People of the Green Sahara

Project Exploration is working with select school partners  to bring the expedition right into the classroom!
Following are questions sent by some of our school partners to the expedition team, we will be posting the questions as they are answered from the field.

December 16, 2011 
Questions from the 2^nd grade scholars at Laureate Prepatory School in Dallas, Texas.
Answered by Hannah Moots

1. What do you eat?

Since our camp is about a day’s drive away from the nearest city, we took all the food we would need for the entire 4 week trip with us. We wanted to pack light, so we brought a lot of dry food (pasta, rice, feeze-dried meat, and dehydrated sauces) that you need to cook with water to eat. We also have some dried fruit and canned vegetables. Because citrus fruits keep well without refridgeration, we brought a lot of grapefuits with us as well.

For breakfast, we usually have cereal. To make milk to put on top of it, we mix milk powder with water. It actually tatses pretty good!

To see just how creative our team members can be with the ingredients we have, check the blog in the next couple days and the recipes of the best meals we had while we were here will be posted.

2. What have you found and how deep is it buried?

The site was once a peninsula in a large lake, but over the last 5000 years the area has become a very dry desert. When it was a lake, the area was inhabited (lived in) and used as a burial ground. We have found burials, arrowheads (archaeologists call these projectile points) and haproons, stone tools, jewelry, bones of animals that used to live here (like crocodiles and hippopotomuses), and trash-piles (which archaeologists call middens).

We are lucky that nothing is buried very deep, we usually only have to dig down about 10 cm (that’s less than a foot!) to excavate the artifacts that are here.

3. What do you wear to protect yourself from the sun?

We always wear sunblock, long sleeves, pants, sunglasses and hats. We also wear an item of clothing called a cheche (pronounced “shesh”). It is made from a long cloth that your wrap around your head and neck that keeps the sun, and equally importantly, sand, off your face, neck, and ears. It is a very useful piece of clothing and many people who live here wear them.

Bonus Question: One of the cool things about being so far away from a city is that there is no light polution from city lights, so at night the stars are very bright. I can see stars here that are too dim to see in Dallas.