region:fertile crescent

The Ominous Story of Syria’s Climate Refugees
▻https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ominous-story-of-syria-climate-refugees

Climatologists say Syria is a grim preview of what could be in store for the larger Middle East, the Mediterranean and other parts of the world. The drought, they maintain, was exacerbated by climate change. The Fertile Crescent—the birthplace of agriculture some 12,000 years ago—is drying out. Syria’s drought has destroyed crops, killed livestock and displaced as many as 1.5 million Syrian farmers. In the process, it touched off the social turmoil that burst into civil war, according to a study published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. A dozen farmers and former business owners like Ali with whom I recently spoke at camps for Syrian refugees say that’s exactly what happened.

#Syrie #climat

Et maintenant, Ze Economist - journal sérieux (oui, bon) - t’explique que les arabes sunnites sont un « groupe ethnique » :
▻http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21708259-liberation-iraqs-second-largest-city-offers-rare-chance-assuage-

SURVEY the rubble of the Fertile Crescent, and a disturbing pattern emerges: from the Mediterranean to the Golf, those bearing the brunt of war are for the most part Sunni Arabs. Though they form the largest ethnic group and are heirs of fabled empires, many of their great cities are in the hands of others...

Un peu vieux mais intéressant:

Syrian seedbank wins award for continuing work despite civil war | Environment | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/19/syrian-seedbank-wins-award-for-continuing-work-despite-civil-war

The fields around Aleppo have sustained humanity for tens of thousands of years. Blood-torn now, they were among the first to produce wheat, barley and the crops that made this area part of the “fertile crescent” that Western civilisation sprang from.

There may be little sign of that left today, amid Syria’s bloody civil war, but the few remaining strands of the region’s farming heritage have been pulled together by a small group of scientists, whose achievement has just been recognised.

How a Massive Environmental Crisis Led to the Invention of Cheese | Mother Jones
▻http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/cheese-environmental-crisis-evolution

http://www.motherjones.com/files/cheese630.jpg

Using this new research, Kinstead explains, we now know that the real dawn of cheese came about 8,500 years ago, with two simultaneous developments in human history. First, by then, over-intensive agricultural practices had depleted the soil, leading to the first human-created environmental disaster. As a result, Neolithic humans began herding goats and sheep more intensely, as those animals could survive on marginal lands unfit for crops. And secondly, humans invented pottery: the original practical milk-collection containers.

In the warm environment of the Fertile Crescent region, Kinstedt explained, any milk not used immediately and instead left to stand in those newly invented containers “would have very quickly, in a matter of hours, coagulated [due to the heat and the natural lactic acid bacteria in the milk]. And at some point, probably some adventurous adult tried some of the solid material and found that they could tolerate it a lot more of it than they could milk.” That’s because about 80 percent of the lactose drains off with the whey, leaving a digestible and, likely, rather delicious fresh cheese.

With the discovery of cheese, suddenly those early humans could add dairy to their diets. Cheese made an entirely new source of nutrients and calories available for adults, and, as a result, dairying took off in a major way. What this meant, says Kindstedt, is that “children and newborns would be exposed to milk frequently, which ultimately through random mutations selected for children who could tolerate lactose later into adulthood.”

#lait #fromage #agriculture #préhistoire

Cold War Spy-Satellite Images Unveil Lost Cities
▻http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140425-corona-spy-satellite-archaeology-science

the new Corona Atlas of the Middle East, unveiled Thursday at the Society for American Archaeology’s annual meeting, moves spy-satellite science to a new level. Surveying land from Egypt to Iran—and encompassing the Fertile Crescent, the renowned cradle of civilization and location of some of humanity’s earliest cities—the atlas reveals numerous sites that had been lost to history.

et le site : ▻http://corona.cast.uark.edu/index.html

#archeologie #histoire #moyen-orient