Arab and Berber grazing patterns

Submitted by Bellator (Finland), Oct 19, 2014 at 03:02

There is actually no evidence whatsoever that Arab and Berber grazing patterns caused deforestation and desertification in North Africa. This is a French colonial era myth, meant to perpetuate the notion that the natives were lazy and wasteful, and in need of "civilizing" and "sedentarization" policy imposed by the white man. The truth of the matter is that North Africa looked exactly the same when Arabs invaded: the myth of the "Rome's granary" is based on the selective descriptions of ancient writers, not on any actual biological research: and the actual amounts of grains that the Romans extracted from North Africa are not remarkable and indeed North Africa under the Muslims significantly outproduced the "roman granary", both today and in the past.

If you actually went there and asked the locals if their terrain has changed in the recent decades, they'd tell you it hasn't changed at all. What really effects the situation is rainfall, not grazing patterns, since the locals already know not strain any single area by overgrazing.

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