For years , fish dodo have turned up in the deserts of westerly Egypt , and nobody could explain why . Now we have intercourse : Long ago , the Egyptian desert was home to a soundbox of water the size of Lake Michigan .
As the base to one of the world ’s most ancient civilizations , the Egyptian environment can seem almost eonian , with the Nile River forever allow for the only productive refuge from the dateless area of desert on both side . But once , long ago , the southwestern deserts were home to a massive lake that stretched some 250 geographical mile away from the Nile . The macrocosm of such a lake explains a few longstanding mysteries , but it also raises a few unexampled interrogation .
The large puzzle it solves is just how a bunch of fish fossils , intelligibly related to those plant in the Nile , were discovered out in the undecided desert . The lake provides these Pisces with a plaza to live , and the existence of the lake also neatly explains the fish ’s origins . After all , the huge amount of water demand for such a lake must have come from somewhere , and the obvious seed is the Nile itself . A pass known as Wadi Tushka could have connect the Nile with this lake , provided the Nile ’s yearly flooding was more severe than it is today .
Beyond the presence of the Pisces fossils , the ancient lake is also known from radar function that trace at the ancient topography of the area , as well as a few archaeological web site manifestly place on the shorelines of the lake in more mod times . All this puts together a decently compelling case , but the Egyptian lake is missing a few crucial pieces of supporting evidence that really ought to be there .
For one thing , most vanished lake leave behind geological evidence of their old shorelines – these scrape are rather colorfully known as bath ring . The westerly United States is full of such bathtub rings that put up definitive validation of lose mega - lakes . But whatever bathing tub rings the Egyptian lake leave behind have long since been blasted off by millennia of shifting sands . There ’s also no sedimentary grounds for the lake . That does n’t disprove the creation of the lake , but it spend a penny it an awed lot difficult to prove that it exists .
We also do n’t actually make love for certain how the lake prepare . Though the Nile seems like the obvious rootage , it ’s not the only possible action . Indeed , a few ancient aqueous remnants from natural spring and archaeologic sites suggest the western deserts were once home to a cluster of small lakes created by pelting and groundwater . Over metre , these lakes might have grown big and ultimately unite into the one mega - lake , which in routine started flowing into the Nile . That would have then allowed the Nile fish to enter the lake .
So then , we love there was once a lake in Egypt , which is a pretty cool finding . But exactly how it formed , and how it affected the ecology of the Nile and surrounding comeuppance , not to mention any impact it had on the human populations of ancient Egypt , are all things we still have to see out .
[ viaDiscovery News ]
Ancient EgyptArchaeologyGeologyLakeScience
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and culture news in your inbox day by day .
News from the time to come , delivered to your present tense .
You May Also Like
