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WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US-led team of archaeologists said Thursday they had discovered by chance what is believed to be the largest find of Stone Age-era remains ever uncovered in the Sahara Desert. Named Gobero, the site includes remarkably intact human remains as well as the skeletons of fish and crocodiles dating back some 10,000 years to a time when what is now the world's largest desert was a swampy wetland.

A team of US archaeologists has discovered the ruins of a city dating back to the period of the first farmers 7,000 years ago in Egypt's Fayyum oasis, the supreme council of antiquities said. "An electro-magnetic survey revealed the existence in the Karanis region of a network of walls and roads similar to those constructed during the Greco-Roman period," the council's chief Zahi Hawwas said. The remnants of the city are "still buried beneath the sand and the details of this discovery will be revealed in due course," Mr Hawwas said. "The artefacts consist of the remains of walls and...

Egypt's Earliest Agricultural Settlement UnearthedA fragment of a bangle made of a shell found only at the Red Sea suggests possible trade links with the cradle of agriculture in the Near East. (Credit: Copyright UC Regents) ScienceDaily (Feb. 15, 2008) — Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings. The findings, which were unearthed in 2006 and are still being analyzed, also suggest possible...

The Tassili n’Ajjer of Southern Algiers is described as the “largest storehouse of rock paintings in the world”. But could it also be the origins of the ancient Egypt culture ? In January 2003, I made enquiries to visit the Hoggar Mountains and the Tassili n’Ajjer, one of the most enchanting mountain ranges on this planet. The two geographically close but nevertheless quite separate landscapes are located in the Sahara desert in southeast Algeria. I was told that if I could pack my bags immediately (literally), I could join the three weeks’ trip. Unfortunately, I could not, but planned to...

When Paul C. Sereno went hunting for dinosaur bones in the Sahara, his career took a sharp turn from paleontology to archaeology. The expedition found what has proved to be the largest known graveyard of Stone Age people who lived there when the desert was green. The first traces of pottery, stone tools and human skeletons were discovered eight years ago at a site in the southern Sahara, in Niger. After preliminary research, Dr. Sereno, a University of Chicago scientist who had previously uncovered remains of the dinosaur Nigersaurus there, organized an international team of archaeologists to investigate what had...

Graves Found From Sahara’s Green Period By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD When Paul C. Sereno went hunting for dinosaur bones in the Sahara, his career took a sharp turn from paleontology to archaeology. The expedition found what has proved to be the largest known graveyard of Stone Age people who lived there when the desert was green. The first traces of pottery, stone tools and human skeletons were discovered eight years ago at a site in the southern Sahara, in Niger. After preliminary research, Dr. Sereno, a University of Chicago scientist who had previously uncovered remains of the dinosaur Nigersaurus there,...

In search of the lost Sahara 05/15/2008 A team of Basque and Sahrawi archaeologists is making the first catalogue of the prehistoric heritage of the Western Sahara. Archaeologists doing some research. Photo: EiTBThe region of Tiris, a vast desert area south of Western Sahara, is the work field of the Basque-Sahrawi expedirion researching the past of this inhospitable place of the planet. A team of Basque archaeologists led by Andoni Sáenz de Buruaga, a professor at the Basque public university UPV, is visiting the Western Sahara for a fifth time. "We presented our research project to the Sahrawi Government in...

Once Lush Sahara Dried Up Over Millennia, Study SaysJames Owen for National Geographic NewsMay 8, 2008 The grassy prehistoric Sahara turned into Earth's largest hot desert more slowly than previously thought, a new report says—and some say global warming may turn the desert green once again. The new research is based on deposits from a unique desert lake in remote northern Chad. Lake Yoa, sustained by prehistoric groundwater, has survived for millennia despite constant drought and searing heat. The body of water contains an unbroken climate record going back at least 6,000 years, said study lead author Stefan Kröpelin of...

OSLO (Reuters) - The once-green Sahara turned to desert over thousands of years rather than in an abrupt shift as previously believed, according to a study on Thursday that may help understanding of future climate changes. And there are now signs of a tiny shift back towards greener conditions in parts of the Sahara, apparently because of OSLO (Reuters) - The once-green Sahara turned to desert over thousands of years rather than in an abrupt shift as previously believed, according to a study on Thursday that may help understanding of future climate changes. And there are now signs of a...

Spectacular prehistoric depictions of animal and human figures created up to 6,000 years ago on Western Saharan rocks have been vandalised by United Nations peacekeepers, The Times has learnt. Archaeological sites boasting ancient paintings and engravings of giraffes, buffalo and elephants have been defaced within the past two years by personnel attached to the UN mission, known by its French acronym, Minurso. Graffiti, some of it more than a metre high and sprayed with paint meant for use for marking routes, now blights the rock art at Lajuad, an isolated site known as Devil Mountain, which is regarded by the...

LOS ANGELES - Despite hearing whispers around Hollywood there were troubles making the film adaptation of "Sahara," Breck Eisner said Wednesday he decided to direct the movie because he thought it could lead to a lucrative franchise. "I knew I could nail this film," the son of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner said. "I was going to take that chance." Eisner admitted, however, he had no idea of the maelstrom he was about to enter. Eisner was the latest witness to testify in a trial involving dueling lawsuits over the 2005 film that starred Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz. Over...

Making a "criminal" out of Saint Israel When it comes to Victim Israel, the media "justice" turns 360 degrees A fascism that selects Israel for unfair harsh terms & gross language. When it comes to victim Israel, all hell break lose. Not only don't they appreciate Israel's reluctance from going on the lose like Arab neighbors, Syria & Jordan that "dealt" with violent "uprising" by just massacring thousands randomly. But it calls Israeli restrained minimal defense-of-lives actions against terror aggression as "aggressive". Not only don't they appreciate Israel's beautiful treatment of it's minorities including favoring it's Arab citizens over Israeli...

MAURITANIAN PASSENGER PLANE HIJACKED TO WESTERN SAHARA - MAURITANIAN POLICE

Attorneys for Philip Anschutz allege as part of a lawsuit going to trial this week that author Clive Cussler duped the Denver industrialist into paying $10 million for film rights to the adventure novel "Sahara" by flagrantly inflating his book sales to more than 100 million copies. "Cussler and his agent had gotten away with these numbers for years," said Alan Rader, Anschutz's lawyer. "It was a lie and it doomed the movie." The claim is "ridiculous," Cussler said this morning outside a Los Angeles Superior Court room. "They wanted the book. They solicited us." The allegations surfaced at the...

Dying trade of the Sahara camel train By John Pilkington BBC News, Mali A thousand years ago Sahara salt was worth its weight in gold In Timbuktu, camel trains, that for millenia have been trudging around the Sahara with their valuable cargoes, are being replaced by the much less exotic lorry. I have always been fascinated by the Sahara - so when I heard that camel caravans still make the 450-mile journey from the Taoudenni salt mines to Timbuktu, I decided to go and see if this was true. What I found there was the stuff of dreams. Every week...

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt owed their existence to prehistoric climate change in the eastern Sahara, according to an exhaustive study of archaeological data that bolsters this theory. Starting at about 8500 B.C., researchers say, broad swaths of what are now Egypt, Chad, Libya, and Sudan experienced a "sudden onset of humid conditions." ...The new study, which appears online today on the Science Express Web site, is based on painstaking research that combines new radiocarbon dating of about 500 artifacts from the region with data from past studies. Kröpelin and study co-author Rudolph Kuper also collected geological climate data from...

At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation. During these few thousand years, prehistoric humans left the congested Nile Valley and established settlements around rain pools, green valleys, and rivers. The ancient climate shift and its effects are detailed in the July 21 issue of the journal Science. When the rains came Some 12,000 years ago, the only place to live along the eastern Sahara Desert was the Nile...

Millions 'wasted' planting trees that reduce water By Charles Clover, Environment Editor (Filed: 29/07/2005) Millions of pounds in overseas aid are wasted every year planting trees in dry countries in the belief that they help attract rainfall and act as storage for water, scientists said yesterday. In fact, forests usually increase evaporation and help to reduce the amount of water available for human consumption or growing crops, according to a four-year study. Research on water catchments on three continents says it is "a myth" that trees always increase the availability of water. Even the cloud forests of tropical Costa Rica...

INSPIRED by the legend of a Persian king and his lost army, Stefano Miglietti, an Italian adventurer, completed a 340-mile hike through the most isolated and arid part of the western Sahara yesterday. The route that Signor Miglietti followed through the so-called Great Sand Sea — from the Farafra oasis in southern Egypt to the Siwa oasis in the north — has always been considered impossible for a man carrying his own food and water. According to legend, Cambyses II, the Persian king, foolishly tried to take the same route in 523 BC, setting off with a 50,000-strong army. Herodotus,...

The Sahara has not always been the arid, inhospitable place that it is today – it was once a savannah teeming with life, according to researchers at the Universities of Reading and Leicester. Eight years of studies in the Libyan desert area of Fazzan, now one of the harshest, most inaccessible spots on Earth, have revealed swings in its climate that have caused considerably wetter periods, lasting for thousands of years, when the desert turned to savannah and lakes provided water for people and animals. This, in turn, has given us vital clues about the history of humans in the...

Why U.S. officials worry about a group you've never heard of These days, there are few clear victories in the battle against terrorism. Instead, the effort is increasingly coming down to a series of arrests like the ones in Spain in early December. Police captured seven Algerians accused of stealing luxury goods from vacation homes along Spain's southern coast. Authorities say that the gang had infiltrated the high-end real-estate market to pick up tips on which homes to target. The real significance, however, is that the suspects were allegedly funneling the proceeds to other Algerian militants for attacks in Afghanistan and perhaps in...

Stone Age Cemetery, Artifacts Unearthed in Sahara Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News October 21, 2005Archaeologists have excavated a trove of Stone Age human skeletons and artifacts on the shores of an ancient lake in the Sahara. The seven nearby sites include an extensive cemetery and represent one of the largest and best preserved concentrations of ancient skeletons and artifacts ever found in the region, researchers say. Harpoons, fishhooks, pottery, jewelry, stone tools, and other artifacts pepper the ancient lakeside settlement. The objects were left by early communities that once thrived on the former lake's abundant fish and shellfish. "They...

On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel's security barrier was a violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law. Eleven days later, the United Nations General Assembly voted 150-6 to condemn Israel and demand removal of the barrier. All twenty-five members of the European Union supported the motion.[1] The EU position would not have been so offensive had it not then undertaken an act of stunning hypocrisy. In August 2004, the EU put out tenders for companies to construct a European separation fence to prevent migration into the EU from countries excluded from...

Prehistoric Desert Town Found in Western Sahara Thu Aug 19, 2004 01:52 PM ET RABAT (Reuters) - The remains of a prehistoric town believed to date back 15,000 years and belong to an ancient Berber civilization have been discovered in Western Sahara, Moroccan state media said on Thursday. A team of Moroccan scientists stumbled across the sand-covered ruins of the town Arghilas deep in the desert of the Morocco-administered territory. The remains of a place of worship, houses and a necropolis, as well as columns and rock engravings depicting animals, were found at the site near the town of Aousserd...

How many of the mushrooming number of terrorism experts now on TV, or journalists pretending to compete with them in their instant expertise, have heard, let alone know about, what is going on in the Sahel? Or that there is actually something called Sahel that is important in the fight against Islamist terrorists? The answer is: depressingly few -- and that is good for us. Indeed, if more weres known, we would immediately hear the screams of human rights fundamentalists, from Amnesty International to Jimmy Carter, demanding a cut off of aid to less-than-Jeffersonian regimes in such exotic places as...

An Algerian terrorist accused of holding 32 Europeans hostage in the Sahara Desert last year has been captured in Chad, according to Germany's federal prosecutor's office. Ammari Saifi, also known as Abdrrezak al-Para, is in custody with one other man in connection to the abductions in February and March 2003 of German, Austrian, Swiss and Swedish citizens who were traveling in the desert area of southern Algeria, reported Agence France-Presse. The hostages were seized in separate incidents and held for three to six months. In May 2003, Algerian army commandos rescued 17 tourists following a four-hour gun battle in which...

Click on link to see the satellite photo. The Canary Islands are the only inhabited area affected.

he paleontologists were driving across the scorched and trackless Ténéré Desert of Niger, following a low ridge of rock bearing dinosaur fossils. Suddenly, someone on the team, led by Dr. Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, spotted something dark against the tawny dunes.Getting out of their vehicles, they stepped into sand littered with the fossilized bones of modern crocodiles, hippos, camels and birds — interesting creatures, to be sure, but not exactly the quarry of these paleontologists. "But then things got really strange," recalls Gabrielle Lyon, a member of the expedition who is Dr. Sereno's wife and the director...

MADRID, Oct 27, 2003 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Al-Qaida is building secret bases in the Sahara in north Africa with the help of Algerian extremists, Western and Arab intelligence sources said Monday. The Spanish daily Periodico De Catalonia quoted the sources as saying the Sahara, stretching between Mauritania and southern Libya, has become a base for al-Qaida. "The desert of Mali, especially in the north, and the area near the Algerian border has become a base and meeting point for al-Qaida members who have fled from the Middle East region," an Algerian source said. "We know that many...

A GROUP of 14 European tourists held hostage for up to six months were today freed by their captors, officials in the northern Malian town of Gao said, amid a report that a ransom had been paid. The officials said the nine Germans, four Swiss and a Dutchman, abducted by a suspected Islamic extremist group, were released in the town of Tessalit in the northeastern region of Kidal. Germany's public ZDF television reported that it followed a payment to the kidnappers yesterday of a ransom, although the station said the money did not come from the German government. According...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Kidnappers who have held 14 European tourists hostage in the Sahara desert for the past five months are demanding a ransom of 4.6 million euros (3.2 million pounds) for each one, German television reports. The hostages -- nine Germans, four Swiss and one Dutch national -- were among 32 European tourists seized by armed rebels in a remote area of southern Algeria, famous for ancient grave sites but also known for arms and drugs smuggling. Negotiations were under way with the kidnappers through an intermediary, but no quick release was expected, N-TV quoted unnamed diplomats in Mali...

<p>ALGIERS, Algeria -- The last 15 European tourists held by armed rebels in the Algerian Sahara desert for up to three months have been freed, a military source told Reuters.</p> <p>It was not immediately known if they were freed in a commando operation, as in the case of the 17 other tourists hostages freed last week after a gun battle with al Qaeda-linked guerrillas.</p>

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 November 12 Terkezi Oasis in the Sahara Desert Credit: Landsat 7, NASA Explanation: Dominating the top third of Africa is the largest band of dry land on Earth: the Sahara Desert. Stretching across the Sahara are vast planes of sand and gravel, seas of sand dunes, and barren rocky mountains. Only 10,000 years ago, however, grasses covered the region, then rich in mammals such as lions and...

Link post: Geology Picture of the Week, June 23-30, 2002

Richat Structure, Mauritania This prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert of Mauritania has attracted attention since the earliest space missions because it forms a conspicuous bull’s-eye in the otherwise rather featureless expanse of the desert. Described by some as looking like an outsized ammonite in the desert, the structure [which has a diameter of almost 50 kilometers (30 miles)] has become a landmark for shuttle crews. Initially interpreted as a meteorite impact structure because of its high degree of circularity, it is now thought to be merely a symmetrical uplift (circular anticline) that has been laid bare by...