Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
5
Evolution of desert research
The past does not exist. There are only infinite renderings of it.
Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007)
Travels with Herodotus
(2004)
(Trans. Klara Glowczewska, 2007)
Il est si facile et si tentant de croire que 'la' clef est decouverte, que 'la'
solution est trouvee, comme si d'ailleurs il ne pouvait y en avoir qu'une,
precisement celle que son defenseur preconise, alors que dans les
choses de la nature, il arrive qu'une meme serrure admette plusieurs
clefs, et que, par consequent, une seule theorie, fut-elle la plus
seduisante, ou la plus nouvelle, ne puisse pretendre a representer
davantage qu'une modeste verite partielle et provisoire.
It is so easy and so tempting to believe that we have found 'The Key' or
'The Solution'. The presumption that there is only one answer to a
problem - that advocated by the interested party, runs counter to our
experience of the natural world, where several keys may fit the same
lock, so that no one theory, however original or attractive, can ever claim
to represent more than a very modest and provisional part of reality.
Theodore Monod (1902-2000)
The Sahara and the Nile
(1980), foreword, xiv, xvi
5.1 Introduction
Our concern in this chapter is primarily with the
historical
record of desert exploration
and scientific research, a record that extends back about five centuries for the deserts
of South, Central and North America and less than two centuries for the Australian
deserts. The written records for Mesopotamia date back to the
Epic of Gilgamesh
(ca. 2700 BC), those for the Nile Valley in Egypt to more than 5,000 years ago and
those for China to at least 4,000 years ago. Easily accessible scientific observations in
most of the deserts have a relatively short pedigree of only a few centuries, although
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