Recent expansion of the Sahara

During the late Pleistocene, the Sahara experienced both pluvial and inter‐pluvial periods when the climate was successively wetter and drier than it is today. At the end of the Pleistocene the regions bordering its southern edge were richly supplied with lakes and rivers. These dried up between 7000 and 3500 B.P. as the climate became progressively drier and warmer. Subsequent impoverishment of the flora and fauna has been due almost entirely to human activities: bad agriculture, felling trees for fuel, and overgrazing by domestic stock.