.

That's OK. Their bark is worse than their bite.