You may have heard my name but forgot about me. You can't miss me on a satellite image. I am called the "great desert" in Arabic. The translation: Sahara. I am the third largest desert in the world. Only Antarctica and the Arctic cover more land area than me. I could fit the entire United States within my sand and still have extra real estate. I have been an important spot in history, from the great Nile River civilizations on my eastern side to the vast trade networks that made empires wealthy in the west. As a desert, I have been expanding since 1600 BC when temperatures in my neighborhood started to climb. This was caused by a shift in the Earth's axis and resulted in less rainfall. I am the Sahara Desert.
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