Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1920 — SAHARA ONCE FERTILE LAND [ARTICLE]

SAHARA ONCE FERTILE LAND

In the Stone Age Africa Far- Outstripped Europe, According to Chicago Professor. ’ 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 Ues, according to Dr. J. 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 resourcp and founded a civilization which outstripped Europe. It was about 4000 or 3000 B. C. that Egypt had a stable government controlling millions of souls. The grain of Egypt was 1,000 years .older than any found in Asia, says Doctor Breasted, and cattle undoubtedly had their origin In Africa. The Stone age founders of Egypt early developed '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.