Major Find in the Sahara

[Minimalist]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/200808 ... 87A00.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert. The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.

Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and colleagues were searching for the remains of dinosaurs in the African country of Niger when they came across the startling find, detailed at a news conference Thursday at the National Geographic Society.

Helene Jousse, a zooarchaeologist from the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, Austria, reported that animal bones found in the area were from types common today in the Serengeti in Kenya, such as elephants, giraffes, hartebeests and warthogs.

The finds are detailed in reports in Thursday's edition of the journal PLoS One and in the September issue of National Geographic Magazine.

While the Sahara is desert today, a small difference in Earth's orbit once brought seasonal monsoons farther north, wetting the landscape with lakes with lush margins and drawing animals and people.

This is the first time I've heard this idea.

[kbs2244]

Orbit or tilt?
This may be a case of a non science reporter.
It seems to me tilt of the axis would more likely to have this effect.
And be more likely.
But it will be worth tracking the idea.

[Minimalist]

That actually makes more sense....but one would hope that National Geo would have higher standards.

Oh well....maybe not.

[War Arrow]

That actually makes more sense....but one would hope that National Geo would have higher standards.

Oh well....maybe not.

Not sure about the magazine, though I saw one of their DVDs and sadly it was pretty much guilty of repeating all the same (and usual) articles of received wisdom as the BBC. I suspect it's the same with any of these things, they might initially draw you into a subject, but once you've gone into it for yourself at some level, you start to notice the historical equivalent of lazy journalism.

[kbs2244]

Well, NG may get it right.
That was an AP story, and I wouldn't trust them to get ther own name right.

[Ishtar]

.... into it for yourself at some level, you start to notice the historical equivalent of lazy journalism.

I would like to stick up for the so-called 'lazy journalist'.

Most journalists, unless they're specialists, have to know a lot about very little at all, as their remit covers a very wide area. So if you're a General Features Writer on a Sunday rag, as I was, here's what it's like.

You come in on Tuesday morning to a conference with the editor where he or she decides that this week, you are going to write about why the honey bees are dying.

You have no knowledge of any kind of bees, let alone honey ones, except when they try to sting you. Now, overnight, you have to become an expert in honey bees and what makes them tick and what makes them different biologically to ordinary common-or-garden bees and then you have to find out why people think they are dying.

The only people that would really know are bee-keepers. So between Wednesday and Thursday, you have to track down at least two or three bee-keepers who are prepared to be quoted and photographed and also a spokesman for the government body in charge of bees (in this country, Defra). When they or their secretaries try to fob you off because their diary is too full, you have to fall to your knees and beg them to speak to you.

By Thursday, if you're lucky, you've arranged with the picture desk to send one of the photographers to take all the photos of everyone that you've cajoled into speaking to you. Sometimes you have to go with them, as they're not always very intelliigent about getting the photo in context with the story. Then you have to come back and write the sodding story, usually with all hell breaking loose around you in the news room for one reason or another - usually to do with alcohol and sex.

You have to get it written, though, as it has to go to the drink-sodden subs bench by close of play that day, so that they can sub it and then send it to the Editor for Friday.

On Friday, they start laying out the pages and you have to keep a beady eye on the picture desk and the art desk to make sure they don't run a picture of a common-or-garden bee, or that the drunken subs haven't cut the main point of your story, or put a headline on it that's doesn't work.

Then the Editor calls you in, and tells you that you've got to go Newcastle immediately. Some WAG has just been jilted by her footballer boyfriend and she may turn up at the match. If she does, you have to persuade her to talk to you in time for the late editions (i.e. five o'clock).

You go. ...but she doesn't turn up, of course.

So you get back on the train and finally arrive home somewhere around midnight ... but hey, at least you can look forward to a nice, leisurely weekend and staying in bed late with the Sunday papers.

So there you are, all tucked up with your coffee and croissants ... and then you open your own paper ... to find that your story about the honey bees has been cut. Then you pick up the rival rag and immediately see, splashed across the front page, that that Newcastle WAG has spilled her guts to them.

Thus is the life of a General Features Writer - it's not laziness.. it's just the sheer impossibility and craziness of the task...well, that and the drink!

[MichelleH]

Here is the original paper on this:

Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Ad ... ne.0002995

[Digit]

So what's the problem Ish?
In any case if the reporter had asked even an amateur climatologist or astronomer he should have got tilt/inclination correct.
A change in orbit would have affected the entire planet, this sort of thing is why I get hot under the collar with the man made global warming-we're all doomed society cos one day in the future the Sahara will bloom again, and there ain't a Damn thing we can do about it!

Roy.

[john]

So what's the problem Ish?
In any case if the reporter had asked even an amateur climatologist or astronomer he should have got tilt/inclination correct.
A change in orbit would have affected the entire planet, this sort of thing is why I get hot under the collar with the man made global warming-we're all doomed society cos one day in the future the Sahara will bloom again, and there ain't a Damn thing we can do about it!

Roy.

Hang on, Digit -

Something was tickling my memory, a vague recollection

Of cyclical changes in Earth's orbit.

Here are a couple openers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_eccentricity

http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q2389.html

Obviously, nothing conclusive.

However, I would be inclined to think

That the combination of the tilt of Earth's axis

And

Orbital eccentricity could lead to some fairly significant,

If gradual,

Changes in weather patterns.


hoka hey

john

[Minimalist]

Driven by variation in orbital insolation and magnified by feedback between monsoonal rainfall and vegetation

Where the hell is Monk? We need a definition of "orbital insolation."

[john]

Minimalist -

A couple more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

http://www.teslasociety.com/milankovic.htm


j

[Minimalist]

Somehow that is a lot more reassuring than the notion that the orbit can change.

[Rokcet Scientist]

So what's the problem Ish?
In any case if the reporter had asked even an amateur climatologist or astronomer he should have got tilt/inclination correct.
A change in orbit would have affected the entire planet, this sort of thing is why I get hot under the collar with the man made global warming-we're all doomed society cos one day in the future the Sahara will bloom again, and there ain't a Damn thing we can do about it!

Maybe the Sahara will one day be green again, but from a global perspective for now and the foreseeable future desertification is the name of the game. Not 'foliation' (is that even a word...? )