Reading
passage The Sahara is a massive
desert, the world’s largest, in fact. It is approximately equal in size
to the United States and covers more than 9 million square kilometers.
It is more than 5,500 kilometers from east to west and 2,000 kilometers
from north to south.
The Sahara has a very dry climate. The average annual rainfall is not
even 10 centimeters, and many areas receive less than 2 centimeters per
year. In the very driest places, it rains only about once a century.
There is little surface water in the Sahara. The Nile river does run
through the Sahara, and there are some oases there, but otherwise the
surface is dry. Of the oases in the Sahara, about 90 are large enough
to support tiny villages.
Main
idea: Characteristics of the
Sahara today MP 1: --- world's largest desert
-- same size U.S.
-- 9 mill sq km
-- 5,500km E/W, 2,000 N/S MP2: --- v. dry climate
-- < 10cm rain a year
(someplace <2cm)
-- sometimes only once/100years MP3: --- little surface water
-- only Nile, few oases Listening
passage Something that many people
find quite surprising about the Sahara is that it actually used to be
quite green. It once used to be a lush green jungle-like area.
When an ice-age, the Pleistocene Ice Age, ended about 10,000 years ago,
the area that today is the massive Sahara Desert actually had a rather
wet climate. The area was a lush green land of forests and grasslands
with rivers and lakes throughout. There were large animals such as
giraffes and elephants, and there were even hippopotamuses, which need
water year round to live, in the area. The area was also populated by
prehistoric peoples who lived at first by hunting and fishing and later
by farming and raising animals.
Around 6,000 years ago, the climate there began to dry out, and the
region began turning into a desert. Within 2,000 years, by 4,000 years
ago, a dramatic shift had taken place, and the Sahara had become the
huge desert that it is today.
Main
idea: The Sahara in the past
(very different) MP 1: --- 10,000 years ago wet climate --
forests, grassland, rivers, lakes
-- large animals, e.g. hippos
-- prehistoric people, hunting, fishing, farming MP2 --- 6,000 years ago climate changes --
dry out, desertification begins MP3: -- by 4,000 years ago had become desert