Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 183, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1919 — Sahara Desert Once Well Watered and Fertile Says Professor of Egyptology [ARTICLE]

Sahara Desert Once Well Watered and Fertile Says Professor of Egyptology

The Sahara desert was once well watered and fertile, and hunters from the Sahara plateau, moving gradually down through a rift in Northeastern Africa, located where Egypt now lies, according to Dr. Janies Henry Breasted, professor of Egyptology and oriental history. University of Chicago. Doctor Breasted said that this all happened about the time of the stone age. Egypt was then one huge lake, but it gradually drained out into the Mediterranean, leaving the Nile valley. Here the hunters were afforded every natural resource and founded a civilization which outstripped Europe. It was about 4,000 or 3,000 B. C. that Egypt had a stable government controlling millions of souls. The grain of Egypt was 1,000 years older than that found in Asia, says Doctor Breasted, and cattle undoubtedly had their origin in Africa. The stone age founders of Egypt early de? veloped from hunters to farmers and used the oldest metal instruments made by human agency. They evidently discovered the metal there; and a system of writing was evolved in Egypt thousands of years before Christ,