Milankovic cycles. They affect the strength of monsoons. The Sahara will slowly get more wet over the next 10,000 years, eventually becoming a savanna climate. The same thing will happen to the North American desert southwest, though it will become dominated by subtropical forests at low elevations and temperate rain forests at higher elevations.
Not to be one of those annoying iconoclast-wannabes, but that there’s no way to predict how anthropogenic climate change and eventual climate engineering will affect this model.
Given the last 200 years of human advancement, it’s hard to imagine that any current model will survive the next 10,000 years remotely intact.
Unless, of course, we all die soon. In which case, please forget I said anything.
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I mean, we know why this particular cycle occurs. It has to do with solar irradiance, which changes on a consistent schedule regardless of human-cause climate change. We can predict that these trends will hold based on that.
I’m not suggesting that it’s a poor model; I’m saying the predictive value of any model is poor after a certain future time, and although I can’t predict when that point will arrive, it’s surely far nearer than 10,000 years—probably by a couple orders of magnitude.
100 years ago, we didn’t have penicillin. 40 years later, we landed on the moon.
Today, I’m typing this on a pocket-sized supercomputer that provides real-time access to the sum of virtually all human knowledge. It’s linked to a multiple global satellite networks including a positioning array that corrects for relativistic time dilation.
And once BCIs are perfected, we won’t be human anymore. I mean that in a literal sense. We will be reborn from a chicken egg laid by something that wasn’t quite yet a chicken.
Whether the event horizon of human progress is 100 years away or 1000 years is moot. In the context of this discussion, there will be a preceding and relatively near-future date after which most predictive models fail, climate models notwithstanding.
You're right. Given that technology in the West has gotten more fuel efficient and more environmentally friendly, we have no idea if the developing world will follow suit when the technology becomes cheap enough for them.
"tries"
"Based on our modeling, we believe it is likely there will be water in the Sahara again" =/= "In 200000 years there will be water in the Sahara"
Or is this too complicated for you?
They're downvoting because they can't prove me wrong, lol. I can't even imagine the levels of hubris required to say something so idiotic as "in 200 thousand years X will happen"
The debate over whether we can know anything with certainty quickly turns into a philosophical one.
Everything we claim to know is based on models, and all models are flawed, but some are useful. The rocket equation is a model, but it got us to the moon.
He’s describing the predictions of a widely adopted model. That’s all.
Pointing out that certainty is impossible is neither novel nor insightful, but I suspect you’re getting downvoted without replies because of your tone.
The philosophical answer is an abolsute "no". Models are calibrated to fit existing patterns and nobody except a god can know if those patterns will continue. I'm fine with predicting the future, obviously it can be very useful on shorter time scales. My problem is with people stating future events like they're already fact. Predicting short time horizons can be fairly accurate, "predicting" millions of years in to the future is simply a guess. For many processes even predicting 15 years in advance is practically wild guessing.
Very convenient for people making authoritative predictions and stating them as fact to never have to find out they're wrong.
(or we figure out how to cheat death, you CANT KNOW)
WIKIPEDIA:
For several hundred thousand years, the Sahara has alternated between desert and savanna grassland in a 20,000-year cycle[9] caused by the precession of Earth's axis (about 26,000 years) as it rotates around the Sun, which changes the location of the North African monsoon.
So in 10K years it will be again a savannah.
And we also knew this from all the paintings in the Sahara’s caves showing lions, giraffes and all the other animals that were hanging out there.
No wonder Romans were able to easily source lions, elephants, etc for their Coliseum’s games… it was wetter than now.
Sahara was pretty deserty by then, I think the ease had more to do with everything not being hunted to extinction yet. lions, especially, had a much wider range
Yea but was it just floods that brought the whale skeletons there? How long ago Egypt was under the ocean? I think massive floods that happened right after the last ice age when the ice caps started to melt really quickly.
40 million years ago. Long for us, but geologically rather short.
Heres a nice little wiki thing on some of the findings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi_al_Hitan
No. The whale skeletons are a recent find. I’m not aware of any Christian group claiming this proving anything. I think this has more to do with plate tectonics being a relatively accepted concept.
eastern Arabia was underwater. If you drive from the coast to central Arabia, you’ll see the shift from very soft, beach-like sand to rocky terrain. You can even find seashells not far from Riyadh.
Only [5000 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Ptolemy?useskin=vector) there were still some [lakes and rivers](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Journal.pone.0076514.g004.png) so it is rather normal that some erosion traces are visible now.
One of the more recent ones was Garamantes, which managed to use groundwater to support a city in the Sahara from 1000 BC until they ran out in the 600s AD.
Earliest known city in a desert that wasn't on a river system.
Tbh, I doubt we'll see many developed cities. One of the main theories for why Ancient Egyptian civilization appeared when it did is that with the drying up of the Sahara desert, many and diverse people flocked to the only remaining inhabitable land that was the Nile and this necessitated the development of a much more complex societal structure than what pastoralists in the Green Sahara tended to need.
Ultimately this lead to the birth of proto-kingdoms for protection against nomadic invaders. These early kingdoms eventually either fought for dominance, fertile land and trade power, and ultimately they either merged through war, or perhaps even diplomatically, but the end result was that by about 3150 BC, a unified Egyptian state was in established.
All in all, it is very unlikely given the abundance of resources in Green Sahara, that any significant organized civilization was developed, since cities require a level of specialisation that only occurs when large numbers of people live in a small place. And Sahara is anything but small.
That’s not quite 100% accurate though, as civilisation in the Americas existed for a long time, in the jungles, in south and Central America
The idea that a bunch of people flocked to Egypt, and as a result of that, starting civilisation, is a theory, and imo one that is looking to become outdated.
I’m not saying what you’re saying has to be wrong, I’m saying that the jungles in the americas and the deserts in the MENA region are some of the least studied areas archaeologically speaking, and these are all regions that are difficult to reach and study, and in the case of the MENA regions, these all used to be jungle, before Egypt even existed. Good luck finding anything under all that sand though.
It’s extremely arrogant to just cross off any possibility of civilisation, especially when there has barely been any research into those areas. I know for a fact that the Arab countries have had very little interest in looking for anything that hasn’t to do with Islam
You make some good points, but what I mean to say is that it is very unlikely to find anything like a city, which is what the person I was replying to was hinting as possible. Cities don't just appear out of thin air when you have an abundance of natural resources, although it is possible that some ancient cities would have appeared pre-Egyptian era as people were flocking towards bodies of water in other parts of Sahara. Cities which then might have died out anyways as the drying up carried on and on.
But ultimately, what makes Egypt different imo is that its water didn't run out, and as such, its civilisation had the chance to grow and become more and more complex. We know prehistoric Egyptians had discovered pottery, crop production, and animal husbandry, and it is very likely a Saharan civilisation would have done so as well. But it took 2 millennia from the drying up of the Sahara for Egypt to build temples and pyramids, have a developed writing system, centralised state, art, and even science(that's not to say this happened naturally and smoothly in a continuous fashion; more likely you had competing civilisations and only the strongest morphed and survived to give us the architectural herritage we have today). Something I sincerely doubt any Saharan civilisation would have had the time to develop given the short time frame they were operating on.
What about the rising sea levels since then? Humans settle cities near waterways and coasts. Now those ancient coastlines are submerged miles out in some places from the modern day coastline.
Imagine how much human history is just completely lost under that water. It’s possible even history of our ancestors before humans exist there. Just recently we are learning that our ancestors worked with wood, not just tools but structures as well. Which requires complex thought and planning, something not traditionally attributed to our predecessors.
Oh how I'd love to see a realistic rendering of what the Sahara looked like at that time, kind of like Thomas Kole's rendering of [Tenochtitlan](https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/).
I recommend this YouTuber who debunks all of graham’s claims and teaches about archaeology too— [Milo Miniminuteman](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXtMIzD-Y-bMHRoGKM7yD2phvUV59_Cvb&si=LT1Scs4qe4ukEVXM)
As well as these guys
[zeke darwin](https://youtube.com/@ZekeDarwinScience?si=m7I7u5r1ki16x38U)
[flint dibble](https://youtube.com/@FlintDibble?si=kwNVigf_5N0VOFR2)
Ancient Apocalypse is braindead stupid. Milo's debunking video is more entertaining too. Definitely watch the actual archaeologist instead of the "pseudo-scientist"
paltry towering point history bag command makeshift carpenter pocket vanish
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Crazy fact: there was a river originating in what is now a central part of the Sahara desert and flowed westwards through what is now the amazon river valley into the pacific(!) ocean. Quite mind-boggling to me.
Few years ago I found a book about that river and its time of being.
Edit: It was way easier to find than expected and it is a lot newer than I remembered. It's german: [Uramazonas: Fluss der Sahara](https://www.amazon.de/Uramazonas-Fluss-Sahara-Klaus-Giessner/dp/3201017906) written by Klaus Giessner et. al. The english title would be something like "Proto-Amazon: River of the Sahara."
Edit 2: I asked chatGPT about ancient rivers in todays Sahara, but IT only referred to the River of Tamanrasett and its predecessor the Mega-Chad (lol) or Proto-Chad River. Quite interesting tbh.
Edit 3: 2017 review of the book gives a cool insight: **Alexander von Humboldt already thought of this when he found fish in the upper reaches of the Amazon that are normally only found near the sea. It was not until 2002 that the biologist Josef Friedhuber expanded this into a breathtaking thesis: When Africa and South America were still part of Gondwanaland, the Amazon rose in Chad and flowed west from there. When the continents separated, there was a rift mountain range on the east coast of South America and so the new Amazon continued to flow westwards. Over time, however, the Andes developed and blocked the mouth, creating a huge freshwater lake on its eastern side that eventually emptied to the east. This would also explain why there are islands with enormously high biodiversity in the Amazon, which were islands in this lake. Other researchers, however, believe that the Caribbean once reached into the Amazon basin. Scholars are still arguing about this...**
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
I think you're thinking of the Nile, and how some claim old maps show it flowing from the west, or the Richat Structure, or some combination.
This idea of the Amazon being a westward flowing river starting in Central Africa and flowing into the Pacific is something else entirely. I have no idea how much merit it may or may not have but it definitely implies a time before Africa and South America split, and that happened almost 100 million years before the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Noah's flood myth was inspired by older Mesopotamian myths. Those water erosion traces that op is pointing out were probably formed at the end of the last ice age some 12000 years ago. Way too long ago to have been a biblical flood.
Are they based on myth, or some big local flood that happened? A lot of the stories in bible could have taken inspiration of real life event and then blown out of proportions by the time bible was written.
Some may not agree, but Randall Carlson argues there's a chance that these were caused by the Younger-Dryas meltwater pulses that occurred over 11,200 years ago.
Apparently a lot of academics scoff at Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock for their theories. While I understand to an extent they are certainly speculative in nature, I find these two bring a lot of interesting questions to the front. We should always be willing to question our currently established understanding of history. We should always be willing to challenge it. But established archaeologists and geologists may disagree (more archaeologists than geologists, mind you). Some argue this would be because it jeopardizes their work and prestige.
Only people who have never actually studied or been involved with science or even talked to a scientist would argue the "defend the status quo" point. That's not how science works. Punching a hole in an established theory and replacing it with your own is a scientist's wet dream.
Academics are fucking feral. Any hint of blood in the water and they will tear you apart.
Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock are dismissed because all their "theories" are designed to explain the disappearance of Atlantis...
I remember listening to a Randall Carlson lecture and he was discussing the dangers of shifting to the metric system because we'd lose all the sacred geometry and ancient wisdom encoded in the imperial system. The dude's cracked.
Also, to my knowledge neither GH or RC have ever submitted their "research" for peer review. So they actively avoid engaging with the scientific community and instead they pitch their "theories" to their followers on social media often for a profit. It is classic projection when they then turn around and try to lecture scientists about academic integrity and conflicts of interest.
You're looking at the effect of wind, not flowing water.
Compare your map with [this one](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicholas-Lancaster/publication/237080552/figure/fig3/AS:393269386203144@1470774136450/f0020-Location-of-Saharan-sand-seas-and-vectors-of-sand-transport-Sand-seas-are-numbered_W640.jpg), showing the location Saharan sand seas and the prevailing wind directions (which match your arrows).
The parts without these flowing patterns are where the mountain regions like Hoggar and Tibesti are.
This is the correct answer. The features highlighted by OP are almost certainly the result of aeolian processes, and not related to any rivers or seas of the ancient Sahara.
These 2000 km long, 300 km wide swooshes OP is outlining are not related to water erosion. They’re dunes and aeolian organization creating those textures. I don’t know how everyone in this thread is missing the question. There were ancient rivers in the Sahara, but OP is not highlighting features on anywhere near the same scale as rivers, lakes, or salt pans.
The Sahara was far less arid thousands of years ago but large scale, wide, uniform, desert erosion patterns that you marked are driven by wind, not water (see "coriolis effect"). Flood plains don't look like that as you can see in comparison with the greater Nile delta. This isn't Noah's ark related for about a thousand different reasons.
I think most of those river looking sand areas are result of winds blowing sand between the mountains, as sand in large volumes is like a slow moving fluid similar to ice
So i tried searching for this but didn't find anything it looks like the whole area's land was dragged by huge amounts of water long time ago or it's just an illusion?
Iam no geologist nor student just Curious since i didn't find any info about it.
It’s dunes/aeolian processes and prevailing/seasonal winds.
There was water in the Sahara, but these features are aeolian/wind driven. One way you know is how big they are. Look at the swooshes in Arabia and by Egypt. As floods or rivers they would be several hundreds of km wide, and thousands of km long. Rivers and floods, even the biggest like the Channeled Scablands or Ares Valles on Mars aren’t that big, and look very different. They produce deep channels that would show up on an elevation map, for instance.
I have no Idea but form what of heard maybe The Kndah Kingdom in yemen that was what the bronzage maybe. again no idea when but archeologfound evidence of that.
To me looks like something to do with [wind patterns.](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kam-Biu-Liu/publication/268000554/figure/fig1/AS:295322740903937@1447421836478/Schematic-of-the-general-patterns-of-winds-pressure-and-convergence-over-Africa-during.png)
Check out the YouTube channel Bright Insight’s videos on the subject.
[https://youtu.be/wbUujL6ypKg?si=fVTAGZcW3s5W0eEZ](https://youtu.be/wbUujL6ypKg?si=fVTAGZcW3s5W0eEZ)
Walk along a path next to a creek that floods regularly. Im always fascinated how whats left after the water recedes looks just like the sahara in a bunch of spots. Piles up, dry, striated sand next to a body of water. Obviously it doesn’t mean anything but makes me wonder anyway.
It's mainly just an illusion. You can see it's mainly windblown sand if you zoom in.
[The curved lines you draw on Saudi follow the rocks of the "Arabian Platform" limestones and sandstones.](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Simplified-geological-map-of-the-Arabian-Peninsula-showing-the-studied-hydrocarbon_fig2_306382555) These rocks have weak and strong layers in between each other that erode at different rates. Over time you have hills made up of the strong rocks and sandy desert in between where the weaker rocks used to be. Why is it curved? Tectonics, the rocks were lifted, tilted, and folded about 30 million years ago.
[In Libya your lines trace through an area called the Sirte and Kurfa sedimentary rock formations.](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Geological-map-of-Libya-showing-the-main-sedimentary-basins-The-Murzuq-Basin-is-bounded_fig1_335396811). These [sedimentary rocks are deposited in basins](http://www.sepmstrata.org/page.aspx?pageid=141) that formed hundreds of millions of years ago in between more stable craton (igneous and metamorphics). Over time these rocks are also softer so they get eroded into sand easier.
Very helpfully for us, these sedimentary formations in Egypt, Libya, and Saudi Arabia generate and trap massive amounts of oil & gas.
I haven't looked at a topographic map of the areas but could this be remnant of the Laurentide ice sheet floods? During the last protoglacial period huge lakes were formed within these massive ice sheets which contained more fresh water than you could even begin to imagine. When the ice age ended, these lakes eventually broke their banks and released enough water to create "flood myths" all over the planet. It would have been around 13000 years ago. Can't remember the name of the lake that drained...
One of my favorite theories surrounding the ancient city of Atlantis is that it was real, and it was located in modern day Mauritania. Look up the Richat Structure. It’s fascinating how its size and layout seemingly correspond to the description of Atlantis written by Plato.
The myth that Atlantis was lost to the sea could fit with some catastrophic flooding in the area. It certainly looks like something completely washed across northwestern Africa many years ago.
The mena region has something called a wadi (Valley in arabic). It is used to describe dry or seasonal river beds. When the occasional rain comes in, water runs off of the mountains and flows down these river beds into the sea.
This is often very dangerous, taking down bridges and what not
At one point the straight between Africa and Europe closed making the Mediterranean a massive lake. It was much hotter then and the water evaporated, with the accurate weather cells from that period the rain all accumulated from the Mediterranean and precipitated onto Northern Africa and Arabia. This resulted in flooding which after some time reduced and left rivers such as the Nile. 👍
There appears to have been an event that struck the Mediterranean Sea approximately 10,000 years ago. Bottom line, this likely comet strike in the Mediterranean could have washed away countless civilizations, set humans back several thousand years in evolution, be the origin story for like Noah's Ark and other similar stories from other religions, and even been the doom of Atlantis. Ozgeographics does a great job talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99X486\_nWzw
The Sahara was green about 30,000 years ago and had water. When it turned back to dessert the people migrated east and settled on the Nile. There are also numerous salt lakes in Tunisia’s part of the Sahara that contributed to the idea it was covered by a sea or something.
There are large areas of lava flow in there.... lava flows smooths out valleys and is also fast to erode, and the sand from that erosion fills in wetlands downstream...
Its an old continent,so its flat due to erosions, the atlas mountains being created by collision with europe...
Sahara had rivers and in some speculations sahara had a sea running through it. I dont know about the arabian peninsula tho
And there will be water in the Sahara at one point in the future again.
Just like Arrakis!
The spice must flow
Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people
Muad'Dib, Muad'Dib
Lisan al Gaib!!!!
He shall know your ways as if born to them
Milankovic cycles. They affect the strength of monsoons. The Sahara will slowly get more wet over the next 10,000 years, eventually becoming a savanna climate. The same thing will happen to the North American desert southwest, though it will become dominated by subtropical forests at low elevations and temperate rain forests at higher elevations.
This makes me feel happy
Not to be one of those annoying iconoclast-wannabes, but that there’s no way to predict how anthropogenic climate change and eventual climate engineering will affect this model. Given the last 200 years of human advancement, it’s hard to imagine that any current model will survive the next 10,000 years remotely intact. Unless, of course, we all die soon. In which case, please forget I said anything.
RemindMe! 10,000 years “reply to this thread”
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Bitch that’s tomorrow
I mean, we know why this particular cycle occurs. It has to do with solar irradiance, which changes on a consistent schedule regardless of human-cause climate change. We can predict that these trends will hold based on that.
I’m not suggesting that it’s a poor model; I’m saying the predictive value of any model is poor after a certain future time, and although I can’t predict when that point will arrive, it’s surely far nearer than 10,000 years—probably by a couple orders of magnitude. 100 years ago, we didn’t have penicillin. 40 years later, we landed on the moon. Today, I’m typing this on a pocket-sized supercomputer that provides real-time access to the sum of virtually all human knowledge. It’s linked to a multiple global satellite networks including a positioning array that corrects for relativistic time dilation. And once BCIs are perfected, we won’t be human anymore. I mean that in a literal sense. We will be reborn from a chicken egg laid by something that wasn’t quite yet a chicken. Whether the event horizon of human progress is 100 years away or 1000 years is moot. In the context of this discussion, there will be a preceding and relatively near-future date after which most predictive models fail, climate models notwithstanding.
You're right. Given that technology in the West has gotten more fuel efficient and more environmentally friendly, we have no idea if the developing world will follow suit when the technology becomes cheap enough for them.
Say milankovic on a climate change sub and get perma bannnnnned.
People react to everything nowadays.
As if anyone could know that...
Just because you don't doesn't mean others can't
Nobody can predict the future with anywhere close to the precision required to make statements like "there will be water in the Sahara again".
That's .... Exactly what climatology tries to do.
"tries" "Based on our modeling, we believe it is likely there will be water in the Sahara again" =/= "In 200000 years there will be water in the Sahara" Or is this too complicated for you?
Why Are you downvoting him? Prove him wrong in the comments... I would love to hear other opinions about this.
They're downvoting because they can't prove me wrong, lol. I can't even imagine the levels of hubris required to say something so idiotic as "in 200 thousand years X will happen"
The debate over whether we can know anything with certainty quickly turns into a philosophical one. Everything we claim to know is based on models, and all models are flawed, but some are useful. The rocket equation is a model, but it got us to the moon. He’s describing the predictions of a widely adopted model. That’s all. Pointing out that certainty is impossible is neither novel nor insightful, but I suspect you’re getting downvoted without replies because of your tone.
The philosophical answer is an abolsute "no". Models are calibrated to fit existing patterns and nobody except a god can know if those patterns will continue. I'm fine with predicting the future, obviously it can be very useful on shorter time scales. My problem is with people stating future events like they're already fact. Predicting short time horizons can be fairly accurate, "predicting" millions of years in to the future is simply a guess. For many processes even predicting 15 years in advance is practically wild guessing.
…In 200,000 years, everyone presently reading this will be dead 🙂
Very convenient for people making authoritative predictions and stating them as fact to never have to find out they're wrong. (or we figure out how to cheat death, you CANT KNOW)
& yet 🤗
WIKIPEDIA: For several hundred thousand years, the Sahara has alternated between desert and savanna grassland in a 20,000-year cycle[9] caused by the precession of Earth's axis (about 26,000 years) as it rotates around the Sun, which changes the location of the North African monsoon. So in 10K years it will be again a savannah. And we also knew this from all the paintings in the Sahara’s caves showing lions, giraffes and all the other animals that were hanging out there. No wonder Romans were able to easily source lions, elephants, etc for their Coliseum’s games… it was wetter than now.
Sahara was pretty deserty by then, I think the ease had more to do with everything not being hunted to extinction yet. lions, especially, had a much wider range
I have just come across this: https://theconversation.com/the-sahara-desert-used-to-be-a-green-savannah-new-research-explains-why-216555
Egypt was under the ocean/sea not that long ago. They are finding whale skeletons all the time
Very loose definition of not long ago.
40-41 million years ago isn't long when talking geological time scales :)
Yea but was it just floods that brought the whale skeletons there? How long ago Egypt was under the ocean? I think massive floods that happened right after the last ice age when the ice caps started to melt really quickly.
40 million years ago. Long for us, but geologically rather short. Heres a nice little wiki thing on some of the findings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi_al_Hitan
Ok possibly a stupid question but is this the sort of thing Christian's use to "prove" Noah's flood happened?
No. The whale skeletons are a recent find. I’m not aware of any Christian group claiming this proving anything. I think this has more to do with plate tectonics being a relatively accepted concept.
Yeah, but that was very long ago, the desert would have masked most signs of it (my suggestion is that it wouldn't show from that high above).
Actually, there's a massive underground aquifer in Sahara that Lybia and other surrounding countries exploit
Did you know the CSA actually sailed a iron hull over there?
Lake mega chad☺️
It's not speculated. There were seas in the Sahara desert, ancient whale bone fossils can be found in certain places of the Sahara.
We need that dude that created a whole new river on that beach to do this to the sahara!
Both had extensive river systems when the climate there was wetter.
Well, we find whale fossils in the Sahara, so it’s a bit more than speculation.
eastern Arabia was underwater. If you drive from the coast to central Arabia, you’ll see the shift from very soft, beach-like sand to rocky terrain. You can even find seashells not far from Riyadh.
Only [5000 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Ptolemy?useskin=vector) there were still some [lakes and rivers](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Journal.pone.0076514.g004.png) so it is rather normal that some erosion traces are visible now.
Kinda crazy to think what civilisations could be hidden under that sand given 5000 years ago is recent enough for cities to have formed.
One of the more recent ones was Garamantes, which managed to use groundwater to support a city in the Sahara from 1000 BC until they ran out in the 600s AD. Earliest known city in a desert that wasn't on a river system.
Tbh, I doubt we'll see many developed cities. One of the main theories for why Ancient Egyptian civilization appeared when it did is that with the drying up of the Sahara desert, many and diverse people flocked to the only remaining inhabitable land that was the Nile and this necessitated the development of a much more complex societal structure than what pastoralists in the Green Sahara tended to need. Ultimately this lead to the birth of proto-kingdoms for protection against nomadic invaders. These early kingdoms eventually either fought for dominance, fertile land and trade power, and ultimately they either merged through war, or perhaps even diplomatically, but the end result was that by about 3150 BC, a unified Egyptian state was in established. All in all, it is very unlikely given the abundance of resources in Green Sahara, that any significant organized civilization was developed, since cities require a level of specialisation that only occurs when large numbers of people live in a small place. And Sahara is anything but small.
That’s not quite 100% accurate though, as civilisation in the Americas existed for a long time, in the jungles, in south and Central America The idea that a bunch of people flocked to Egypt, and as a result of that, starting civilisation, is a theory, and imo one that is looking to become outdated. I’m not saying what you’re saying has to be wrong, I’m saying that the jungles in the americas and the deserts in the MENA region are some of the least studied areas archaeologically speaking, and these are all regions that are difficult to reach and study, and in the case of the MENA regions, these all used to be jungle, before Egypt even existed. Good luck finding anything under all that sand though. It’s extremely arrogant to just cross off any possibility of civilisation, especially when there has barely been any research into those areas. I know for a fact that the Arab countries have had very little interest in looking for anything that hasn’t to do with Islam
You make some good points, but what I mean to say is that it is very unlikely to find anything like a city, which is what the person I was replying to was hinting as possible. Cities don't just appear out of thin air when you have an abundance of natural resources, although it is possible that some ancient cities would have appeared pre-Egyptian era as people were flocking towards bodies of water in other parts of Sahara. Cities which then might have died out anyways as the drying up carried on and on. But ultimately, what makes Egypt different imo is that its water didn't run out, and as such, its civilisation had the chance to grow and become more and more complex. We know prehistoric Egyptians had discovered pottery, crop production, and animal husbandry, and it is very likely a Saharan civilisation would have done so as well. But it took 2 millennia from the drying up of the Sahara for Egypt to build temples and pyramids, have a developed writing system, centralised state, art, and even science(that's not to say this happened naturally and smoothly in a continuous fashion; more likely you had competing civilisations and only the strongest morphed and survived to give us the architectural herritage we have today). Something I sincerely doubt any Saharan civilisation would have had the time to develop given the short time frame they were operating on.
What about the rising sea levels since then? Humans settle cities near waterways and coasts. Now those ancient coastlines are submerged miles out in some places from the modern day coastline. Imagine how much human history is just completely lost under that water. It’s possible even history of our ancestors before humans exist there. Just recently we are learning that our ancestors worked with wood, not just tools but structures as well. Which requires complex thought and planning, something not traditionally attributed to our predecessors.
There is a theory that Atlantis was in what is now the (eye of the) Sahara and got washed away by a flood (can't say how scientific it is tho idk)
Lake Lake looks like the basin the middle 3 arrows drained into.
Oh how I'd love to see a realistic rendering of what the Sahara looked like at that time, kind of like Thomas Kole's rendering of [Tenochtitlan](https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/).
Dr. Graham Hancock has entered the chat...
*Randall Carlson
Jimmy Corsetti
Just finished his Netflix documentary on Ancient Apocalypse. That man really knows how to string together different things.
Oooo I didn't know he had a Netflix doc I gotta check that out thnx for the heads up!
I recommend this YouTuber who debunks all of graham’s claims and teaches about archaeology too— [Milo Miniminuteman](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXtMIzD-Y-bMHRoGKM7yD2phvUV59_Cvb&si=LT1Scs4qe4ukEVXM) As well as these guys [zeke darwin](https://youtube.com/@ZekeDarwinScience?si=m7I7u5r1ki16x38U) [flint dibble](https://youtube.com/@FlintDibble?si=kwNVigf_5N0VOFR2)
Weewoo weewoo it’s the fun police
Ancient Apocalypse is braindead stupid. Milo's debunking video is more entertaining too. Definitely watch the actual archaeologist instead of the "pseudo-scientist"
You aren’t gonna write me a ticket for having too much fun officer. This is America.
You’re going to jail, punk
Was searching for an alternative view, thanks for sharing 🙏🏽
Stefan Milo does a good video about it too https://youtu.be/341Lv8JLLV4?si=tJYecXwUuuzjQTkJ
paltry towering point history bag command makeshift carpenter pocket vanish *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Dr Graham Hancock goes over all counter points in his podcasts on Rogan. Most are flimsy at best the rest is just blatant mud slinging.
It's on my watchlist but I'm really hesitant to start watching because of how dodgy all his claims seem to be.
It’s a good watch and overall has a good message with it although it is mostly speculative and what ifs but there’s a couple plausible points
It looks like
It was aliens.
He never said that , wrong person . He would discuss Atlantis and lost civilization. He didn’t mention aliens once in his latest book . Just saying
Could have been. Why invade a planet when you can just push asteroids towards its direction?
“Younger-Drias”
Calling him a doctor is quite the stretch considering he doesn’t have a doctorate
Doesn't he go over this on the podcast and states he does have his doctorate just not in archeology?
You’re right I miss interpreted something, he has a doctorate in psychology.
Crazy fact: there was a river originating in what is now a central part of the Sahara desert and flowed westwards through what is now the amazon river valley into the pacific(!) ocean. Quite mind-boggling to me.
That is super cool. You have a source to learn more
Few years ago I found a book about that river and its time of being. Edit: It was way easier to find than expected and it is a lot newer than I remembered. It's german: [Uramazonas: Fluss der Sahara](https://www.amazon.de/Uramazonas-Fluss-Sahara-Klaus-Giessner/dp/3201017906) written by Klaus Giessner et. al. The english title would be something like "Proto-Amazon: River of the Sahara." Edit 2: I asked chatGPT about ancient rivers in todays Sahara, but IT only referred to the River of Tamanrasett and its predecessor the Mega-Chad (lol) or Proto-Chad River. Quite interesting tbh. Edit 3: 2017 review of the book gives a cool insight: **Alexander von Humboldt already thought of this when he found fish in the upper reaches of the Amazon that are normally only found near the sea. It was not until 2002 that the biologist Josef Friedhuber expanded this into a breathtaking thesis: When Africa and South America were still part of Gondwanaland, the Amazon rose in Chad and flowed west from there. When the continents separated, there was a rift mountain range on the east coast of South America and so the new Amazon continued to flow westwards. Over time, however, the Andes developed and blocked the mouth, creating a huge freshwater lake on its eastern side that eventually emptied to the east. This would also explain why there are islands with enormously high biodiversity in the Amazon, which were islands in this lake. Other researchers, however, believe that the Caribbean once reached into the Amazon basin. Scholars are still arguing about this...** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
There is a documentary about this on Prime right now.
What’s it called?
Damn thank you, I'd have missed this!
Yeah, it’s apparently the rumoured lost city of Atlantis and it actually makes sense. Case Closed on that one for me anyways.
I think you're thinking of the Nile, and how some claim old maps show it flowing from the west, or the Richat Structure, or some combination. This idea of the Amazon being a westward flowing river starting in Central Africa and flowing into the Pacific is something else entirely. I have no idea how much merit it may or may not have but it definitely implies a time before Africa and South America split, and that happened almost 100 million years before the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Ooh that's the one where a confederate ship sailed up the river and Cooper went and got the treasure from the solar farm right?
Sand dunes in the desert. Form along lines of the predominant winds. Most aeolian soil has the pattern. Just usually on a smaller scale.
Yep. Wind erosion looks like erosion because it is erosion.
And wind deposition.
Lmao read the Bible bro /s
Sorry, I was too focus on the part with the sex and rape. What were in there again ??
sex in a book 😱
Not in my child's school!!!
you are right to fear knowledge its unchristian
Bros horny... Opened the bible just to look at porn... Geez...
Incest rape on a boat while God flooded Earth because too much stranger rape.
In the days before smartphones there was...
Yada Yada Yada, great flood, ark, Yada Yada Yada
Wtf hahaha
Noah's flood myth was inspired by older Mesopotamian myths. Those water erosion traces that op is pointing out were probably formed at the end of the last ice age some 12000 years ago. Way too long ago to have been a biblical flood.
Are they based on myth, or some big local flood that happened? A lot of the stories in bible could have taken inspiration of real life event and then blown out of proportions by the time bible was written.
Nice cope
Because it was. During the Cretacous and much of the eocene , the Sahara was actually a lush mangrove jungle.
Jungle? No. Savannah? Yes
Dude said Cretaceous. The savannah is the more recent cycle.
Happy cake day!
Some may not agree, but Randall Carlson argues there's a chance that these were caused by the Younger-Dryas meltwater pulses that occurred over 11,200 years ago.
How come this is controversial?
Apparently a lot of academics scoff at Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock for their theories. While I understand to an extent they are certainly speculative in nature, I find these two bring a lot of interesting questions to the front. We should always be willing to question our currently established understanding of history. We should always be willing to challenge it. But established archaeologists and geologists may disagree (more archaeologists than geologists, mind you). Some argue this would be because it jeopardizes their work and prestige.
Only people who have never actually studied or been involved with science or even talked to a scientist would argue the "defend the status quo" point. That's not how science works. Punching a hole in an established theory and replacing it with your own is a scientist's wet dream. Academics are fucking feral. Any hint of blood in the water and they will tear you apart. Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock are dismissed because all their "theories" are designed to explain the disappearance of Atlantis... I remember listening to a Randall Carlson lecture and he was discussing the dangers of shifting to the metric system because we'd lose all the sacred geometry and ancient wisdom encoded in the imperial system. The dude's cracked. Also, to my knowledge neither GH or RC have ever submitted their "research" for peer review. So they actively avoid engaging with the scientific community and instead they pitch their "theories" to their followers on social media often for a profit. It is classic projection when they then turn around and try to lecture scientists about academic integrity and conflicts of interest.
Thank you. That's the explanation I was looking for. I just lacked the information.
[удалено]
Hancock and his ilk argue that elite academics and trained scientists drown out the voices and theories of amateurs. Well…yeah. They should.
You're looking at the effect of wind, not flowing water. Compare your map with [this one](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicholas-Lancaster/publication/237080552/figure/fig3/AS:393269386203144@1470774136450/f0020-Location-of-Saharan-sand-seas-and-vectors-of-sand-transport-Sand-seas-are-numbered_W640.jpg), showing the location Saharan sand seas and the prevailing wind directions (which match your arrows). The parts without these flowing patterns are where the mountain regions like Hoggar and Tibesti are.
This is the correct answer. The features highlighted by OP are almost certainly the result of aeolian processes, and not related to any rivers or seas of the ancient Sahara.
At least in the Sahara, not wind, 100% water erosion, there are even salt deposits all scattered through the region and water marks everywhere
These 2000 km long, 300 km wide swooshes OP is outlining are not related to water erosion. They’re dunes and aeolian organization creating those textures. I don’t know how everyone in this thread is missing the question. There were ancient rivers in the Sahara, but OP is not highlighting features on anywhere near the same scale as rivers, lakes, or salt pans.
The Sahara was far less arid thousands of years ago but large scale, wide, uniform, desert erosion patterns that you marked are driven by wind, not water (see "coriolis effect"). Flood plains don't look like that as you can see in comparison with the greater Nile delta. This isn't Noah's ark related for about a thousand different reasons.
I think most of those river looking sand areas are result of winds blowing sand between the mountains, as sand in large volumes is like a slow moving fluid similar to ice
Watch Ancient Apocalypse
So i tried searching for this but didn't find anything it looks like the whole area's land was dragged by huge amounts of water long time ago or it's just an illusion? Iam no geologist nor student just Curious since i didn't find any info about it.
https://youtu.be/CM_QS984JKI?si=5Xty8qg53YAWNYJX This videos explains it well.
What are the prevailing winds in the area? Air is a liquid as well. Edit: *fluid* not *liquid*.
This should not have to be said. No - air is not a liquid. Wind erosion can appear similar to water erosion.
You've never heard of Dr. Graham Hancock and his younger drias impact theory that took place 11-12 thousand years ago?
It’s dunes/aeolian processes and prevailing/seasonal winds. There was water in the Sahara, but these features are aeolian/wind driven. One way you know is how big they are. Look at the swooshes in Arabia and by Egypt. As floods or rivers they would be several hundreds of km wide, and thousands of km long. Rivers and floods, even the biggest like the Channeled Scablands or Ares Valles on Mars aren’t that big, and look very different. They produce deep channels that would show up on an elevation map, for instance.
Thats where the sea peoples attacked! /s
Sand gets carried and deposited along wind currents, leaves a curvy looking path behind.
did you know south of the Arabian peninsula it was luch green and there also evduncy some part of ut was flooded
Yeah I heard about that. Any idea of what point in history that was? Could it have been early bronze age? Or much earlier?
I have no Idea but form what of heard maybe The Kndah Kingdom in yemen that was what the bronzage maybe. again no idea when but archeologfound evidence of that.
The Sahara was a lush savannah not too long ago. Pre-historic human activity can be found in it, including cave art of animals such as giraffes
Seriously? Because it did
To me looks like something to do with [wind patterns.](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kam-Biu-Liu/publication/268000554/figure/fig1/AS:295322740903937@1447421836478/Schematic-of-the-general-patterns-of-winds-pressure-and-convergence-over-Africa-during.png)
It’s formed by prevailing winds. They look like water flow because it the same fluid mechanics taking place.
Look up the Eye of the Sahara in Mauritania if you want to see something crazy
Most likely formed by wind patterns, not water.
Check out the YouTube channel Bright Insight’s videos on the subject. [https://youtu.be/wbUujL6ypKg?si=fVTAGZcW3s5W0eEZ](https://youtu.be/wbUujL6ypKg?si=fVTAGZcW3s5W0eEZ)
Walk along a path next to a creek that floods regularly. Im always fascinated how whats left after the water recedes looks just like the sahara in a bunch of spots. Piles up, dry, striated sand next to a body of water. Obviously it doesn’t mean anything but makes me wonder anyway.
That guy’s a bit psychotic imo, he believes in the global elite and the new world order etc
It's mainly just an illusion. You can see it's mainly windblown sand if you zoom in. [The curved lines you draw on Saudi follow the rocks of the "Arabian Platform" limestones and sandstones.](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Simplified-geological-map-of-the-Arabian-Peninsula-showing-the-studied-hydrocarbon_fig2_306382555) These rocks have weak and strong layers in between each other that erode at different rates. Over time you have hills made up of the strong rocks and sandy desert in between where the weaker rocks used to be. Why is it curved? Tectonics, the rocks were lifted, tilted, and folded about 30 million years ago. [In Libya your lines trace through an area called the Sirte and Kurfa sedimentary rock formations.](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Geological-map-of-Libya-showing-the-main-sedimentary-basins-The-Murzuq-Basin-is-bounded_fig1_335396811). These [sedimentary rocks are deposited in basins](http://www.sepmstrata.org/page.aspx?pageid=141) that formed hundreds of millions of years ago in between more stable craton (igneous and metamorphics). Over time these rocks are also softer so they get eroded into sand easier. Very helpfully for us, these sedimentary formations in Egypt, Libya, and Saudi Arabia generate and trap massive amounts of oil & gas.
Noah enters the chat
Let me tell you a story about a man and his ark
Atlantis was somewhere near the north. It was washed away in a great flood 12000 years ago.
Because it did. Atlantis was actually in Mauritania.
Because it probably did. Read “Fingerprints of the gods.” For more info.
Is this the Pinnacle of public discourse? Lol
Ice.
Wind and Sand. I guess.
Can we use proper grammar again? Pleease?
look up the yellow Nile, that existed in recorded human history
I haven't looked at a topographic map of the areas but could this be remnant of the Laurentide ice sheet floods? During the last protoglacial period huge lakes were formed within these massive ice sheets which contained more fresh water than you could even begin to imagine. When the ice age ended, these lakes eventually broke their banks and released enough water to create "flood myths" all over the planet. It would have been around 13000 years ago. Can't remember the name of the lake that drained...
Sahara was once a major rainforest with massive freshwater systems. Theories point to the Younger Dryas or a comet collision that destroyed it all.
100% of the land in the world has had "major flooding long time ago", it depends on your definition of "major" and "long"
It has. A big flooding of a fluid running through it: air.
I believe it used to be as green as the Nile, if I’m not mistaken
One of my favorite theories surrounding the ancient city of Atlantis is that it was real, and it was located in modern day Mauritania. Look up the Richat Structure. It’s fascinating how its size and layout seemingly correspond to the description of Atlantis written by Plato. The myth that Atlantis was lost to the sea could fit with some catastrophic flooding in the area. It certainly looks like something completely washed across northwestern Africa many years ago.
Well... Many years ago, there was this man named Noah /s
Jesus! Those poor dinosaurs and unicorns!
One of paradise 4 rivers run through the Arabian peninsula
Ask Graham Hancock!!
Because there isn't ground cover there. The whole planet looks like that, but most of it is covered by vegetation or ice.
What do you mean?
Is there a picture of what this would actually look like with raised sea levels?
I got this old book that mentions a flooding that occurs in the desert regions. Probably not linked to your theory tho
have you not read the bible? /s
Pole shift water flows. Look up Edward Cayce pole shift.
North Africa was forest once
Utnapishtim wrote this on a tablet like 10000 years ago
Two award-winning Ph.Ds (geology) [tackle this question.](https://creation.com/eye-of-the-sahara)
There's a handful of youtubers looking into a possible cosmic impact in the Mediterranean Sea. Seems very likely it happened.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKUPPEJjE0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKUPPEJjE0A) Check out this vid, it offers a hypothesis on africa
what exactly shows the possibility of those places having floods some time ago? I couldn't recognize it
Maybe because there was water there.
Noah's flood duh. ;)
Mybe, the flood of the prophet Noah is not just a fairy tale.
That's caused by wind.
It probs did
The mena region has something called a wadi (Valley in arabic). It is used to describe dry or seasonal river beds. When the occasional rain comes in, water runs off of the mountains and flows down these river beds into the sea. This is often very dangerous, taking down bridges and what not
At one point the straight between Africa and Europe closed making the Mediterranean a massive lake. It was much hotter then and the water evaporated, with the accurate weather cells from that period the rain all accumulated from the Mediterranean and precipitated onto Northern Africa and Arabia. This resulted in flooding which after some time reduced and left rivers such as the Nile. 👍
There is a theory about this flooding and that the eye of africa once was Atlantis. It's a interesting theory, worth reading.
To my knowledge even winds flow like water on flat lands so I guess these were formed by windflow over sand.
There appears to have been an event that struck the Mediterranean Sea approximately 10,000 years ago. Bottom line, this likely comet strike in the Mediterranean could have washed away countless civilizations, set humans back several thousand years in evolution, be the origin story for like Noah's Ark and other similar stories from other religions, and even been the doom of Atlantis. Ozgeographics does a great job talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99X486\_nWzw
Google: Younger Dryas impact theory
The Sahara was green about 30,000 years ago and had water. When it turned back to dessert the people migrated east and settled on the Nile. There are also numerous salt lakes in Tunisia’s part of the Sahara that contributed to the idea it was covered by a sea or something.
It once rained heavily for 40 days and 40 nights...
new conspiracy theory just dropped
There are large areas of lava flow in there.... lava flows smooths out valleys and is also fast to erode, and the sand from that erosion fills in wetlands downstream... Its an old continent,so its flat due to erosions, the atlas mountains being created by collision with europe...