Was sahara desert always had been a desert?

Answer 1

No it wasnt.. if you visit sahara you will see evidance that animals were been there as elephants, lions ,, etc and the life of old days been drawn on the mountains and caves ,, also they found alot of underground water in many areas as it can mean an old rivers been bured by sand and rocks after may be climatic change

Answer 2

Don't listen to all these other people. Listen to the real paleontologist! The sahara desert was most definitely a sea. Why the heck do you think you find fossilized bones of Basilosaurus(ancient whale that measured 18 meters long). I'm sorry my mistake the sahara has been a lot of things but predominately a sea in recent times. Yes, yes big beasts have walked the lands there such as Andrewsarchus.

Answer 3

The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert, over 9,000,000 km² (3,500,000 mi²), almost as large as the United States. The Sahara is located in northern Africa and is 2.5 million years old. Its name, Sahara, is an English pronunciation of the word for desert in Arabic

The boundaries of the Sahara are the Atlantic Ocean on the west, the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea on the north, the Red Sea and Egypt on the east, and the Sudan and the valley of the Niger River on the south. The Sahara is divided into western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains (a region of desert mountains and high plateaus), Tenere desert and the Libyan desert (the most arid region). The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi (3415 m) in the Tibesti Mountains in northern Chad.

The Sahara divides the continent of Africa into North and Sub-Saharan Africa. The southern border of the Sahara is marked by a band of semiarid savanna called the Sahel; south of the Sahel lies the lusher Sudan and the Congo River Basin.

Humans have lived on the edge of the desert for almost 500,000 years. Imediately after the last ice age, the Sahara was a much wetter place than it is today. Over 30,000 petroglyphs of river animals such as crocodiles survive in total with half found in the Tassili n'Ajjer in southeast Algeria. Fossils of dinosaurs, like Afrovenator, Jobaria and Ouranosaurus, have also been found here. The modern Sahara, though, is not as lush in vegetation, except in the Nile Valley, at a few oases, and in the northern highlands, where Mediterranean plants such as the olive tree grow. It has been this way since about 3000 BCE.

2.5 million people live in the Sahara, most of these in Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria. Dominant ethnicities in the Sahara are various Berber groups including Tuareg tribes, various Arabised Berber groups such as the Hassaniya speaking Maure/Moors (also known as Sahrawis) and various "black African" ethnicities including Tubu, Nubians, Zaghawa,Kanuri, Peul (Fulani), Hausa and Songhai. The largest city in the Sahara is Cairo, in the Nile Valley and Egypt's capital. Other important cities are Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania; Tamanrasset, Algeria; Timbuktu, Mali; Agadez, Niger; Ghat, Libya; and Faya, Chad

Climate History
The climate of the Sahara has undergone enormous variation between wet and dry over the last few hundred thousand years. During the last ice age, the Sahara was bigger than it is today, extending south beyond its current boundaries. The end of the ice age brought wetter times to the Sahara, from about 8000 BCE to 6000 BCE, perhaps due to low pressure areas over the collapsing ice sheets to the north

Once the ice sheets were gone, the northern part of the Sahara dried out. However, not long after the end of the ice sheets, the monsoon which currently brings rain to the Sahel came further north and counteracted the drying trend in the southern Sahara. The monsoon in Africa (and elsewhere) is due to heating during the summer. Air over land becomes warmer and rises, pulling cool wet air in from the ocean. This causes rain. So, paradoxically, the Sahara was wetter when it received more insolation in the summer. In turn, changes in solar insolation are caused by changes in the Earth's orbital parameters.

By around 2500 BCE, the monsoon retreated south to approximately where it is today, leading to the desertification of the Sahara. The Sahara is currently as dry as it was about 13,000 years ago.

Answer 4

I think , once up on a time it is not desert, it was good place for live, after long time it had been last its power form any natural effects.

Answer 5

No,Sahara was not a dessert about a millon years ago it was an agricultural land.This has been proved by the drawings obtained in caves .

Answer 6

nop... not always was a desert , the sahara was something like the amazonas in our times....

Answer 7

No, It was like a present day rainforest eg. Amazon

Answer 8

No--it has been under water several times.

Answer 9

yes

Answer 10

actually no
they say once upon a time it wasnt