* Astronomy

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RE: Sahara

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Stone Age humans crossed Sahara in the rain
Wet spells in the Sahara may have opened the door for early human migration. According to new evidence, water-dependent trees and shrubs grew there between 120,000 and 45,000 years ago. This suggests that changes in the weather helped early humans cross the desert on their way out of Africa.

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The archaeologist, Martin Tomáek, describes an almost twenty-two day exploration by the Czech expedition into rarely seen stretches of the Egyptian Sahara. Thanks to him we bring unique pictures from the places where package tours rarely ever go.

It was almost 2 a.m. on 3rd November 2008, when most of the members of our scientific expedition met at Cairo airport. The final destination was the remote area of Gilf Kebir, which is located near where Egypt borders with Libya and Sudan. Our team of scientists - Egyptologist Miroslav Bárta, surveyor Vladimír Brna, and me (archaeologist Martin Tomáek) - were joined at the airport by other members of the expedition. The rest soon arrived from Prague and comprised of: archaeologist Jirí Svoboda, expert of the Palaeolithic era, surveyor Václav Cílek, archaeologist Jirí Musil, specialist on the Roman Period, botanist Petr Pokorný and Josef Jía who was responsible for charging all of the electrical devices using solar cells. The last person to join the expedition was Martin Frouz, a photographer working for the Czech National Geographic team.
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Discovery of an ancient river the size of the Nile in Eastern Libya

Une équipe internationale, coordonnée par Philippe Paillou de l'Observatoire Aquitain des Sciences de l'Univers (INSU-CNRS, Université sciences et technologie Bordeaux), vient de découvrir les traces d'un ancien fleuve, comparable en taille au Nil égyptien, dans l'Est de la Libye. A partir de données acquises par le radar imageur PALSAR du satellite ALOS de la JAXA (agence spatiale japonaise) et grâce à un soutien du CNES, les chercheurs ont pu mettre en évidence un vaste réseau hydrographique fossile, long de plus de 1200 km, qui reliait, il y a plusieurs millions d'années le bassin de Kufrah à la mer Méditerranée.

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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.

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Fearless Planet - Sahara (e03) 3

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Fearless Planet - Sahara (e03) 4

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Fearless Planet - Sahara (e03) 5

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Fearless Planet - Sahara (e03) 1

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Fearless Planet - Sahara (e03) 2

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The Eastern Sahara desert is largely unoccupied by humans, yet according to new evidence in today's issue of the U.S. journal Science, ancient humans once inhabited these lands by following rainfall patterns.

Evidence from early occupation sites and archaeological remains suggests that African people from the south followed the rains up north to the Egyptian Sahara.

"(when the Egyptian Sahara became a full desert) most of the prehistoric populations which did not head for the Nile valley were forced to migrate south following the retreating rains" - Stefan Kröpelin, co-author and archaeologist from the University of Cologne, Germany.

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