The Green Sahara
Monsoon rains push north and the largest desert on Earth becomes grassland, lakes and rivers.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 5.5 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 500 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
For most of the early and middle Holocene the Sahara is not a desert. Orbital precession strengthens the African monsoon, and the region supports savanna, permanent lakes — Lake Chad reaches the size of the Caspian — hippopotamus, crocodiles, elephants and a substantial human population herding cattle. Rock art across the central massifs records that world. It is the most recent and best documented of the many green phases the Sahara has passed through.