I saw YouTube the other night that north Africa use to be very lush......then it dried up.
Probably during the Ice Ages............
“ that north Africa use to be very lush......then it dried up.”
Na, they brought in the goats and they ate everything.
That’s a big issue in the prehistoric migration of species, including hominids, out of Africa. It’s also an issue in Biblical archaeology. The whole region, including what is now the Middle East, was wetter as recently as 5-7,000 years ago, into “modern” times when the Egyptians and Mesopotamians were inventing civilization and written records begin to appear.
I caught a YouTube video some time back that discussed the “missing” rivers of the Garden of Eden. Biblical scholars have always assumed the Tigris and Euphrates, with the Garden of Eden arguably (probably) located in the formerly marshy areas of the lower Euphrates (largely drained by Saddam Hussein to help control the Marsh Arabs). But where are the others?
There is also a substantial stream, which was much larger as recently as 5-7,000 years ago, which flows from the Zagros Mountains into the lower Euphrates.
There is also a now completely dried up ancient riverbed that ran from the coastal mountains of Israel and Jordan east across what is now the desert regions of Jordan and Iraq; I don’t recall whether it ran far enough south to loop into northern Saudi Arabia as well. The man who put together the video drove the route, and once you see it, it’s unmistakable. Today, it’s a dry wadi, though I imagine it is susceptible to flash flooding in the ways that desert wadis are. As recently as 5-7,000 years ago, it was a major river.
The river count in Genesis may be historically correct without any need for the innumerable theories reaching as far out as the Indus and Nile. Those rivers are geographical nonsense, but when theory comes up short a few facts, scholars are known to get pretty inventive — sometimes to the point that they set themselves up for well-placed mockery from the debunkers. If we reconstruct the ancient climate, that problem may disappear.
The Afar region contains an array of both salt and fresh water lakes.