User:Douglaspostpark/Saharan Archaeological Research Association

Saharan Archaeological Research Association (SARA). SARA views the Sahara with a deep-time perspective. The Sahara, with its volatile climate history, is now known to have been host to multiple complex and large-scale human settlements dating from the Neolithic onwards. The massive degree of climate unpredictability and variation makes the observation of successful and long-term social complexity an extremely significant one. Understanding this observation is of primary interest to SARA. However, there is much that needs to be done before we can begin addressing larger concepts of human response to climate change in arid regions within the framework of a deep-time perspective. While many nations have sent expedition parties full of explorers and scientists across the vast expanses of desert, in all actuality we are only now just beginning to draw out information about the early complex societies that once inhabited the Sahara. Unfortunately, we may know even less about the climate history of this now arid region. Both SARA and TEP are directed by Douglas P. Park and Peter Coutros of Yale University.