Ancient Lakes of the Sahara
By Kevin White, David Mattingly
The Sahara was once a savannah teeming with life. The story of how the climate changed, and how humans coped, is still being unraveled
This Article From Issue
January-February 2006
Volume 94, Number 1
Page 58
DOI: 10.1511/2006.57.58
Descending the dune onto a hard white surface that was cracked by desiccation and sculpted by the wind into contorted pinnacles, we soon began to kick up clouds of gray dust as our feet sank through the crust into the powdery silt beneath. The sediments disturbed by our footprints were studded with tiny snail shells and the petrified roots of trees and shrubs long since swept away by the intensifying aridity in the Sahara over the past 5,000 years.
Photographs courtesy of Toby Savage
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