Hola MaHigh-School - November 2019

200,000 deaths due to famine and diseases.
The ash in the atmosphere created some strange phenomena: The sky
had a yellow tinge which probably inspired Turner in his paintings.
People migrated to better areas of USA and Europe, a pattern not seen
since the early Roman empire.
… and that was only one volcanic explosion.
And Africa?
Ever heard of AHP? Me neither – but it is the African Humid Period, in
the earliest days of the Holocene (where temperatures turned Snowball
Earth into a place where we could live). This is some 11,000 years ago,
which is really recent – geological speaking.
Now we need to be very scientific:
The Earth sort of wobbles a bit in its orbit around the sun. It is a cycle of
some 20,000 years. This change in wobble forces the monsoonal rains in
Northern Africa further north and intensifies
the rain fall.
Now we had lakes in Sahara and a fertile climate.
Sahara and surroundings were GREEN.
This triggered a population growth and also triggered the rock arts,
paintings and a settled life in terms of agriculture and livestock.
Remember, Jericho was a city 10,000 years ago. And Egypt was a growing
kingdom.
Alas, the desiccation de-populated Northern Africa into what we see
today.
But look at one little thing: a slight change
in climate triggers enormous changes in the
cultural make-up.