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News: More on greening of Sahara influencing early migrations
Science Daily
A team of scientists from the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of Bremen (Germany) has determined that a major change in the climate of the Sahara and Sahel region of North Africa facilitated early human migrations from the African continent. The team's findings will be published online in the Nov. 9th installment of Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Among the key findings are that the Sahara desert and the Sahel were considerably wetter around 9,000, 50,000 and 120,000 years ago than at present, allowing for the growth of trees instead of grasses. . . .
Based on analysis of plant leaf waxes the researchers could determine the relative importance of trees and grasses in the Sahara and Sahel regions. Trees generally require more water to survive than do tropical grasses, and so by analysing the plant leaf waxes to determine if they were produced by trees or grasses, the scientists could examine past precipitation changes in tropical Africa over the last 200,000 years.
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Fish Swam The Sahara, Bolstering Out Of Africa Theory
Live Science (Charles Q. Choi) Fish may have once swum across the Sahara, a finding that could shed light on how humanity made its way out of Africa, researchers said. The cradle of humanity lies south of the Sahara, which begs the question as to how...
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News: Stone Age Humans Crossed Sahara In The Rain
New Scientist (Jeff Hecht) 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...
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More Re Out Of Africa Via Wet Sahara
Science Now (Michael Balter) Modern humans arose in sub-Saharan Africa as early as 200,000 years ago, but our species did not venture beyond Africa until at least 80,000 years later. Just why they took so long to travel north is not clear, but many researchers...
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Out Of Africa - A New Route?
Science Daily The widely held belief that the Nile valley was the most likely route out of sub-Saharan Africa for early modern humans 120,000 year ago is challenged in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A team led by the...
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More Re Drying Of The Sahara
Scientific American In a finding that may help scientists better predict the pace of climate change, research published in Science shows how the Sahara Desert, a region as big as the U.S. that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea across northern...
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