Archaeologica.org

At least 20 years. Yeah what more do you need? This huge edifice was decoration enough. Plus he had the sphinx. All of this is, of course, debateable.

Don't start with the goddamn sphinx....Schoch is busy in Bosnia.

Minimalist wrote:Don't start with the goddamn sphinx....Schoch is busy in Bosnia.

What I mean is that all the decoration may have been outside the pyramid. I've heard that the outside of the pyramid was heavily decorated, with paint. Like a huge billboard you could see for miles. Maybe that was good enough.
Or maybe, since it was finished years after his death, (in my opinion), the ones in charge at the finish just wanted to get it done and get onto the next one.
Or maybe the entire Giza plateau was the decoration.

Yeah Frank, I've read that also. Plus we know that the Sphinx was brightly painted because some traces of it remain today.

Must've been something to look at.

Or maybe, since it was finished years after his death, (in my opinion), the ones in charge at the finish just wanted to get it done and get onto the next one.
Or maybe the entire Giza plateau was the decoration.

Or maybe it didn't happen like that at all?

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13957717

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.

I have said it before, but I think there is a world of archaeology in the Sahara.

These conditions existed previous to the last ice age also. Probably a lot of early man history there. Arabia and the Sinai peninsula too I imagine.

Disputes over land often were settled with brutality, as evidenced by the cemetery of Jebel Sahaba where many of the buried individuals had died a violent death.

That is a bit of a leap of logic, isn't it? However, the underlying theory could provide a rationale for humanity leaving Africa.[/quote]

Here's a second link on the same story, this time from National Geographic.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ahara.html


You know, the impression I get from both of these is that

a- Everyone lived in the Nile Valley....
b- Everyone ran out into the Sahara when it started to rain...
c- Everyone came back when it stopped raining and Egyptian culture grew up as a result.

That's just silly.

Certainly, some people would have left the Nile just as American settlers headed west in the 1840's but plenty of others would have remained right where they were and would have continued developing their own culture alongside the Sahara culture. This still leaves the problem of where is the evidence for pre-dynastic Egypt. Of course, perhaps the sphinx IS evidence of pre-dynastic Egypt and if only the Egyptology club didn't sit there trashing every alternative theory that comes along maybe we would learn something!

Further, we see continuing evidence of human reactions to the continued growth of the Sahara, today. They sit there and starve as the desert continues to move south.

I have no answer to those questions, but I think many things will be clearer when the ancient Saharan cultures are truly found.

To be sure, 3,000 years is a long time and one would expect something to develop in all that time.

This makes me curious about the nature of the desert.
How deep is all that sand? Has the topsoil and all the former
organic material blown away or perhaps been disintegrated by
..erosion or the grinding of sand?

On another point, It seems that the desertification contributed to the
separation of the arab and black races, and the only place they had contact was around the Nile.

Minimalist, the theory put forward in the article seems to make sense to me, although I see the point of the questions you raise.
However, maybe "back then" people could migrate more freely because of the lack of national borders. Borders like that create a lot of problems in today's world for refugees of various kinds.
As for people starving in the edge of the desert, the Sahara has grown a lot in the last 100 years or so, so it hasn't been that long. And again,
today's nation states discourage that kind of thing.

Stan, there are plenty of refugees in the world provided someone is shooting at them or near them. National borders do not present a barrier...they present a presumption of safety. (Misplaced in many circumstances, unfortunately). With drought and famine, however, a lot of people tend to sit where they are and pray for rain....which never works, either!)

You raise a good question about desert lands. I live in a desert and it is amazing what can be grown with irrigation. However, we also use heavy fertilizers which negates your point about organic material in the soil.

Agree about the racial separation. Nubia (Sudan) was a frequent enemy, sometime province and one-time founder of a Nubian Dynasty in Egypt when the tables were turned. If I'm not mistaken this very subject came up once before in a discussion of skin color evolving as a result of heat.

Minimalist wrote:

National borders do not present a barrier..

Of course they do. Many countries don't want immigrants, and
most are protected by armed guards. Besides, would-be refugees
are often not granted legal refugee status.

I wasn't making a point about the desert sands, just raising a question, and maybe you have answered it for Arizona, but not for all that trackless "dune" country where not even cactus grows. I would think that is different.

There just doesn't seem to be any shortage of refugee camps across the border from war zones. The host countries may not be delighted to have them but it happens a lot.

Not all of the Sahara is trackless dunes. Some is and some is stony and flat. It's all dry as a bone though.

Anyway, my point was that adding water is obviously the key but out here and in the Imperial Valley of California they did a lot more than that in order to make the land fertile. Perhaps it would have yielded decent crops on its own but why take the chance when fertilizer is available? That, I think overcomes the other deficiency of desert soil that I thought you were making a reference to.

I'm curious about the "trackless dunes." How deep they are, etc.
I just haven't done it yet. I am sure there is some bedrock & subsoil under there, but i still wonder about ancient topsoil, dwelling sites, etc.
Maybe they're just covered up, though.

I know there is a lot of "desert" in the world that just needs a little water and fertilizer to be fruitful.