Dear OBRL-News and OBRL-Quarterly Subscribers,

The Revised 2nd Edition Printing of Saharasia is now available.  It is basically the same book as the 1st edition, with the same size, format, and color cover, but contains several important additions:

* An added Preface to the Second Edition, which details a few small changes in the book, as well as a few of my own self-critical points on the 1st edition.

* A new Appendix, the article "Update on Saharasia: New Findings Since the First Printing".

Saharasia continues to stimulate interest within scholarly circles, and is a "must-read" item if you really want to know the social background behind the current global crisis.  An excellent book for students, parents, professionals, or anyone who has a genuine interest to find more compelling answers as to the "why" behind history and current events, beyond the headlines.

There is a price increase for the new 464-page softcover large-format edition, to $39.  However, we have decided to keep the price at the current $34, same as the first edition, for the near future.  Currently, we are the only ones to have the 2nd Edition, so ordering of Saharasia from other sources will only provide you with the first edition.  Go to this webpage to order:

http://www.naturalenergyworks.net

(see the Saharasia link in the upper-left column.)

I've also made a special "Saharasia Resource Page" at this weblink:

http://www.saharasia.org

At this site, you can find various book-reviews and summary articles, in other world languages as well.  I should point out, we are seeking volunteer translators for my major summary article (linked at the above website, or here:)

http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia_en.htm

This article is currently available in English, German and Turkish.  If you are able and interested to make such a translation, which would then be openly posted to the OBRL website, please contact me directly.

Also, there will be a special Seminar on Saharasia offered at OBRL this summer:

* 29-30 July (Saturday-Sunday): Seminar on Saharasia:
The Origins of Violence, Emotional Armoring and Patriarchy

  For details, see here:

http://www.orgonelab.org/events.htm

This will be, in addition to an excellent line-up of seminars on orgone biophysical topics.  See that weblink for more information.

On a related note, below is a letter-to-the-editor of a major scientific magazine, in response to an article they published on the subject of social collapse of the Garamantian society in the core of the Sahara Desert, thousands of years ago.  This society and its collapse were briefly mentioned in Saharasia, along with hundreds of other similar societies which were devastated by the Saharasian climate-change.  The editors declined to publish my letter, so I make it public here.

Thanks for your interest and support over these many years.

James DeMeo, Ph.D.

Director of OBRL

++++++++

TO: American Scientist

RE: Ancient Lakes of the Sahara

http://www.americanscientist.org/IssueTOC/issue/801

Dear Editors,

It was with great pleasure I read the article by Kevin White and David Mattingly, "Ancient Lakes of the Sahara" (Jan-Feb.2006).  In the mid-1980s, I produced a dissertation at the University of Kansas which, as part of its study, compared the intensity of world desert regions and encompassed a review of climate-change evidence over what I identified and termed the "Saharasian Desert Belt". (Citation list below).  The shift from relatively moist to arid conditions which was recorded in the Sahara was generally reflected in climate-change records over a much larger territory, ranging across North Africa, the Middle East, and into Central Asia as well: "Saharasia".  Evidence is clear for previously moist conditions across nearly all of Saharasia prior to c.3000 BCE, with large lakes and year-round rivers, as well as a vast semi-forested grassland thick with large and small animals, to include fish, crocodile, hippo, elephant, lion, giraffe, equines, bovines and so forth, upon which early humans hunted and thrived.

The drying up of Saharasia, which appears earliest in the region encompassing the dry core of Arabia, across the Levant and into Central Asia, started around 4000-3500 BCE, possibly as early as 5000 BCE in a few spots, but with North Africa and the more peripheral areas of the Western Sahara and Gobi drying out only later on -- I haven't seen anything since my original 1986 publication which would significantly alter those conclusions.  What is most remarkable, however, is the change in human subsistence, settlement, migration and even behavior patterns (related to early childhood, status of women, family life and social violence) which attended the massive climate change.  For those early peoples it could only be termed as a giant climatic disaster which progressively destroyed their subsistence, sometimes in a dramatic manner, with the quick appearance of extreme multi-year droughts, and often leading to widespread famines, starvation, social collapse and forced migrations. The Garamantes were notable for their finding a way to survive this climate change -- most other human societies were not so fortunate.  It was the largest single climate-change episode to occur on the planet since the end of the Pleistocene glaciation and it profoundly affected early Homo Sapiens and human social existence.

Curiously, neither of these issues -- the climate change nor the behavior changes -- gets much discussion outside of specialists.  My work surveyed available archaeological and anthropological evidence, in dozens of world maps addressing climatic and landscape features, as well as human behavior patterns, using the best available cross-cultural data bases from standard anthropological sources. What jumps out at you in my published maps is the striking degree of geographical correlation between the landscape-climatic patterns (ie, areas of harshest deserts with most extremely difficult living conditions), with the behavior patterns related to a tough and hard existence from generations of life in the core of a hard desert.

World maps of both climate and behavior therefore show very similar "Saharasian" pattern, suggesting a causal relationship.  When viewed through the lens of archaeology and history, they suggest an even more remarkable set of relationships:

        1) Human social violence and warfare developed its most intensive and institutionalized forms within Saharasia around and shortly after the time of the Great Drying-Up.  Evidence for social violence and warfare appears only fleetingly or not at all in world archaeology prior to this climatic change event, but afterward it grows increasingly more abundant, and is most abundantly found within Saharasia and its immediate borderlands.  This appears as a consequence of the drying up of the subsistence lifestyle of early hunter-gatherer and pastoral peoples, who increasingly were affected by famine, starvation and forced migrations, eventually developing a semi-permanent nomadic lifestyle with attendant trade-raid qualities.

        2) Equally controversial, elements of this early geographical Saharasian pattern is seen in the relatively recent anthropological record, in that Saharasian peoples are predominantly the most extreme patristic (patriarchal authoritarian and warlike) of all world peoples, as compared to the most extreme matristic (cooperative peaceful societies) as found in anthropology by the 1900s only within isolated rainforest regions -- a consequence of the global spread of "Saharasian" types of human behavior out of the large desert regions, being spread by massive Saharasian warrior-nomad armies (Sythians, Huns, Mongols, Turks, Arabs) and also on the heels of the great "desert religions" which also were carried out of Saharasia by patriarchal methods (Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam).

        3) And even more controversial, points 1 and 2 are suggestive that cross-cultural human myths of an ancient "garden" -- of easy life in a land of plenty, and out of which humans were cast most disastrously -- may reflect a very real event in prehistory. The turning away from early maternal-oriented cultures towards patriarchal ones, including shifts towards patriarchal gods, appears to have attended these correlated dramatic climatic, landscape and behavior changes.

I note, the whole world is still grappling with the after-effects of the Saharasian desert belt -- not only is much of the world locked into resource dependency with this region, but Saharasia and its borderlands have been a never-ending source of wars and conflicts, fights over productive land and/or religion, and with Saharasian peoples still exerting warlike pressures outside of their desert homelands. It is a 6000-year-old problem related to ancient desertification -- affecting world stability and even world climate today -- but like an elephant in the living room, nearly nobody wants to talk about it.

James DeMeo, Ph.D.

Ashland, Oregon, USA

541-552-0118

demeo(at)mind.net

**********

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, reprinted materials are distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the information for research and educational purposes.)

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