Petra and Wadi Rum, Jordan (1975)

Abstract

In 1975 I spend a sabbatical year at the Laboratoire de Géologie du Quaternaire at Meudon-Bellevue just outside Paris . I share a laboratory with Françoise Gasse and discover the use of diatoms to reconstruct past changes in lake water temperature, depth and salinity. I plan the outline of a contributed volume on the Sahara and the Nile, which I later edit with Professor Hugues Faure Director of the Quaternary Geology laboratory and Professor of Geology at the University of Paris. Professor Pierre Rognon , Françoise Gasse and I investigate some of the older lake deposits in the Afar Desert of TFAI (now Djibouti ) and Ethiopia . We meet Lieutenant de Barbeyrac and his tame cheetah and lunch in his fort. I visit Wadi Rumm and Petra in Jordan and learn from the local Beduin how Moses struck the rock at the present spring in Wadi Musa , which has provided fresh water for the last three thousand years.