It seems like man-caused climate change is not anything new. I wonder if the political leaders of the Neolithic communities in Sahara were busy discrediting their shamans to obfuscate the findings that their livestock husbandry was the cause of desertification. Maybe the Neolithic people were conned into believing that "desertification" was a shamanic conspiracy for a one world government and population control.
It reminds me of the Sumerian irrigation system that eventually resulted in salinization of the irrigation channels leading to the current desert conditions in the Middle East. Also, the overzealous timber industry in Lebanon that resulted in current denuded Lebanese landscape.