Facing the Sea of Sand

Abstract Northern Africa is dominated now by the Sahara Desert stretching across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. This book is about the people who lived around the edges of the Desert and the different ways in which they responded to its challenges, establishing networks of communication across the great waste. But the Sahara has not always ben a Desert. From about 9000 BC the region began to enjoy a warm humid period allowing vegetation to flourish and wild animals to move in. Humans soon followed practising pastoral economies but with the onset of harsher conditions once more around 3000 BC the desert reclaimed its own. Since then fluctuations in climate have continued to affect the lives of the people living around the desert fringes. The communities occupying the North African coast and the Nile Valley have come under the states dominating the Near East and the Mediterranean, but those living in the Sahel to the south of the desert have developed their own distinctive cultures. The book tells the story of the links between the two worlds showing that Africa played a crucial part in the development of the Old World before it was drawn into the story of the New World.