Sahara Desert: secrets, mysteries, facts. Video: From Casablanca to Sahara

23.09.2019

The Sahara is the most famous desert. It is not surprising, because this is the most large desert in the world. It is located on the territory of 10 African states. The most ancient text, in which the Sahara appears as the "great" North African desert, dates back to the 1st century AD. A truly endless sea of \u200b\u200bsun-scorched sand, stone and clay, enlivened only by rare green spots of oases and one the only river - that's what the Sahara is.

The word "Sahara" is associated with images of endless, hot sand dunes with very rare emerald-green oases. But in reality, here, in the vast expanses of the Sahara, you can find almost any kind of desert landscape. In the Sahara, besides sand dunes, there are barren rocky plateaus strewn with stones; there are unusual fantastic geological formations; you can also see thickets of thorny bushes.

The Sahara stretches from the dry, thorny plains of northern Sudan and Mali to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, where its sands are covered with the ruins of ancient Roman cities. In the east, it goes beyond the Nile and meets the waves of the Red Sea, and five thousand kilometers from there in the west reaches the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, the Sahara occupies the entire north of Africa, stretching for 5149 km. from Egypt and Sudan to the western shores of Mauritania and Western Sahara. The world's greatest desert covers an area of \u200b\u200b9,269,594 sq. Km.

The Sahara is an arid desert, and no river invades its limits. In many places, it receives less than 250 mm of precipitation per year, and in some parts of the Sahara, it does not rain for years. The main territory of the desert is located inland, and the prevailing winds have time to absorb moisture before it penetrates into the heart of the desert. The mountain ranges separating the desert from the sea also force the clouds to rain down, keeping them out of the way. Because clouds are rare here, the desert is brutally hot during the day. After sunset, hot air rises to the upper atmosphere, so temperatures can drop below freezing at night. Kebili, where the temperature rises to 55 ° C, is one of the hottest places in the desert, not only because of the scorching sun, but also because it lies in the path of the sirocco, the wind that originates in the burning heart of the desert and drives hot to the north, like from the stove, air. The highest shade temperature on Earth was recorded here, + 58 °.

The sand dunes of the Sahara in some places the dunes are extremely mobile and they move through the desert under the influence of wind at a speed of up to 11 m per year. Huge areas of rolling sand dunes, each covering up to 100 square kilometers, are known as ergi. The famous Fudge oasis lives under the constant threat of impending dunes with all-pervading sand. It is interesting that in other regions of the Sahara, dunes practically stand for millennia, and the hollows between them serve as permanent caravan routes.

The arid lands of the Sahara have never been cultivated, and only nomadic tribes roam here with small herds. From an economic point of view, most of the Sahara Desert is unproductive, and only a few oases develop diversified agriculture. Recently, the advance of the desert in the territories adjacent to the Sahara has caused serious concern. This phenomenon is observed with the wrong choice of agricultural methods, which, combined with natural factors such as drought and strong winds, leads to the onset of the desert. Elimination of native vegetation weakens the soil, which is then dried out by the sun; the wind carries it away in the form of dust, and the desert reigns where the shoots once rose.

The Tuareg, who always roam the most remote and uninhabited regions of the Sahara, are called “blue ghosts”. A blue veil that covers his face so that only a strip for the eyes remains, the young man receives at a family celebration when he turns eighteen years old. From that moment on, he becomes a man, and again never in his life, neither day nor night, he does not remove the veil from his face and will only slightly move it away from his mouth while eating.

Although many areas of the Sahara are covered with sand, a much larger area is occupied by waterless plains, strewn with large stones and polished pebbles. And in the very heart of the Sahara, there are ridges of sandstone cliffs that stick out vertically on the Tassilin-Ajer plateau. Here they form an amazing labyrinth of hollows, bizarre curved columns and curved arches. Many resemble modern tower houses, with shallow caves visible at their foundations. The columns below are often reminiscent of skewed mushrooms. All these fantastic figures were sculpted by the wind, which picked up pebbles and sand, gouging and scratching the surface of the rocks, cutting horizontal grooves in the cliffs, deepening cracks between layers of sandstone. The exposed rock, baked by the sun, not covered by vegetation or soil, gradually crumbles into sand, which other winds will then carry away in other parts of the desert in order to heap them there.

In some places, under the ledges, on the walls of shallow caves, you can find animals painted with bright yellow and red ocher - gazelles, rhinos, hippos, horse antelopes, giraffes. There are drawings and domestic animals - herds of variegated cows and bulls with graceful horns, and some with a yoke around their necks. The artists also depicted themselves: they stand among their herds, sit near the huts, hunt, drawing bows, dance in masks.

But who were these people? Perhaps the ancestors of nomads, who still follow the herds of semi-wild long-horned spotted cattle that roam among the thorny bushes beyond the southern border of the desert. The time when these drawings were applied to the rocks is not precisely established, but several styles are clearly distinguished in them, from which it clearly follows that this period was very extended. According to most experts, the earliest drawings appeared about five thousand years ago, but none of the animals depicted currently lives on the hot, barren sands and pebbles of the Sahara. And only in a narrow gorge with steep walls there is a bunch of old cypresses, the rings on the trunks of which indicate an age of at least two to three thousand years. They were young trees when the last drawings adorned the rocks next door. Their thick, gnarled roots have worked their way through sun-shattered slabs, widening cracks and knocking over debris in a stubborn effort to make their way down to the underground moisture. Their dusty needles manage to turn green, giving the eye rest from the monotonous brown and rusty-yellow tones of the surrounding rocks. Their branches still bear cones with live seeds under the scales. But not a single seed is accepted. The land around is too dry.

And this , remember, we have already discussed it.

The climate change that turned the Tassili Plateau and the entire Sahara into a desert lasted a very long time. They began about a million years ago, when the great glaciation that fettered the then world began to decline. The glaciers that crawled out of the Arctic, covering the entire North Sea with a wet pack, and in Europe reached the south of England and the north of France, began to retreat. As a result, the climate in this area of \u200b\u200bAfrica became more humid, and Tassili was dressed in green. But about five thousand years ago, rains began to fall further south, and the Sahara became drier and drier. The bushes and grass that covered it died from lack of moisture. The shallow lakes have evaporated. The animals and people who lived in it migrated in search of water and pastures further south. The soil weathered and the former fertile plain, sparkling with wide lakes, eventually transformed into a kingdom of bare stones and loose sand ...

The sun regulates the entire life of the Sahara. It is hot in the desert during the day and cold at night. Daily fluctuations in air temperature reach more than thirty degrees. But the heat of the day is easier for a person than for the night cold. Oddly enough, but in the Sahara people suffer more from the cold than from the heat throughout the year.
Long-lasting storms are the hardest hit. Dust and sand storms are a magnificent sight. They are like fires quickly engulfing everything around. Puffs of smoke rise high into the sky. With frantic force, they rush through the plains and mountains, knocking stone dust from the destroyed rocks in their path.
After hot days with storms, the air in the Sahara is highly electrified. If at this time in the dark you remove one blanket from another, then the space between them is illuminated by sometimes crackling sparks. Electric sparks can be extracted not only from hair, clothing, but even from sharp iron objects.

Storms in the Sahara are often extremely violent. The wind speed reaches, according to some researchers, 50 m per second or more. There is a known case when, during a storm, camel saddles were thrown two hundred meters away. It happens that stones the size of a hen's egg are moved by the wind without lifting them from the ground.

Knowing the wind patterns is very important when traveling across the Sahara. One day in February, in Erg Shegi, a storm kept one traveler under a rock for nine days. Experts of the Sahara have calculated that in the desert, on average, out of a hundred days, only six are windless. Unfortunately, little is known about the origin and laws of wind movement.in desert.
Hot winds in the north of the Sahara are destructive. They come from the center of the desert and can destroy crops in a few hours. These winds most often blow in early summer and are called sirocco, in Morocco they are called shergi,in Algerian Sahara - "shekhilli", in Libya - "gebli",in Egypt - "samum" or "hamsin". They not only move sandAnd DUST, but also pile mountains of small pebbles.

Sometimes tornadoes appear for a short time. These are rotating air currents that take the form of pipes. They arise during the daytime due to the heating of the scorched earth and become visible due to the dust being raised. Fortunately, these "sand devils" dancing like ghosts in the fog only occasionally cause damage. Sometimes sand pipes are lifted from the ground, continuing their life in the high layers of the atmosphere. The pilots met dust storms at an altitude of 1500 m.

The Sahara has not always been a lifeless land.

As further studies confirmed, even in the Paleolithic period, that is, 10-12 thousand years ago (during the ice age), the climate here was much more humid. The Sahara was not a desert, but an African savannah steppe. The population of the Sahara was engaged not only in cattle breeding and agriculture, but also in hunting and even fishing, as evidenced by cave drawings in different areas of the desert.

In many parts of the Sahara, ancient cities were buried in sand; perhaps this indicates a relatively recent drying out of the climate.

Scientists at Boston University seem to have found further evidence that the Sahara was not always a desert. According to the Remote Sensing Center of Boston University, in the northwestern region of Sudan there used to be a huge lake, almost the size of Lake Baikal. Now a huge body of water, which because of its size was called Mega Lake, is hidden under the sands.

Scientists at Boston University in northwestern Sudan, in the middle of the Sahara, Dr. Eman Goneim and Dr. Farouk El-Baz, studied photographic and radar images of the Darfur region in order to pinpoint the location of the lake. According to their scientific data, coastline the lake was once located about 573 meters (plus or minus 3 meters) above sea level.

Researchers assume that several rivers flowed into the lake at once. The maximum area that Megaozero once occupied is 30,750 sq. km. In addition, the authors of the study calculated that in better times the volume of water in the lake could reach 2 530 cubic meters. km.

Currently, scientists cannot accurately determine the age of the lake, but state another fact that the size of the Mega Lake indicates constant rains, due to which the volume of the reservoir was regularly replenished. The find confirms once again that the territory of the Sahara was not always a desert before. She lay within the zone of moderate climatic zone and plants covered it.

Scientists led by El-Baz also suggest that most of the Megaozero seeped into the soil and now exists as groundwater. This information is extremely important for local residents, since it can be used for purely practical purposes. The fact is that it is this area of \u200b\u200bSudan that is experiencing a severe shortage of fresh waterand finding groundwater would be a boon for them.

Then, about 5-7 thousand years ago, a drought began, the heat intensified, the surface of the Sahara was losing moisture more and more, and the grasses were drying up. Gradually, herbivores began to leave the Sahara, followed by predators. Animals had to retreat into distant forests and savannahs Central Africa, where all these representatives of the so-called Ethiopian fauna live to this day. Almost all people left the Sahara for animals, and only a few were able to survive where there was still a little water left. They became nomads wandering the desert. They are called Berbers or Tuaregs, and the "father of history" Herodotus called this tribe the Garamants - after the main city of Garama (modern Jerma).

By this time, scholars attribute the appearance of most of the famous frescoes of Tas-sely-Ajer, a plateau located in the center of the great desert. The name itself means "plateau of many rivers" and recalls that distant time when life flourished here. Fat herds and caravans carrying ivory are the central theme of the painting. There are also dancing people in masks and mysterious giant images of the so-called "Martian gods". Quite a lot has been written about the latter. The mystery of their origin still haunts the minds: whether they represent a scene of rituals of shamans, roofing felts of aliens abducting people.

The Sahara is, in fact, not the name of one particular desert, but the collective name of a number of deserts connected by a single space and climatic features... Its eastern part is occupied by the Libyan Desert. On the right bank of the Nile, up to the Red Sea, the Arabian Desert stretches, south of which, entering the territory of Sudan, is the Nubian Desert. There are other smaller deserts. Often they are separated by mountain ranges with rather high peaks.

There are also powerful mountains in the Sahara with peaks up to 2500 thousand meters, and an extinct crater of the Amy-Kusi volcano, whose diameter is 12 km, and plains covered with sand dunes, hollows with clay soil, salt lakes and salt marshes, blooming oases. They all replace and complement each other. There are also giant depressions. One of them is located in Egypt in the northeastern part of the Libyan Desert. This is Qatar, the driest depression on our planet, its bottom is 150 m below sea level.

In general, the Sahara is a vast plateau, the flat character of which is disturbed only by the depressions of the Nile and Niger valleys and Lake Chad. On this plain only in three places really high, albeit small in area, mountain ranges rise. These are the highlands of Ahaggar (Algeria) and Tibesti (Chad) and the Darfur plateau, rising more than three kilometers above sea level.

The mountainous, absolutely dry landscapes of Ahaggar, cut by gorges, are often compared to the lunar landscapes.

To the north of them are closed saline depressions, the largest of which turn into shallow salt lakes during the winter rains (for example, Melgir in Algeria and Jerid in Tunisia).

The Sahara's surface is quite diverse; vast spaces covered with loose sand dunes, stony surfaces are widespread, worked out in bedrocks and covered with crushed stone (hamada) and gravel or pebbles (regi).

In the northern part of the desert, deep wells or springs provide oases with water, which is why date palms, olive trees, grapes, wheat and barley are grown.

All the oases of the Sahara are surrounded by a palm grove. Date palms - the basis of life for local residents. Dates and camel milk are the main food of the fellah farmers.

It is believed that the groundwater supplying these oases with water comes from the slopes of the Atlas, located 300–500 km to the north. All life is concentrated mainly in the outskirts of the Sahara. The largest human settlements are concentrated in the northern regions. Naturally, there are no roads connecting the oases. Only after the discovery and the beginning of oil development, several highways were built, but camel caravans continue to run alongside them.

In the east, the desert is carved by the Nile Valley; since ancient times, this river has provided residents with water for irrigation and created fertile soil, depositing silt during annual floods; the regime of the river changed after the construction of the Aswan Dam.

Few dare to travel across the Sahara. During a difficult journey, mirages may occur. Moreover, they always come across in approximately the same place. Therefore, it was even possible to draw up maps of mirages, on which 160 thousand marks were applied to the location of the mirages. These maps even indicate what exactly is seen in one place or another: wells, oases, palm groves, mountain ranges etc.

It is difficult to find a more beautiful sight than a sunset in the desert. Perhaps only the aurora makes a greater impression on the traveler. Each time the sky in the rays of the setting sun amazes with a new combination of shades - this is both blood red and pink-pearl, imperceptibly merging with the pale blue color. All this piles up on the horizon in several floors, burns and sparkles, expanding in some bizarre, fabulous forms, and then gradually fades away. Then, almost instantly, an absolutely black night sets in, the darkness of which even bright southern stars cannot disperse.

The Sahara is not that hard to reach these days. From the city of Algeria, along a good highway, the desert can be reached in one day. Through the picturesque gorge of El-Kantara - the "Gateway to the Sahara", the traveler finds himself in amazing places. To the left and right of the road, which runs along a stony and clay plain, there are small rocks, which the wind and sand have given the intricate outlines of fairytale castles and towers.

In Northern Sahara, the influence of the Mediterranean flora is significant, and in the south, species of paleotropic Sudanese flora widely penetrate into the desert. There are about 30 endemic plant genera known in the flora of the Sahara, belonging mainly to the families of cruciferous, hawk and Asteraceae. In the most arid, extra-arid regions of Central Sahara, flora is especially poor.

So, in the south-west of Libya, only about nine species of native plants grow. And in the south of the Libyan Desert, you can travel hundreds of kilometers without finding a single plant. However, there are regions in Central Sahara with comparative floristic richness. These are the desert highlands of Tibesti and Ahaggar. In the Tibesti highlands, near water sources, willow ficus and even a veneer hair fern grow. On the Tassini-Adgenr plateau, northeast of Ahanar, there are relict plants: individual specimens of the Mediterranean cypress.

In the Sahara, ephemera prevail, appearing for a short time after rare rains. Perennial xerophytes are common. The most extensive in terms of area are desert plant formations of grasses and shrubs (various species of Aristida cereals). The arboreal-shrub layer is represented by free-standing acacias, dwarf xerophytic shrubs - kornulak, randonia, etc.). Zizyphus is often found in the northern zone of grass and shrub communities.

In the extreme west of the desert, in the Atlantic Sahara, special plant groups are formed, dominated by large succulents. Cactus euphorbia, acacia, wolfberry, sumac grow here. An Afghan tree grows near the ocean coast. At altitudes of more than 1700 m (the highlands and plateaus of Central Sahara) begin to dominate here: cereals, feather grass, fire, wildflowers, mallow, etc. The most characteristic plant of the Saharan oases is the date palm.

In the Sahara, there are about 70 species of mammals, about 80 species of nesting birds, about 80 species of ants, more than 300 species of darkling beetles, about 120 species of orthoptera. Species endemism in some groups of insects reaches 70%, in mammals it is about 40%, and in birds there are no endemics at all.

Rodents are the most numerous of mammals. Representatives of the family of hamsters, mice, jerboas, squirrels live here. Gerbils are diverse in the Sahara (the red-tailed gerbil is common). Large ungulates in the Sahara are not numerous, and the reason for this is not only the harsh conditions of the desert, but also the long-standing persecution of them by humans. The largest antelope of the Sahara is the Arix, slightly inferior in size to the Addax antelope. Small antelopes, similar to our gazelles, are found in all regions of the Sahara. On the coasts and plateaus of Tibesti, Ahaggar, as well as in the mountains on the right bank of the Nile, a maned ram lives.

Among the predators there are: miniature chanterelle, striped jackal, Egyptian mongoose, sand cat. Birds in the Sahara are not plentiful. Common larks, hazel grouses, desert sparrow. In addition, there are: runner sandpiper, desert raven, owl. Lizards are numerous (crested lizards, gray monitor lizard, agamas). Some snakes are excellently adapted to life in the sands - sand efa, horned viper

The one-humped camel deserves special attention, the appearance of which symbolizes the Sahara Desert.

But the Sahara still holds many mysteries. One of them is in the desert part of Niger, on the Adrar Ma-det plateau. Here are laid out from rubble stone circles perfect concentric shape. They are located at a distance of almost a mile from each other, as if by arrows pointing exactly to the four cardinal points. Who created them, when and why, there is still no clear answer to these questions!

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10 states: Algeria, Egypt, Western Sahara, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia, Chad

The Sahara is the most famous desert. No wonder it is the largest desert in the world. It is located on the territory of 10 African states.

The oldest text, in which the Sahara appears as the "great" North African desert, dates back to the 1st century AD.

A truly endless sea of \u200b\u200bsun-scorched sand, stone and clay, revitalized only by rare green spots of oases and one single river - this is what the Sahara is.

"Sahara" or "Sahra" is an Arabic word, it means a monotonous brown desert plain. Say this word aloud: can you hear in it the wheezing of a man choking with thirst and incinerating heat? We Europeans pronounce the word "Sahara" softer than Africans, but it also conveys to us the formidable charm of the desert. This is the hottest region on Earth (near the city of Tripoli, the air temperature is recorded at + 58 ° C). There is no rain in the Sahara for years, and if it does, it often doesn’t reach the ground - it dries up in the air.

But what are the feelings of a person who first found himself in the Sahara. In the morning a huge ball of fire of the sun rises and everything around is heated: the air is hot and dry, which burns the lips, and it is impossible to stand on the ground. An Arabic proverb says: "In the Sahara, the wind rises and falls with the sun." The wind can bring dust storms, or it can pick up the terrible "song of the sands", and then a terrible whirlwind - samum - will sweep over the desert. At night, intolerable heat is replaced by piercing coolness. Even stones cannot withstand such sudden changes - they burst with a loud crash. In the Sahara, such stones were called "shooting", and the inhabitants of the desert say: "the sun in our country makes even stones scream",

The Tuareg, who always roam the most remote and uninhabited regions of the Sahara, are called "blue ghosts". A blue veil that covers his face so that only a strip for the eyes remains, the young man receives at a family celebration when he turns eighteen years old. From that moment on, he becomes a man, and again never in his life, neither day nor night, he does not remove the veil from his face and will only slightly move it away from his mouth while eating.

location

The Sahara extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east, and from the foothills of the Atlas and Mediterranean coast in the north up to about 15 ° N. (Lake Chad) in the south, where it borders the savannah zone. Its area is approx. 7700 thousand km2. - it is more extensive than Australia and only slightly smaller than Brazil. By its size, the Sahara is not inferior to Europe with all its islands.

Sahara climate

The climate of the Sahara is extra-arid (tropical, dry and hot, in the north - subtropical). The wet factor is the wide location of the Sahara to the north and south of the Northern Tropic. This explains the fact that most of the desert is under the influence of the north-east trade wind, which dominates over for the most part Sahara all year round.

An additional influence on the climate is exerted by the Atlas mountain barrier located in the north, stretching from west to east and preventing the main mass of moist Mediterranean air from entering the desert. In the south, from the Gulf of Guinea, wet masses enter the Sahara without hindrance in summer, which, gradually drying out, reach its central parts.

Extreme dry air, a huge amount of moisture deficit and, accordingly, an extremely high evaporation rate are characteristic of the entire Sahara. According to the regime of precipitation in the Sahara, three zones can be distinguished: northern, central and southern.

The aridity of the Sahara also changes in a latitudinal direction, from west to east. There is no heavy rainfall on the Atlantic coast, as the rare westerly winds are cooled by the Canary Current passing along the coast. Fogs are frequent here.

Dry air (relative humidity 30-50%), a huge moisture deficit and high evaporation (potential evaporation of 2500-6000 mm, which is more than 70 times the amount of precipitation) are typical for the entire Sahara, except for narrow coastal strips. Precipitation in Northern Sahara is mainly winter, in Southern Sahara it is summer; the average annual precipitation in the outlying regions is 100-200 mm, in most of the Sahara plains less than 50 mm (in mountain ranges, usually less than 100 mm), and in the interior regions it may not rain for several years in a row. There are several locations where rain has never been recorded at all. During rains, usually torrential, dry channels (wadis) quickly turn into violent streams and cause floods in bridles and mudflows in the mountains. During this period, the desert seems to come to life. Numerous streams, rivers, lakes appear in it.

The Sahara is generally poorly provided with water, but compared to other deserts in the world, it is rich in groundwater.

Most of the Sahara is characterized by abundant morning dew (condensation due to low night temperatures), contributing to the formation of surface dusty crust. Snow falls on the summits of Ahaggara and Tibesti for a short time almost every year. Temperatures can reach 56-58 ° C, approaching the maximum on Earth, but the land surface can warm up to 70-80 ° C. The average monthly air temperature in July reaches 37.2 ° С (Adrar), the average January temperatures range from 16 to 27 ° С.In winter, in the Sahara at night, ground frosts are widespread, and in the central mountain ranges night temperatures up to -18 ° С are recorded ...

Prolonged winds and multi-day dust (sand) storms are frequent. Storms in the Sahara are extremely powerful. Wind speed sometimes reaches fifty meters per second (sometimes more; winds of sirocco, shergi, khamsin, harmattan and samum) (thirty meters per second is already a hurricane!). The caravan men say that sometimes heavy camel saddles are blown away by the wind two hundred meters away, and stones the size of a hen's egg roll on the ground like peas. The Bedouins call the tornado "the genie of the desert".

And when the Sahara is calm and the air is filled with dust, there is a "dry fog" known to all travelers. At the same time, visibility completely disappears, and the sun seems to be a dull spot and does not give a shadow. Even wild animals lose their orientation at such moments. They say that there was a case when during the "dry fog", usually very shy gazelles, calmly walked in a caravan, walking between people and camels.

The Sahara affects the climate of many adjacent areas. Winds can blow dust and sand far beyond Africa, in Atlantic Ocean or to Europe.

History

The Sahara has not always been a lifeless land.

In many parts of the Sahara, ancient cities were buried in sand; perhaps this indicates a relatively recent drying out of the climate.

Scientists at Boston University in northwestern Sudan, in the middle of the Sahara, Dr. Eman Goneim and Dr. Farouk El-Baz, studied photographic and radar images of the Darfur region in order to pinpoint the location of the lake. According to their scientific data, the shoreline of the lake was once located about 573 meters (plus or minus 3 meters) above sea level.

Researchers assume that several rivers flowed into the lake at once. The maximum area that Megaozero once occupied is 30,750 sq. km. In addition, the authors of the study calculated that at the best of times, the volume of water in the lake could reach 2,530 cubic meters. km.

Currently, scientists cannot accurately determine the age of the lake, but state another fact that the size of the Mega Lake indicates constant rains, due to which the volume of the reservoir was regularly replenished. The find confirms once again that the territory of the Sahara was not always a desert before. It lay within the temperate zone and was covered with plants.

Scientists, led by El-Baz, also suggest that most of the Megaozero seeped into the soil and now exists as groundwater. This information is extremely important for local residents, as it can be used for purely practical purposes. The fact is that it is this region of Sudan that is experiencing a severe shortage of fresh water, and the discovery of groundwater would be a gift for them.

Then, about 5-7 thousand years ago, a drought began, the heat intensified, the surface of the Sahara was losing moisture more and more, and the grasses were drying up. Gradually, herbivores began to leave the Sahara, followed by predators. The animals had to retreat to the distant forests and savannas of Central Africa, where all these representatives of the so-called Ethiopian fauna still live today. Almost all people left the Sahara for animals, and only a few were able to survive where there was still a little water left. They became nomads wandering the desert. They are called Berbers or Tuaregs, and the "father of history" Herodotus called this tribe the Garamants - after the main city of Garama (modern Jerma).

By this time, scholars attribute the appearance of most of the famous frescoes of Tas-sely-Ajer, a plateau located in the center of the great desert. The name itself means "plateau of many rivers" and recalls that distant time when life flourished here. Fat herds and caravans carrying ivory are the central theme of the painting. There are also dancing people in masks and mysterious giant images of the so-called "Martian gods". Quite a lot has been written about the latter. The mystery of their origin still excites the minds: whether they represent a scene of shamans' rituals, or aliens abducting people.

Relief

The Sahara is, in fact, not the name of one particular desert, but the collective name of a number of deserts connected by a single space and climatic features. Its eastern part is occupied by the Libyan Desert. On the right bank of the Nile, up to the Red Sea, the Arabian Desert stretches, south of which, entering the territory of Sudan, is the Nubian Desert. There are other smaller deserts. Often they are separated by mountain ranges with rather high peaks.

The mountainous, absolutely dry landscapes of Ahaggar, cut by gorges, are often compared to the lunar landscapes.

To the north of them are closed saline depressions, the largest of which turn into shallow salt lakes during the winter rains (for example, Melgir in Algeria and Jerid in Tunisia).

The Sahara's surface is quite diverse; vast expanses are covered with loose sand dunes; rocky surfaces, excavated in bedrocks and covered with rubble (hamada) and gravel or pebbles (regi), are widespread.

In the northern part of the desert, deep wells or springs provide oases with water, which is why date palms, olive trees, grapes, wheat and barley are grown.

All the oases of the Sahara are surrounded by a palm grove. Date palms are the backbone of life for the locals. Dates and camel milk are the main food of the fellah farmers.

Oil production

In the 1960s, oil and natural gas production began in the Algerian and Tunisian sectors of the Sahara. The main deposits are concentrated in the Hassi-Mesaud region (in Algeria). In the late 1960s, even richer oil fields were discovered in the Libyan sector of the Sahara. Transport system in the desert has undergone significant improvements. Several highways crossed the Sahara from north to south without displacing, however, the time-honored camel caravans.

Mirages

Few dare to travel across the Sahara. During a difficult journey, mirages may occur. Moreover, they always come across in approximately the same place. Therefore, it was even possible to draw up maps of mirages, on which 160 thousand marks were applied to the location of mirages. On these maps, it is even marked what exactly is seen in this or that place: wells, oases, palm groves, mountain ranges, and so on.

Flora

Fauna

The one-humped camel deserves special attention, the appearance of which symbolizes the Sahara Desert.

Human Museum

The Great Desert is full of intentional human footprints. Some drawings and engravings of the Sahara are more than 10 thousand years old. On the most ancient - wild animals: elephants, giraffes, rhinos, hippos, ostriches, antelopes, often gigantic... Sometimes it’s the other way around: following the guide, you crouch down under a rock ledge and find yourself among a herd of palm-sized red cows.

The yellowish-brown and yellow-red background of Tassili rocks and sandstones proved to be the ideal material, preserving an archive of several eras. In the hundreds of images of Tassili N "Ager, discovered, described and copied by the French explorer Henri Lot in the 50s of the XX century, there is the life of different peoples who inhabited the massif at different times.

“We were amazed,” wrote A. Lot, “by the variety of styles and plots that we discovered during the study of numerous layers of murals ... Some of the drawings were located in isolation, others were very complex compositions. We found ourselves in the greatest museum of prehistoric art. Two main styles characterize these murals: one is symbolic, more ancient, in all likelihood, of Negroid origin; the other is more recent, clearly naturalistic, in which the influence of the culture of the Nile Valley is felt. ... And if sometimes you can find Egyptian or possibly Mycenaean influence in them, the most ancient of them certainly belong to an unknown original art school. "

But the Sahara still holds many mysteries. One of them is in the desert part of Niger, on the Adrar Ma-det plateau. There are stone circles of ideal concentric shape lined with rubble. They are located at a distance of almost a mile from each other, as if by arrows directed exactly to the four cardinal points. Who created them, when and why, there is still no clear answer to these questions!

Structure Guell Rishat, Mauritania

This structure is located in the Sahara Desert and is clearly visible from space, since its diameter is almost 50 km. It is believed that its oldest ring was formed more than half a billion years ago. But the reasons for its occurrence are not clear. Previously, it was believed that it arose after a huge meteorite hit the Earth, but the bottom of the structure is not flat, and traces of the impact along the edges of the structure itself have not been identified. Therefore, today most researchers believe that the structure is the result of erosion, but they do not even try to explain its almost perfectly round shape - this is a mystery.

Tourism

Excursions are offered to the Sahara. These are small trips for 2-3 days into the murderous desert. You can ride a camel, but only under the supervision of an overseer. Otherwise, you may find yourself on the beast among the endless sands. The most daring can cross the desert themselves (it is possible, although it seems unreal!). But before the hike, you need to consult with a specialist.

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DESERT SUGAR - INTERESTING FACTS.

The Sahara is the largest desert on Earth, with an area of \u200b\u200babout 9 million km2, this is slightly less area United States of America. The Sahara is located in North Africa, on the territory of more than ten states (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan). The Sahara does not lend itself to categorization within one type of desert, although the sandy-rocky type is predominant. There are many regions in the desert: Tenere, Greater Eastern Erg, Greater Western Erg, Tanezruft, Hamada-el-Hamra, Erg-Igidi, Erg-Shesh, Arabian, Libyan, Nubian deserts. The name "Sahara" is the Arabic translation of the Tuareg word "tener", meaning desert.

In 2008, an international team of scientists from Germany, Canada and the United States, as a result of research, found that the Sahara became a desert about 2,700 years ago as a result of very slow climate evolution. Scientists managed to make such conclusions based on the study of geological deposits raised from the depths of Lake Joa, located in the north of Chad. According to research results, about 6 thousand years ago, trees grew in the Sahara and there were many lakes. Thus, this work of scientists refutes the existing theory about the transformation of this part of Africa into a desert 5.5 thousand years ago and the fact that the process of desertification took only a few centuries. About 160 thousand mirages are observed annually in the Sahara. They are stable and wandering, vertical and horizontal. Even special maps of caravan routes have been compiled with an assessment of the places where mirages are usually observed. These maps show where wells, oases, palm groves, mountain ranges appear.

The Sahara has a combined climate: subtropics and tropics.

The local conditions are practically unsuitable for human habitation, but the tribes of nomads (Tuareg and Teda), probably, cannot imagine another life and feel great in the world's largest uninhabited territory.

Geographically, the Sahara is rocky. It includes underground rivers that sometimes flow outward to form oases.

There are dunes that reach heights of up to 180 meters.

It may sound strange, but the peaks in the desert are covered with snow in winter. Eastern The Sahara, the Libyan Desert, is dry and has several oases.

The Sahara receives only 20 cm of rain per year. This is one of the reasons that only 2 million people live here.

During the last Ice Age, the desert was larger than it is now. The Sahara has one of the most violent climates in the world. A predominantly northeasterly wind often leads to sandstorms.

In the desert there is the City of Tidikelt, which has not received a single drop of rain for ten years.

average temperature in the Sahara - 30 degrees Celsius, and the maximum is 50 degrees, in winter the temperature often drops below zero;

Only a few animals can survive in the Desert - Camels, sand snakes, scorpions, monitor lizards.

About 500 species of flora survive here;

Amy Cussi is the most high point in the Sahara mountains. Its height is 3415 meters.

Where is the Sahara Desert?

The Sahara Desert is the largest SANDY desert on our planet and is located in the northern part of Africa. She also ranks second as the most great desert in the world in area, giving way to the Antarctic Desert. The area of \u200b\u200bthe Sahara is about 8.6 million km2 and partly covers the territory of 10 states. From west to east, its length is 4800 m, and from south to north, its length ranges from 800 to 1200 meters. At the same time, the size of the desert is not constant; it grows 6-10 km annually from south to north.

Sahara Desert landscape

The Sahara landscape consists of 70% plains and 30% of the Tibesti and Ahaggar uplands, the stepped plateaus Adrar-Iforas, Air, Ennedi, Tademait, etc., as well as cuesta ridges.

Sahara Desert Climate

The desert climate is divided into subtropical in the north and tropical in the south of the desert. In the northern part of the desert, there are large fluctuations in temperature, both average annual and daily average. In winter, the temperature can drop in the mountains to -18 degrees. On the contrary, summer is very hot. The soil can warm up to 70-80 degrees Celsius.

In the southern part of the desert, temperature fluctuations are slightly less, but also in winter, temperatures in the mountains can drop below zero degrees Celsius. Winters are milder and drier.

The desert is characterized by large fluctuations in temperatures between night and day. This figure is announced up to 30-40 degrees with the difference between night and day temperatures! Therefore, it is sometimes impossible to do without warm clothes at night, since the temperature can drop below zero. Also in the desert there are often sandstorms, in which the wind can reach up to 50 meters per second. Central parts of the desert may not see rain for years, while other parts may even experience heavy rainfall. In other words, the Sahara Desert is full of surprises in terms of weather.

Sahara Desert - amazing place... It is incredible how animals, plants and humans have been able to adapt to life in this part of the earth, given the constant drought and heat.

1) By its size, the desert is like half of Russia, or the whole of Brazil!
The Sahara Desert is the largest desert in the world, it is located on 30% of all Africa. But this is half Russian Federation, or the entire area of \u200b\u200bBrazil, which is the fifth largest country in terms of area on Earth.

2) "Sea without water". On arabic The Sahara is a desert, and some people called it “The Sea without Water” because once upon a time there were many rivers and lakes in its place.

3) Mars on Earth. Desert dunes move from a couple of centimeters to hundreds of meters per year, and the dunes themselves resemble the landscapes of Mars! Sometimes they reach a height of 300 meters!

4) There are fewer and fewer oases. Villages and cities usually appear near the oases, but every year the number of oases becomes less and less.

5) The average temperature in the desert is about 40 degrees Celsius! The sand itself is heated up to 80 degrees Celsius! But at night the temperature can drop to -15 degrees Celsius.

6) Over the past fifty years, storms have begun to appear more and more often, in some places their occurrence has increased forty times!

7) The Sahara is home to 3 million people. However, before there were more people, once upon a time, caravans of merchants passed through the desert, carrying various riches. But the passage through the entire desert took 1.5 years!

8) The roots of some plants are at a depth of 20 meters! Thus, plants try to get water for themselves in order to keep it for a long time, and use it carefully.

9) There are about 4 thousand in the Sahara different types animals and plants.

10) Camels live without water for 14 days, and without food as much as 30! They can smell moisture 50 kilometers away and drink one hundred liters of water at a time! And they don't sweat at all! Their humps are fat, thanks to which they can survive for a long time without food.

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