10 secrets discovered by satellites in the great desert
1- Lost castles
Satellites allowed explorers to peer beneath the thickest of forests, penetrate the heart of the most ferocious deserts - all without even bothering to leave a chair. In 2010, satellites discovered the remains of more than 100 castles belonging to the Garamantes people in Libya. The area was well planned by the oil industry companies in search of places to dig, so it was easy for scientists to scan the satellite images of these companies to look for any signs of the presence of the remains of cities buried under the surface of the desert. Later, researchers were able to ascertain that those buildings and walls that were found by satellites were actually erected in that area by the Garamantes people, but unfortunately search campaigns in the area stopped after the Libyan revolution that overthrew Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Returning to the Garamantes people, the time when this people flourished was around the second century BC to the seventh century AD, and the area in which they lived was incredibly barren, and in order to cultivate their land, they built channels that pass from underground and provide water from reservoirs But when those underground water sources ran out, the fields withered, and the desert sands covered the remains of castles and villages abandoned by their inhabitants.
2- Meteorites and volcanic craters
Earth has always been bombarded with rocks and meteorites from outer space, and while most of them burn harmlessly in the atmosphere, leaving only a streak of light across the sky, others reach Earth and have devastating effects, and because most of them happened in the distant past, we often cannot Seeing the effects of those meteorite strikes, the impacts they created have mostly disappeared due to erosion or changes in the geography of the planet, however, some of those scars left by meteorites and space rocks can still be seen in the desert, the Kamil Crater, which is 45 meters wide (148 m). feet) in southwestern Egypt, clearly indicated To the place where an iron meteorite struck the place about 5,000 years ago. Not only the craters left by the meteorites can be found, but around the crater itself, fragments of the meteorite itself were discovered, where it shattered and scattered through the sand. This discovery was not a single discovery, but the remains of nearly five meteorites that struck the Sahara were found in the past.
3- Libyan desert glass
Even when the traces and remains of meteorites disappear, as well as the resulting craters, traces of other cosmic collisions can remain. About 29 million years ago, a meteorite struck Earth, leaving enough thermal energy to melt a vast area of the Libyan desert and turn sand into sheets of thin green glass. And while the crater from this impact has yet to be found, there is still plenty of desert glass out there - and in some unexpected areas.
When Howard Carter opened the tomb of Tutankhamun, he discovered among the treasures a jewel-encrusted plate (referred to as the pectoral) belonging to King Tutankhamun, and in the center of the pectoral is a sacred scarab beetle carved from green glass. The glass they used, but interestingly another artifact was made of a material that wasn't on our planet - one of the daggers in the tomb that was made of iron that came from a meteorite!
4- Nabta Playa rocks
Wherever there is water in the desert, we will find that life has clinged to it. When people lived near Nabta Playa in southern Egypt between 9000 and 6000 years ago, that area was subject to annual floods, which left behind a lake, where tribes came from Neolithic age to feed and water their animals.
These people not only survived there thanks to the presence of the lake, but they also used the place to practice the culture of sacrifice, as cows, sheep and goats were all found buried there according to certain rituals.
About 6000 years ago, the people of Napata Playa erected large stone blocks lined up in a circle with rock slabs on the outside. The circle indicates it exactly, but one researcher believes that that ring aligns with the belt position of the constellation Gemini, as it appeared from the sky 6000 years ago.
5- The lost river
Sahara Desert In time immemorial, it was not as we know it from a hot climate and barren land throughout the year, over millions of years the climate of the region has changed, and just as scientists were able to search for ancient evidence supporting the presence of water on Mars, they also turned their attention to the history of the Sahara Desert. One of the huge rivers that used to flow in the old desert. Scientists believe that a river called (Tamanrasset) was flowing through West Africa 5000 years ago, and it is believed that the basin of the Tamanrasset River was the size of the present-day Ganges Brahmaputra basin in Asia. The remains of the river were observed in Mauritania when a gully was discovered under the sea off the coast, carved by the waters of the ancient river, and the sediments of the river appeared in unexpected places. Only 5000 years ago.
6- whales
It is not only rivers that have disappeared under the sands of the Sahara, but over the course of geological time, what was once a great ocean, is today one of the driest places on Earth.
In the Wadi al-Hitan in Egypt, where whales of the deep past lived, it was possible to find the fossils of the ancestors of juvenile whales that lived 37 million years ago. In the sands of the desert, the length of these skeletons reached about 15 meters (50 feet), and beside the bones of whales were found skeletons of other creatures that shared the sea, the teeth of large and predatory sharks were found.
7- Machimosaurus rex
The seas have always been home to monsters, and about 120 million years ago, the Sahara was home to a crocodile known as Makimosaurus, which reached about 9 meters in length, and is the largest ocean crocodile known so far. Scientists believe that the area in which this crocodile lived may have been a vast lake that extended To the Teths Sea, which is the ancient sea that separated the continents during the different ages of the earth's life, and it is not fixed in location, as its location was changing according to the movement of the continents.
This type of crocodile used its huge head, amazing bite force, and short monstrous teeth to break sea turtle shells and catch fish.
8- Spinosaurus
In continuation of the series of marine discoveries in the Sahara Desert, fossils of the largest meat-eating dinosaur ever discovered were found, which lived 95 million years ago in that region. far .
The length of the Spinosaurus known as (Spinosaurus aegyptiacus) was about 7 meters, and its body extended to a length of 16 meters, surpassing the famous T-Rex dinosaur. It has long nostrils that it uses to row in the water, in addition to nostrils located above its nose to allow it to breathe underwater.
9- The doomed plane and the missing pilot of World War II
On January 28, 1942, Staff Sgt. Dennis Copping was driving a damaged P-40 Kittyhawk to a British base in the Sahara Desert, and somewhere the plane and its young pilot had disappeared.
In 2012, the remains of the plane were discovered when an oil worker found them in the area, and the plane was almost intact, but no traces of the remains of the young pilot were found, so his fate was another mystery among the desert sands.
The plane was later transferred to the El Alamein Museum and was restored, but some believed that the plane should have remained in its place to serve as a souvenir for its young pilot, whose fate no one knows.
10 - A mass grave in Niger
When searching for dinosaur bones in the Sahara Desert, specifically in the Gobero region of Niger, a human cemetery was found in the desert.
This Gobero area was inhabited by humans about 10,000 years ago, and it seems that it was once a green and fertile environment, where the remains of crocodiles, fish and other animals were found among the human remains.
Excavations that lasted for two years revealed about 200 human burials dating back to two separate periods with more than 1,000 years between them.
Those human cemeteries belong to the people of the Kivian and Tenerion, who left their valuables next to their remains. Many jewelry and arrowheads were discovered, along with the snails that they used to fish from the nearby waters.
Many of the burials were unusual and striking, with one man buried with his head in a bowl, while another was buried on a turtle shell.
Perhaps we will not know exactly how these people lived and how they died! The desert will never give up all its secrets.
