Word: sahara
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...14th century Mali (pop. 11 million) was the biggest, richest empire in West Africa, encompassing all or part of Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Mauritania, the legendary land of gold and learning, grower of cotton, source of salt, trader across the Sahara to all the countries of Europe. Almost 700 years later, the Republic of Mali found itself the fourth poorest country in the world, destroyed by tribal and religious wars, colonialism, crashing commodity prices, soaring fuel prices, bad weather, bad governments...
...archaeologists are prepared to go that far. But there is now enough evidence for a scientific consensus that ancient Nubia, beginning in the Stone Age, developed its own distinct civilization--or rather, a series of overlapping civilizations--influenced by Africa, Arabia and the Sahara as well as by Egypt. Moreover, many scholars believe these Nubian kingdoms hold even more clues to the origins of African culture than does Egypt, which, because of its unique position abutting Asia and the Mediterranean, is regarded by many archaeologists as having developed independently from the rest of the continent...
Much of Africa's rock art remains undiscovered. "We know where the major art-rich sites are," says Coulson, "but we're always finding new ones." He estimates that even in the Sahara, where numerous sites are well documented, archaeologists are aware of only 10% of the existing art. Exploring Chad's Tibesti Mountains last year, for example, he and Campbell discovered valleys abounding in ancient engravings, most of them unknown to experts...
Nagle is currently preparing for a trip to Morocco, where he will take part in a seven-day team race in the Sahara...
...ENGLISH PATIENT For so many European wanderlusters who found an Eden in the Sahara, the desert was a woman--dazzling, enveloping, with a vastness that held all their dreams. In such a place, just before World War II, the Hungarian aristocrat Count Laszlo de Almasy finds his ideal desert woman and follows her to hell. He then lives, just barely, to tell the tale to a ministering angel (Juliette Binoche) who can give him what he needs: not absolution but understanding. The lovers are Ralph Fiennes--all coiled sexiness, threat shrouded in hauteur--and Kristin Scott Thomas...