lmqg/qg_squad huggingface dataset:
The Sahara (Arabic: الصحراء الكبرى‎, aṣ-ṣaḥrāʾ al-kubrā , 'the Greatest Desert') is the largest hot desert in the world. It is the third largest desert after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its surface area of 9,400,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi)[citation needed]—including the Libyan Desert—is comparable to the respective land areas of China or the United States. The desert comprises much of the land found within North Africa, excluding the fertile coastal region situated against the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley of Egypt and Sudan. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north, to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually transitions to a coastal plain. To the south, it is delimited by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna around the Niger River valley and Sudan Region of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara can be divided into several regions, including the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains, the Ténéré desert, and the Libyan Desert. Its name is derived from the plural Arabic language word for desert (صحارى ṣaḥārā [ˈsˤɑħɑːrɑː]).

Question: What is the third hottest desert in the world?
Answer: The Sahara

Question: What is the third largest desert in the world?
Answer: The Sahara

Question: What is the surface area of the Sahara Desert?
Answer: 9,400,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi)

Question: What is the hottest desert in the world?
Answer: Sahara
The rainfall inhibition and the dissipation of cloud cover are most accentuated over the eastern section of the Sahara rather than the western. The prevailing air mass lying above the Sahara is the continental tropical (cT) air mass which is hot and dry. Hot, dry air masses primarily form over the North-African desert from the heating of the vast continental land area, and it affects the whole desert during most of the year. Because of this extreme heating process, a thermal low is usually noticed near the surface, and is the strongest and the most developed during the summertime. The Sahara High represents the eastern continental extension of the Azores High, centered over the North Atlantic Ocean. The subsidence of the Sahara High nearly reaches the ground during the coolest part of the year while it limits to the upper troposphere during the hottest periods.

Question: What section of the Sahara's cloud cover are the most accentuated?
Answer: eastern

Question: What is the air mass lying above the Sahara?
Answer: hot and dry

Question: What part of the country does the air masses primarily form over?
Answer: North-African desert
The average annual rainfall ranges from very low in the northern and southern fringes of the desert to nearly non-existent over the central and the eastern part. The thin northern fringe of the desert receives more winter cloudiness and rainfall due to the arrival of low pressure systems over the Mediterranean Sea along the polar front, although very attenuated by the rain shadow effects of the mountains and the annual average rainfall ranges from 100 mm (3,93 in) to 250 mm (9,84 in). For example, Biskra, Algeria and Ouarzazate, Morocco are found in this zone. The southern fringe of the desert along the border with the Sahel receives summer cloudiness and rainfall due to the arrival of the Intertropical Convergence Zone from the south and the annual average rainfall ranges from 100 mm (3,93 in) to 250 mm (9,84 in). For example, Timbuktu, Mali and Agadez, Niger are found in this zone. The vast central hyper-arid core of the desert is virtually never affected by northerly or southerly atmospheric disturbances and permanently remains under the influence of the strongest anticyclonic weather regime and the annual average rainfall can drop to less than 1 mm (0.04 in). In fact, most of the Sahara receives less than 20 mm (0.79 in). Of the 9,000,000 km2 of desert land in the Sahara, an area of about 2,800,000 km2 (about 31% of the total area) receives an annual average rainfall amount of 10 mm (0.39 in) or less, while some 1,500,000 km2 (about 17% of the total area) receive an average of 5 mm or less. The annual average rainfall is virtually zero over a wide area of some 1,000,000 km2 in the eastern Sahara comprising deserts of Libya, Egypt and Sudan (Tazirbu, Kufra, Dakhla, Kharga, Farafra, Siwa, Asyut, Sohag, Luxor, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Wadi Halfa) where the long-term mean approximates 0.5 mm per year. The rainfall is very unreliable and erratic in the Sahara as it may vary considerably year by year. In full contrast to the negligible annual rainfall amounts, the annual rates of potential evaporation are extraordinarily high, roughly ranging from 2,500 mm/year to more than 6,000 mm/year in the whole desert. Nowhere else on Earth has air been found as dry and evaporative as in the Sahara region. With such an evaporative power, the Sahara can only be desiccated and dried out further more and the moisture deficit is tremendous.

Question: What is the reason the northern fringe receives more cloudiness and rainfall?
Answer: low pressure systems

Question: What is the average rainfall of the Sahara?
Answer: less than 1 mm

Question: How much desert land is the Sahara?
Answer: 9,000,000 km2 of desert land

Question: What causes the southern fringe to receive cloudiness and rainfall?
Answer: Intertropical Convergence Zone
The South Saharan steppe and woodlands ecoregion is a narrow band running east and west between the hyper-arid Sahara and the Sahel savannas to the south. Movements of the equatorial Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) bring summer rains during July and August which average 100 to 200 mm (3.9 to 7.9 in) but vary greatly from year to year. These rains sustain summer pastures of grasses and herbs, with dry woodlands and shrublands along seasonal watercourses. This ecoregion covers 1,101,700 km2 (425,400 mi2) in Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Sudan.

Question: Which directions does the South Saharan run?
Answer: east and west

Question: What months do the summer rains happen?
Answer: July and August

Question: What is the average rainfall between the months of July and August?
Answer: 100 to 200 mm

Question: How much land does the ecoregion cover?
Answer: 1,101,700 km2 (425,400 mi2)
The central Sahara is estimated to include five hundred species of plants, which is extremely low considering the huge extent of the area. Plants such as acacia trees, palms, succulents, spiny shrubs, and grasses have adapted to the arid conditions, by growing lower to avoid water loss by strong winds, by storing water in their thick stems to use it in dry periods, by having long roots that travel horizontally to reach the maximum area of water and to find any surface moisture and by having small thick leaves or needles to prevent water loss by evapo-transpiration. Plant leaves may dry out totally and then recover.

Question: What is the number of plants in the Central Sahara?
Answer: five hundred species

Question: What do plants do in order to avoid water loss?
Answer: growing lower

Question: Where do plants store their water to avoid the conditions?
Answer: thick stems

Question: What helps plants in order to get as much water as possible?
Answer: long roots that travel horizontally
human activities are more likely to affect the habitat in areas of permanent water (oases) or where water comes close to the surface. Here, the local pressure on natural resources can be intense. The remaining populations of large mammals have been greatly reduced by hunting for food and recreation. In recent years development projects have started in the deserts of Algeria and Tunisia using irrigated water pumped from underground aquifers. These schemes often lead to soil degradation and salinization.

Question: What activities from these mammals will likely affect habitat areas?
Answer: human activities

Question: What underground items have lead to soil degradation?
Answer: irrigated water pumped

Question: What kind of pressure can be intense in the Sahara?
Answer: natural resources
People lived on the edge of the desert thousands of years ago since the last ice age. The Sahara was then a much wetter place than it is today. Over 30,000 petroglyphs of river animals such as crocodiles survive, with half found in the Tassili n'Ajjer in southeast Algeria. Fossils of dinosaurs, including Afrovenator, Jobaria and Ouranosaurus, have also been found here. The modern Sahara, though, is not lush in vegetation, except in the Nile Valley, at a few oases, and in the northern highlands, where Mediterranean plants such as the olive tree are found to grow. It was long believed that the region had been this way since about 1600 BCE, after shifts in the Earth's axis increased temperatures and decreased precipitation. However, this theory has recently been called into dispute, when samples taken from several 7 million year old sand deposits led scientists to reconsider the timeline for desertification.

Question: When did people start living on the edge of the desert?
Answer: ice age

Question: How many river animals were thought to be found during the ice age era?
Answer: Over 30,000 petroglyphs

Question: What area of the Sahara is full of vegetation?
Answer: the Nile Valley

Question: What is believed to have increased temperatures in the Sahara?
Answer: shifts in the Earth's axis
During the Neolithic Era, before the onset of desertification, around 9500 BCE the central Sudan had been a rich environment supporting a large population ranging across what is now barren desert, like the Wadi el-Qa'ab. By the 5th millennium BCE, the people who inhabited what is now called Nubia, were full participants in the "agricultural revolution", living a settled lifestyle with domesticated plants and animals. Saharan rock art of cattle and herdsmen suggests the presence of a cattle cult like those found in Sudan and other pastoral societies in Africa today. Megaliths found at Nabta Playa are overt examples of probably the world's first known archaeoastronomy devices, predating Stonehenge by some 2,000 years. This complexity, as observed at Nabta Playa, and as expressed by different levels of authority within the society there, likely formed the basis for the structure of both the Neolithic society at Nabta and the Old Kingdom of Egypt.

Question: During what era was the central Sudan rich in environment?
Answer: Neolithic Era

Question: What kind of rock art was found in the Sudan?
Answer: cattle and herdsmen

Question: What are examples of the first known archaeoastronomy found in Nabta Playa?
Answer: Megaliths
By 6000 BCE predynastic Egyptians in the southwestern corner of Egypt were herding cattle and constructing large buildings. Subsistence in organized and permanent settlements in predynastic Egypt by the middle of the 6th millennium BCE centered predominantly on cereal and animal agriculture: cattle, goats, pigs and sheep. Metal objects replaced prior ones of stone. Tanning of animal skins, pottery and weaving were commonplace in this era also. There are indications of seasonal or only temporary occupation of the Al Fayyum in the 6th millennium BCE, with food activities centering on fishing, hunting and food-gathering. Stone arrowheads, knives and scrapers from the era are commonly found. Burial items included pottery, jewelry, farming and hunting equipment, and assorted foods including dried meat and fruit. Burial in desert environments appears to enhance Egyptian preservation rites, and dead were buried facing due west.

Question: What were Egyptians herding in the early BCE period?
Answer: cattle

Question: By what time period were the Egyptians constructing large buildings?
Answer: 6000 BCE

Question: What items replaced previously items made of stone?
Answer: Metal objects

Question: In which direction were the dead facing when they were buried?
Answer: due west
By 3400 BCE, the Sahara was as dry as it is today, due to reduced precipitation and higher temperatures resulting from a shift in the Earth's orbit. As a result of this aridification, it became a largely impenetrable barrier to humans, with the remaining settlements mainly being concentrated around the numerous oases that dot the landscape. Little trade or commerce is known to have passed through the interior in subsequent periods, the only major exception being the Nile Valley. The Nile, however, was impassable at several cataracts, making trade and contact by boat difficult.

Question: By What time period was the Sahara dry like it is today?
Answer: 3400 BCE

Question: What was the main reason that the Sahara became so dry?
Answer: reduced precipitation and higher temperatures

Question: What area is known for having the majority of the trade?
Answer: the Nile Valley
By 500 BCE, Greeks arrived in the desert. Greek traders spread along the eastern coast of the desert, establishing trading colonies along the Red Sea. The Carthaginians explored the Atlantic coast of the desert, but the turbulence of the waters and the lack of markets caused a lack of presence further south than modern Morocco. Centralized states thus surrounded the desert on the north and east; it remained outside the control of these states. Raids from the nomadic Berber people of the desert were a constant concern of those living on the edge of the desert.

Question: Where did the Greeks established their trading colonies?
Answer: Red Sea

Question: Which coast did the Carthaginians explore for trade?
Answer: the Atlantic coast

Question: Who would raid the desert leaving the people in constant fear?
Answer: nomadic Berber
An urban civilization, the Garamantes, arose around 500 BCE in the heart of the Sahara, in a valley that is now called the Wadi al-Ajal in Fezzan, Libya. The Garamantes achieved this development by digging tunnels far into the mountains flanking the valley to tap fossil water and bring it to their fields. The Garamantes grew populous and strong, conquering their neighbors and capturing many slaves (which were put to work extending the tunnels). The ancient Greeks and the Romans knew of the Garamantes and regarded them as uncivilized nomads. However, they traded with the Garamantes, and a Roman bath has been found in the Garamantes capital of Garama. Archaeologists have found eight major towns and many other important settlements in the Garamantes territory. The Garamantes civilization eventually collapsed after they had depleted available water in the aquifers and could no longer sustain the effort to extend the tunnels further into the mountains.

Question: What time period did the Garamantes arrive in?
Answer: 500 BCE

Question: What did the Garamantes do in order to bring water to their crops?
Answer: digging tunnels

Question: How many towns are believed to be found by Archaeologists?
Answer: eight major towns

Question: What was the reason for the collapse of the Garamantes civilization?
Answer: depleted available water
The Byzantine Empire ruled the northern shores of the Sahara from the 5th to the 7th centuries. After the Muslim conquest of Arabia (Arabian peninsula) the Muslim conquest of North Africa began in the mid-7th to early 8th centuries, Islamic influence expanded rapidly on the Sahara. By the end of 641 all of Egypt was in Muslim hands. The trade across the desert intensified. A significant slave trade crossed the desert. It has been estimated that from the 10th to 19th centuries some 6,000 to 7,000 slaves were transported north each year.

Question: What group of people ruled the northern shoes of the Sahara?
Answer: Byzantine Empire

Question: What time period did the Muslim conquest of North Africa take place?
Answer: mid-7th to early 8th centuries

Question: What is the estimated number of slaves that were transported each year?
Answer: 6,000 to 7,000 slaves
In the 16th century the northern fringe of the Sahara, such as coastal regencies in present-day Algeria and Tunisia, as well as some parts of present-day Libya, together with the semi-autonomous kingdom of Egypt, were occupied by the Ottoman Empire. From 1517 Egypt was a valued part of the Ottoman Empire, ownership of which provided the Ottomans with control over the Nile Valley, the east Mediterranean and North Africa. The benefit of the Ottoman Empire was the freedom of movement for citizens and goods. Trade exploited the Ottoman land routes to handle the spices, gold and silk from the East, manufactures from Europe, and the slave and gold traffic from Africa. Arabic continued as the local language and Islamic culture was much reinforced. The Sahel and southern Sahara regions were home to several independent states or to roaming Tuareg clans.

Question: During the 1500 who was a valued part of the Ottoman Empire?
Answer: Egypt

Question: What did the Ottoman Empire provide to its people?
Answer: freedom of movement for citizens and goods

Question: What was the local language during this time in Egypt?
Answer: Arabic
European colonialism in the Sahara began in the 19th century. France conquered the regency of Algiers from the Ottomans in 1830, and French rule spread south from Algeria and eastwards from Senegal into the upper Niger to include present-day Algeria, Chad, Mali then French Sudan including Timbuktu, Mauritania, Morocco (1912), Niger, and Tunisia (1881). By the beginning of the 20th century, the trans-Saharan trade had clearly declined because goods were moved through more modern and efficient means, such as airplanes, rather than across the desert.

Question: What time period did the colonialism of the Sahara begin?
Answer: 19th century

Question: What country conquered the Algiers from the Ottomans in 1830?
Answer: France

Question: During what time were good moved through more modern means?
Answer: 20th century
As one of the earliest centers of book-printing in Europe (see above: History), Strasbourg for a long time held a large number of incunabula—documents printed before 1500—in her library as one of her most precious heritages. After the total destruction of this institution in 1870, however, a new collection had to be reassembled from scratch. Today, Strasbourg's different public and institutional libraries again display a sizable total number of incunabula, distributed as follows: Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, ca. 2 098 Médiathèque de la ville et de la communauté urbaine de Strasbourg, 394 Bibliothèque du Grand Séminaire, 238 Médiathèque protestante, 94 and Bibliothèque alsatique du Crédit Mutuel, 5.

Question: What are incunabula's?
Answer: documents printed before 1500

Question: When was the library destroyed?
Answer: 1870

Question: What kind of building holds incunabula's today?
Answer: public and institutional libraries
The history of India includes the prehistoric settlements and societies in the Indian subcontinent; the blending of the Indus Valley Civilization and Indo-Aryan culture into the Vedic Civilization; the development of Hinduism as a synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions; the rise of the Śramaṇa movement; the decline of Śrauta sacrifices and the birth of the initiatory traditions of Jainism, Buddhism, Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism; the onset of a succession of powerful dynasties and empires for more than two millennia throughout various geographic areas of the subcontinent, including the growth of Muslim dynasties during the Medieval period intertwined with Hindu powers; the advent of European traders resulting in the establishment of the British rule; and the subsequent independence movement that led to the Partition of India and the creation of the Republic of India.

Question: In what geographic area was the country of India established?
Answer: Indian subcontinent

Question: What did the joining of the Indus Valley and Indo-Aryan cultures produce?
Answer: Vedic Civilization