there is very strong evidence for the hypothesis that the middle east and north africa were burned to a crisp by a meteor ... not sure exactly, about 5000 years ago, maybe?

number one cause of deserts is literally fire, remove carbon, you get desert

the meteor, in this case, also, was one formed out of a massive solar flare, which over a 1000 year period or so condensed into a bunch of rocks and one of them took a swipe at that region, and gave us the deserts

according to The Apocalypse of Yajnavalkya, the people who built the Sphinx and Great Pyramids some 3000 years earlier evacuated because their astronomy sciences predicted this event and they had vehicles developed to evacuate with, and they are coming back, and there's a whole lotta stories about that announcement