ABSTRACT
Groundwater quality issues now assume major importance in semi-arid and arid zones, since scarce reserves of groundwater (both renewable and non-renewable) are under threat due to accelerated development, as well as a range of direct human impacts. In earlier times, settlement and human migration in Africa and the Middle East region were strictly controlled by the locations and access to fresh water mainly close to the few major perennial rivers such as the Nile, or to springs and oases, representing key discharge points from large aquifers that had been replenished during wetter periods of the Holocene and the Pleistocene. This is a recurring theme in writings of all the early civilisations where water is valued and revered (Issar 1990). The memory of the Holocene sea level rise and pluvial periods is indicated in the story of the Flood (Genesis 7:10), and groundwater quality is referred to in the book of Exodus (15:20). More recent climate change may also be referred to in the Koran (Sura 34:16).
