Sahara: The Life of the Great Desert

by Marq De Villiers (Author), Sheila Hirtle (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.25

  A glittering geographic tour of the remarkable history, peoples, climate, creatures, sights and sounds of the largest and most austere desert on earth. Ten thousand years ago, the Sahara was a temperate grassland - petrified trees mark where forests used to stand, and former riverbeds are rich in the petrified bones of hippos, elephants, zebras and gazelles. Then a slight shift in the earth's axis transformed it into the greatest desert in the world with astonishing speed. Massive sand dunes are continuously formed and dissolved by fierce winds, making the ever-shifting topography of the desert more uncertain and hazardous to navigate. The inhabitants of this desolate terrain barely eke out a living. Throughout the millennia, diverse populations have struggled to make this severe landscape home. Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle chronicle the desert's nations and peoples and legacies they have left to the sand: stone circles older than Stonehenge; Roman aqueducts; remnants of Greek fields and vineyards, and the ruins of palaces and temples along the Royal Road, a once busy trading route for gold and salt, resources that fuelled the economies of the great empires of Old Africa before centuries of conquests, religious wars and tribal turf battles destroyed them. Illuminated by written testimonies of past travellers, 'Sahara' conveys the majesty, mystery and abundance of the desert's life in an evocative biography of the land and its people.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $5.81

  This volume provides a rich biography of the world's largest desert - its history, peoples, traditions, climate, creatures, tastes, sights and sounds. In the parched and seemingly lifeless heart of the Sahara desert, the endless dune of literary imagination, earthworms find enough moisture to survive. Four major mountain ranges interrupt the flow of dunes and gravel plains, and at certain times waterfalls cascade from their peaks; massive dunes can appear almost overnight, and then move by hopping; it spawns vast underground reservoirs and blind fish; and sudden savage storms, leave behind sand as soft as talcum powder. We think we know the Sahara, the largest and most austere desert on Earth - yet it is full of surprises, as Marq de Villiers reveals in this biography of the land and its people. Woven through de Villiers's account is a chronicle of the desert's nations and peoples: the extraordinary nomads - the Moors, the gardening sand women of Arawan, and the Tuareg (the famous blue men ) - who call the desert home today. Illuminated by eloquent written testimonies of past travellers, Sahara attempts to convey the majesty, mystery, history and abundance of life in what the outside world thinks of as the Great Emptiness.