Facts about Sahara
Paradoxically, the Sahara was wetter when it received more insolation in the summer.
The Phoenecians created a confederation of kingdoms across the entire Sahara to Egypt, generally settling on the coasts but sometimes in the desert also.
The climate of the Sahara has undergone enormous variation between wet and dry over the last few hundred thousand years.
Between twenty thousand and twelve thousand years ago, severe conditions returned and the Sahara was largely depopulated, except in highland retreats where there were springs and surface pools fed by aquifers.
Most of the schools of thought, Therav?da, Mah?y?na, and Vajray?na acknowledge several hells, which are places of great suffering for those who commit evil actions, such as cold hells and hot hells.
During periods of a wet Sahara, the region became a savanna, and African flora and fauna become common.
Once the ice sheets were gone, the northern part of the Sahara dried out.
The end of the ice age brought wetter times to the Sahara, from about 8000 B.C.E.
Immediately after the last ice age, the Sahara was a much wetter place than it is today.
According to archeologists, the Sahara was much more densely populated more than twenty thousand years ago when the desert's climate was not as arid as it is today.
The earliest crossings of the Sahara, about 1000 B.C.E., were by oxen and horse, but such travel was rare until the third century C.E.
Some two million people live in the Sahara, living either a nomadic or settled life wherever they can find food and water.
The largest city in the Sahara is the Egyptian capital Cairo, in the Nile Valley.
An urban civilization, the Garamantes, arose around this time in the heart of the Sahara, in a valley that is now called the Wadi al-Ajal in Fazzan, Libya.
The Sahara, located in Northern Africa, is the world's largest hot desert and second largest desert after Antarctica at over 3.5 million square miles (9 million square kilometers).
The Sahara became a largely impenetrable barrier to humans, with only scattered settlements around the oases but little trade.
Considering the hyper-arid conditions, the fauna of the central Sahara is richer than is generally believed.
Sometime between 633 and 530 B.C.E., Hanno the Navigator either established or reinforced Phoenician colonies in the Western Sahara, but all ancient remains have vanished with virtually no trace.
The lowest point of the Sahara is 436 feet (133 meters) below sea level in the Qattara Depression in Egypt.
After the Arab invasion of the Sahara, trade across the desert intensified.
The central Sahara is estimated to include only five hundred species of plants, which is extremely low considering the huge extent of the area.
During the following dry arid period, the Sahara reverts to desert conditions.
By around 2500 B.C.E., the monsoon had retreated south to approximately where it is today, leading to the desertification of the Sahara.
The Sahara Desert has one of the harshest climates in the world, with strong winds that blow from the northeast.
The name Sahara is an English pronunciation of the Arabic word for desert.
Non-Polar Deserts. The rest of Earth's deserts are outside of the polar areas. The largest is the Sahara Desert, a subtropical desert in northern Africa. It covers a surface area of about 3.5 million square miles.
Western Sahara came under Spanish rule, despite attempts by the Moroccan sultan Hassan I to repel the European incursions on the territory in 1886. The oases of Tuat in the south-east went to the immense territory of the French Sahara.