Sahara : a natural history / Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

De Villiers, Marq.

Contributor:

Hirtle, Sheila.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Natural history--Sahara.

Natural history.

Sahara.

Physical Description:

326 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Walker & Company, 2002.

Summary:

In the parched and seemingly lifeless heart of the Sahara desert, earthworms find enough moisture to survive. Four major mountain ranges interrupt the flow of dunes and gravel plains, and at certain times waterfalls cascade from their peaks. Even the sand amazes: Massive dunes can appear almost overnight, and be gone just as quickly. We think we know the Sahara, the largest and most austere desert on Earth -- yet it is full of surprises, as Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle reveal in this brilliant and evocative biography of the land and its people.

"If you traveled across the United States from Boston to San Diego, you still wouldn't have crossed the Sahara," write de Villiers and Hirtle, painting a vivid picture of this most extraordinary place. They chart the genesis and course of Atlantic hurricanes, many of which are born in the Tibesti mountains of northern Chad, showing that the Sahara, which has a strong influence on weather patterns the world over, is much closer than it seems. They offer a fascinating description of the physics of windblown sand and the formation of dunes and describe in detail the massive aquifers that lie beneath the desert, some filled with water that predates the appearance of humankind on Earth. They marvel at the jagged mountains and at ancient cave paintings deep in the desert that reveal the Sahara was a verdant grassland 10,000 years ago; what's more, this cycle has been repeated several times, and may well repeat again.

Woven through de Villiers and Hirtle's story is a chronicle of the desert's nations and people: the Berbers and Arabs of the north; its black African south, whose ancestors peopled the greatest empires of Old Africa; and the extraordinary nomads -- the Moors, the Tuareg (the famous "blue men"), and the Tubu -- who call the desert home today. Illuminated by the eloquent written testimonies of past travelers, Sahara is a glittering geographic tour conveying the majesty, mystery, and abundance of life in what the outside world thinks of as the Great Emptiness.

Contents:

Introduction: The Idea of the Desert 1

Part 1 The Place Itself

Chapter 1 In a Geographer's Eye 9

Chapter 2 From the Distant Past 38

Chapter 3 The Sand Seas 55

Chapter 4 The Winds 76

Chapter 5 The Surprising Matter of Water 90

Chapter 6 The Massifs 126

Chapter 7 The Tenacity of Life 142

Part 2 And the People Who Live There

Chapter 8 First Peoples 159

Chapter 9 Empires of the Sun 172

Chapter 10 Route Maps 203

Chapter 11 White Gold, Yellow Gold, Black Gold 223

Chapter 12 Adepts of the Uttermost Desert 238

Chapter 13 Life on the Road 264

Epilogue: The Sahara as Home 289.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [305]-309) and index.

ISBN:

0802713726

OCLC:

49902047