BTW, perhaps this will also describe how the Sahara has Crocs in it.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/0617_020618_croc.html
Hopefully this will help in the dating of the Sphinx..water ping
and now it's not cause of Global Warming which is all George Bush's fault! --Albert Gore
Ah, the good old days.
/h
Yes. It was a pre-historic golf resort and jungle area. That is until my wife (old 'brown thumb') became the caretaker.
It's Bush's fault.
SUVs?
ping
Many parts of the world were greener than they are. The Romans did serious deforestation when they arrived in various colonies (such as Spain). And Al Gore wasn't even a gleam in his father's eye...
Amazing, so that could date the Sphinx at more than 5000 years old? Wouldn't that also indicate the existence of advanced civilizations prior to the Mesopotamians and Indus River Civilizations? Exciting.
I'm curious to know the positions, locations, and condition of the human remains found there.
Climate History
"The climate of the Sahara has undergone enormous variation between wet and dry over the last few hundred thousand years. During the last ice age, the Sahara was bigger than it is today, extending south beyond its current boundaries[1]. The end of the ice age brought wetter times to the Sahara, from about 8000 BCE to 6000 BCE, perhaps due to low pressure areas over the collapsing ice sheets to the north[2]."
"Once the ice sheets were gone, the northern part of the Sahara dried out. However, not long after the end of the ice sheets, the monsoon which currently brings rain to the Sahel came further north and counteracted the drying trend in the southern Sahara. The monsoon in Africa (and elsewhere) is due to heating during the summer. Air over land becomes warmer and rises, pulling cool wet air in from the ocean. This causes rain. So, paradoxically, the Sahara was wetter when it recieved more insolation in the summer. In turn, changes in solar insolation are caused by changes in the Earth's orbital parameters."
"By around 2500 BCE, the monsoon retreated south to approximately where it is today[3], leading to the desertification of the Sahara. The Sahara is currently as dry as it was about 13,000 years ago.[4]
Rainer Stadelmann has worked on the plateau for years, and his view is that Khufu (Khafre's daddy) built the Sphinx. That's a nice dodge, because it fits what little pharaonic documentation survives, and there's only one known portrait of Khufu (it's about three inches tall, a seated figure). Other Egyptologists persist in their unfounded, baseless belief (which originated in modern times) that Khafre built the Sphinx.
"Histories"The sea-coast beyond the Lotophagi is occupied by the Machlyans, who use the lotus to some extent, though not so much as the people of whom we last spoke. The Machlyans reach as far as the great river called the Triton, which empties itself into the great lake Tritonis. Here, in this lake, is an island called Phla, which it is said the Lacedaemonians were to have colonised, according to an oracle.
Book IV "Melpomene"
Herodotus
tr by George Rawlinson
The following is the story as it is commonly told. When Jason had finished building the Argo at the foot of Mount Pelion, he took on board the usual hecatomb, and moreover a brazen tripod. Thus equipped, he set sail, intending to coast round the Peloponnese, and so to reach Delphi. The voyage was prosperous as far as Malea; but at that point a gale of wind from the north came on suddenly, and carried him out of his course to the coast of Libya; where, before he discovered the land, he got among the shallows of Lake Tritonis. As he was turning it in his mind how he should find his way out, Triton (they say) appeared to him, and offered to show him the channel, and secure him a safe retreat, if he would give him the tripod. Jason complying, was shown by Triton the passage through the shallows; after which the god took the tripod, and, carrying it to his own temple, seated himself upon it, and, filled with prophetic fury, delivered to Jason and his companions a long prediction. "When a descendant," he said, "of one of the Argo's crew should seize and carry off the brazen tripod, then by inevitable fate would a hundred Grecian cities be built around Lake Tritonis." The Libyans of that region, when they heard the words of this prophecy, took away the tripod and hid it.
The next tribe beyond the Machlyans is the tribe of the Auseans. Both these nations inhabit the borders of Lake Tritonis, being separated from one another by the river Triton. Both also wear their hair long, but the Machlyans let it grow at the back of the head, while the Auseans have it long in front. The Ausean maidens keep year by year a feast in honour of Minerva, whereat their custom is to draw up in two bodies, and fight with stones and clubs. They say that these are rites which have come down to them from their fathers, and that they honour with them their native goddess, who is the same as the Minerva (Athene) of the Grecians. If any of the maidens die of the wounds they receive, the Auseans declare that such are false maidens. Before the fight is suffered to begin, they have another ceremony. One of the virgins, the loveliest of the number, is selected from the rest; a Corinthian helmet and a complete suit of Greek armour are publicly put upon her; and, thus adorned, she is made to mount into a chariot, and led around the whole lake in a procession. What arms they used for the adornment of their damsels before the Greeks came to live in their country, I cannot say. I imagine they dressed them in Egyptian armour, for I maintain that both the shield and the helmet came into Greece from Egypt. The Auseans declare that Minerva is the daughter of Neptune and the Lake Tritonis -- they say she quarrelled with her father, and applied to Jupiter, who consented to let her be his child; and so she became his adopted daughter. These people do not marry or live in families, but dwell together like the gregarious beasts. When their children are full-grown, they are brought before the assembly of the men, which is held every third month, and assigned to those whom they most resemble...
Thus from Egypt as far as Lake Tritonis Libya is inhabited by wandering tribes, whose drink is milk and their food the flesh of animals. Cow's flesh, however, none of these tribes ever taste, but abstain from it for the same reason as the Egyptians, neither do they any of them breed swine. Even at Cyrene, the women think it wrong to eat the flesh of the cow, honouring in this Isis, the Egyptian goddess, whom they worship both with fasts and festivals. The Barcaean women abstain, not from cow's flesh only, but also from the flesh of swine.
West of Lake Tritonis the Libyans are no longer wanderers, nor do they practise the same customs as the wandering people, or treat their children in the same way. For the wandering Libyans, many of them at any rate, if not all -- concerning which I cannot speak with certainty -- when their children come to the age of four years, burn the veins at the top of their heads with a flock from the fleece of a sheep: others burn the veins about the temples. This they do to prevent them from being plagued in their after lives by a flow of rheum from the head; and such they declare is the reason why they are so much more healthy than other men. Certainly the Libyans are the healthiest men that I know; but whether this is what makes them so, or not, I cannot positively say -- the healthiest certainly they are. If when the children are being burnt convulsions come on, there is a remedy of which they have made discovery. It is to sprinkle goat's water upon the child, who thus treated, is sure to recover. In all this I only repeat what is said by the Libyans.
The rites which the wandering Libyans use in sacrificing are the following. They begin with the ear of the victim, which they cut off and throw over their house: this done, they kill the animal by twisting the neck. They sacrifice to the Sun and Moon, but not to any other god. This worship is common to all the Libyans. The inhabitants of the parts about Lake Tritonis worship in addition Triton, Neptune, and Minerva, the last especially.
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The skull of 110 million-year-old Sarcosuchus imperator dwarfs a 20-inch (50-centimeter) adult skull of the living Orinoco crocodile (Crocodylus intermedius). Newly discovered fossils in the Sahara suggest that it took 50 to 60 years for Sarcosuchus to reach its maximum adult size, estimated to be 37 to 40 feet (11 to 12 meters) in length and up to 8 metric tons (17,500 lbs).
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1025_supercroc2.html
