Learn anything with Skillshare for free for 2 months by being one of the first five hundred to sign up using the link below

學習任何與Skillshare的免費2個月，是一個前五百名註冊使用下面的鏈接。

This is Africa

這裡是非洲

And this is the Sahara Desert

這就是撒哈拉沙漠

A pile of sand that's about the same size as the United States

一堆和美國差不多大的沙子。

Linving inside of this enormous area are more than two and a half million people

在這個巨大的區域內，有超過兩百五十萬的人口。

So imagine taking the country of Slovenia and spreading everybody out to live there across China and you'll get an idea of just how desolated it is

所以，想象一下，把斯洛文尼亞這個國家，把所有人都分散到中國各地去生活，你就會知道它有多荒涼了。

There is evidence, though, that not too long ago, the entire Sahara used to be green

但有證據表明，不久前，整個撒哈拉曾是綠色的。

For the past few hundred thousand years, the Sahara has switched back and forth between a desert and a grassland over and over

在過去的幾十萬年裡，撒哈拉在沙漠和草原之間來回切換，一次又一次。

Every forty-one thousand years, because the long-term changes in Earth's rotation, messing up the location of the North African monsoon

每隔四萬一千年，因為地球自轉的長期變化，搞亂了北非季風的位置。

The next time the Sahara will turn green naturally this way will be in about fifteen thousand years or in seventeen thousand AD

下一次撒哈拉沙漠這樣自然變綠，大概是在一萬五千年後，或者是公元一萬七千年後吧

But humanity is nothing if not grossly impatient

但人類如果不是極度急躁，那就什麼都不是了

Imagining the course of human history with a green Sahara would be radically different

想象一下，如果有一個綠色的撒哈拉，人類歷史的進程將是完全不同的。

The Sahara has always been a giant and obvious barrier for travel between the Meditteranean and Sub-Sahara Africa

撒哈拉一直是麥地那尼亞和撒哈拉以南非洲之間旅行的巨大而明顯的障礙。

Thousands of kilometers of desert, rought Atlantic waters of the west and the lack of many markets south of Morocco prevented Pre-Modern explorers from ever getting past it

數千公里的沙漠、西部湍急的大西洋水域以及摩洛哥南部缺乏許多市場，使前現代的探險家們永遠無法越過它。

Centralized states like Egypt, Carthage, the Romans, Byzantines, and Islamic empires surrounded the desert in the north and the east

埃及、迦太基、羅馬、拜占庭、伊斯蘭帝國等中央集權國家將沙漠包圍在北部和東部。

But all of them failed to control or expand beyond the desert

但他們都沒能控制或擴大到沙漠以外的地方

In an alternate history scenario where the Sahara is green, all of this ages and enables these states to expand their influence deep into the African heartland

在另一個歷史場景中，撒哈拉是綠色的，所有這一切都將使這些國家能夠將其影響力擴展到非洲中心地帶深處。

Even in Modern times, turning the Sahara green somehow would revolutionize the entire world.

即使在現代，把撒哈拉變成綠色也會以某種方式徹底改變整個世界。

And open up a tight amount of land for colonization and settlement by the world's ever-growing population

並開闢出緊張的土地，供世界上不斷增長的人口殖民和定居。

One of the most Modern attempts at doing this so far was a plan developed nearly one hundred years ago to creat an artificial sea in the middle of it all, right here in Egypt

到目前為止，最現代的嘗試之一是近一百年前制定的一個計劃，在埃及的中間創造一個人工海。

The plan doesn't seem too crazy at first, but progressently gets more and more insane as this video goes on

這個計劃一開始看起來並不瘋狂，但隨著視頻的進行，越來越瘋狂。

But first, a quick geography lesson

但是，首先，一個簡單的地理課