Fezzan

A rare aerial look at Libya's remote Fezzan region, where ancient societies thrived and collapsed as the rains came and went. Date palms and reeds form a lush fringe along a finger of Umm al Maa Lake in the Ubari Sand Sea. Umm al Maa is one of about a dozen salty reminders of the vast, freshwater Lake Megafezzan, which covered an area the size of England some 200,000 years ago.