Current Events 11/15/11

"Lost" Fortresses of Sahara Revealed by Satellites 

By James Owen 

On National Geographic News 

This very intriguing article is about how we have been able to take more satellite pictures of a super advanced ancient African tribe called the Garamantes. They were around the time 1 A.D. to about 500 A.D and lived in the Sahara Desert in Libya. This tribe had walled farms, towns, and villages. They also had a very intricate irrigation system that would be able to make desert areas, like the Sahara Desert, have green oases in the desert. Since it was hard to grow crops in the Sahara Desert they used these irrigation systems to be able to grow more and wider range of crops and plants. They had a very good writing system and metallurgy. They were also very advanced in architecture and engineering and were able to build bigger walls and buildings. Even though we think we know a lot about them we actually don't. We have no idea how they suddenly disappeared. Scientists think that they ran out of water supply and all of them died. 

I chose this article because from the title it looked very interesting since it was about a very mysterious civilization. I know this article is valid because it is from a very trusted website. Also it was on other websites like the "Heritage Daily" and other news corporation websites.  It is fascinating how ancient civilizations can be very advanced in technology for certain reasons. I thought it was intriguing how they used the irrigation systems to grow grass in desert areas to use for crops. They built underground canals so the water would not evaporate since they were in a desert. It must have been difficult to build this because it took an estimated 77,000 man-years to build this. This proves how smart civilizations can come up with very odd ways to do stuff that is hard to do, like plant crops in a desert. It was difficult to discover these sites because the researchers ran out of money, the sites were in the middle of the Sahara Desert and the war in Libya stopped the researchers for a while.