ONCE A PARADISE

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 95, 23 April 1935, Page 9

ONCE A PARADISE

THI CHANGED,SAHARA

In connection with, the report that a lighthouse has been1' erected to guide aeroplanes across an arid region known as "the Land of Fear," in the Sahara, Professor Child, of Edinburgh, is authority for the statement that once the Sahara Desert blossomed like the rose, writes the Rev. J. F. Cox iri the "Sydney Morning Herald." Then the Sahara was in receipt of a regular rainfall and supported man and bird and beast.

Now there is a strip running through Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Punjab (India)—the three oldest centres of civilisation—which gradually became desiccated and dried up. In the beginning of civilisation, while Northern Europe was covered with ice as far as the Harz, and Alps and Pyrenees were capped with glaciers, the Arctic high pressure deflected southward the Atlantic rainstorms. The cyclones that today traverse Central Europe then passed over the Mediterranean basin, and across Mesopotamia and Arabia to Persia and India. The parched Sahara enjoyed a regular rainfall, and further east the showers were more bountiful and distributed over the whole year. Then,, on the .Iranian plateau, the precipitation filled great hololws that are now salt deserts with hollows that are now salt deserts with tempered the severity of the climate.

In proof of the above assertion in the heart of the Sahara at In-Ezzan, where not a beast or a tree is to be seen, are paintings cut into the rocks of bulls, oryx, and sheep, as welj as human figures and dogs. Similar -drawings are reported from near Lake Chad, the Quenat Oasis 600 miles west of Haifa, the Sudan, Somaliland, and even Arabia