Think the Sahara was always just endless sand? Think again! Dive into the mysteries beneath the dunes: lost rivers, ancient cities, dinosaur bones, and the eye-popping Eye of the Sahara. Was North Africa once a flourishing paradise? Join us as we unravel the secrets! Subscribe for more wild history and tell us in the comments which Sahara secret blew your mind! #history #science #mystery #Sahara #ancientcivilizations
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@kramola_online
0:00 - Introduction and Ancient Sahara Mysteries
0:43 - Prehistoric Discoveries Under the Sands
2:05 - Maps and Evidence of a Green Sahara
5:24 - Ruins Reveal Lost Civilizations
6:13 - The Berbers and Tuareg History
9:11 - The Eye of the Sahara and Wild Theories
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@kramola_online
0:00 - Introduction and Ancient Sahara Mysteries
0:43 - Prehistoric Discoveries Under the Sands
2:05 - Maps and Evidence of a Green Sahara
5:24 - Ruins Reveal Lost Civilizations
6:13 - The Berbers and Tuareg History
9:11 - The Eye of the Sahara and Wild Theories
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TravelTranscript
00:00Camels, sand dunes, the sun blazing so fiercely it feels like it could burn everything to ashes, and not a
00:07soul around.
00:08It seems like these majestic golden dunes have always been here, but that's not the case.
00:13What secrets does the great desert hide from humanity, and what lies beneath its scorching sands?
00:19What if North Africa, home to the largest desert on the planet, was a flourishing land not so long ago?
00:27With numerous large cities, full-flowing rivers, and other benefits of civilization that make no sense to develop in a
00:33resource-poor climate.
00:35How did the area, where traces of a highly developed civilization are found at every turn, become a desert? Let's
00:41figure it out.
00:42What surprises does the Sahara hold?
00:45Well, for example, a whale cemetery, or more precisely, the ancient ancestors of whales, Bacillosaurs.
00:51Or, for example, the bones of one of the largest dinosaurs, the herbivorous sauropod.
00:56This giant, judging by the fossil, could reach up to 32 meters in length and weigh up to 60 tons.
01:02And in 2018, under the endless desert sands, the bones of another previously unknown dinosaur, Mansurosaurus, were discovered.
01:12All these cute creatures existed millions of years ago.
01:15However, the desert itself is quite young compared to these bones.
01:19According to modern scientific understanding, the largest asset on the planet, the Sahara, is thousands of years old.
01:25To be more precise, according to the latest data, it's about 6,000 years old.
01:30It was exactly then, 6,000 years ago, that the arid desert, covering more than 9 million square kilometers, was
01:37covered with a thick green carpet.
01:39Whole settlements lived here, and domesticated animals grazed peacefully.
01:43Where today there is almost nothing but hot sand, there used to be green meadows and lakes.
01:49And the rainfall was so abundant, that it fed the Tam and Rasset River, which carried its waters through the
01:54territory of the Green Sahara to the Atlantic Ocean.
01:57The river, with its numerous tributaries, was more than 500 kilometers long and could have been included in the list
02:03of the longest rivers in the world.
02:05The discovery of the largest river was made possible in 2015 by three-dimensional satellite images.
02:11Thanks to them, scientists noticed the straight edges of the ancient river channels hidden beneath the modern desert.
02:17And in Central Africa, there was a lake called Megachat.
02:22Once in ancient times, this body of water was larger than the Caspian Sea, and covered almost 388,500 square
02:30kilometers across the Sahara.
02:32If the lake existed now, it would be the largest on the planet.
02:36In the images published by NASA, you can clearly see how huge it was.
02:41But what if this wasn't 6,000 years ago?
02:44No. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to depict full-flowing rivers and large cities in North Africa just
02:50a few centuries ago on medieval maps.
02:53Maps of a flourishing Sahara
02:55How is it possible that it's been a desert for thousands of years, but on maps from the 16th, 17th,
03:01and 18th centuries, it's a flourishing land with large cities.
03:05And these maps are considered historically accurate.
03:08Here is a map of Africa from 1688.
03:10Let's overlay it on a modern satellite image of the scorched desert.
03:14What do we see?
03:15An abundance of cities and rivers.
03:17The coastline is very densely populated, but there are also many cities in the center of the desert, and Cairo
03:23is marked with the same symbol on this map.
03:25So, the cities inside the desert are large.
03:28Now, we don't know anything about them.
03:30Here is another map, dated 1575.
03:34Everything is similar here.
03:35Rivers, lakes, cities.
03:37Here is another map from the year 1500, or this map from 1502 here.
03:43Right in the center of the modern Sahara, a green forest with lush grass is depicted.
03:48And this is Heinrich Bunting's map of Africa from 1581.
03:52There is a bit less of everything here, but the map itself is less detailed overall.
03:57This is a detailed map by the Dutch cartographer, Willem Bleu.
04:01It dates back to 1642.
04:04There are more maps, but there's no point in showing them.
04:07Everywhere the picture is roughly the same, which at the very least resembles the African savannah, and not at all
04:12the scorched desert that the Sahara is today.
04:16Official science acknowledges these inconvenient maps, noting,
04:19Significant deviations from normal conditions were observed from the 16th to the 17th century.
04:25During this time, precipitation increased significantly along the tropical boundary in the desert itself, and possibly in its northern regions.
04:32In the 19th century, climatic conditions returned to those similar to the current ones.
04:37However, this explanation seems to have been created specifically to account for such anomalous maps showing a blooming Sahara.
04:45After all, there are no earlier maps, and it's impossible to verify whether this was really a short-term deviation
04:51from normal conditions,
04:52or if the Sahara had always been this green.
04:55The Sahara takes on its modern appearance on geographic maps only at the very end of the 18th century,
05:01and even at the beginning of the 19th century, when the entire center of North Africa began to be depicted
05:05as covered with sand.
05:07By the way, medieval maps do not show the pyramids of ancient Egypt.
05:11Strange, isn't it?
05:13One might think that they were not considered important, or maybe they hadn't yet been included in the project called
05:18World History.
05:19However, that's a topic for another episode.
05:22For now, let's get back to the Sahara.
05:24And let's take a look at this.
05:26If there are cities on the maps, then there should be at least something left of them.
05:30That's right.
05:31The ruins of large ancient cities are not uncommon in the Sahara, as you can see in these photos.
05:36These are the ruins of the ancient city of Timgad in the northern Sahara, and this is what remains of
05:42the ancient city of Garma.
05:44There are quite a lot of ruins like this.
05:46Their number and size confirm that there is no point in creating such urban development.
05:51In a resource-poor desert area, where camel caravans cross the dunes in search of the nearest oasis with a
05:58few villages.
05:59Who built all these cities?
06:02On the tombstones, just like in our modern cemeteries, you can see not a crudely scratched name with a chisel,
06:07but, you could say, a photograph.
06:10Let's talk about these people in more detail now.
06:13White people of the Sahara.
06:15Let's take another look at this map from the year 1500.
06:19You can clearly see well-drawn cities right in the center of the modern Sahara, and interestingly, the rulers of
06:25these cities look more like Europeans in appearance than the modern Arab population of the region.
06:32Someone might say that they simply depicted unfamiliar or distant lands in a European style, kind of like how they
06:38like to portray Lenin in China.
06:40But in reality, this question isn't that simple.
06:43There are many tribes in the Sahara Desert, but the proud Tuaregs are the most well-known.
06:49A stern rider, wrapped in a scarf up to his eyes, sitting on a camel or a horse, is a
06:55symbol of the great sandy land.
06:57They have light skin, and there is very little negroid blood.
07:02How the Tuaregs appeared in the Sahara is a question that official science has not yet answered.
07:06Nevertheless, it is generally known that the Tuaregs are a people of the Berber group, and the word itself comes
07:13from the Greek barbaros, or the Latin barbari.
07:15So, where there is a Berber, there is a barbarian, and where there is a barbarian, there is the white
07:20race.
07:21There is no particular secret here.
07:23But what's interesting is that they don't call themselves that.
07:26According to linguists, the self-designation of the Berbers may come from the word red.
07:31And indeed, among them, there are many red-haired, fair-skinned people with blue or light brown eyes.
07:37For example, Miss Algeria 2013, the wife of King Mohammed of Jordan, and the world-famous and beloved French singer,
07:45Edith Piaf.
07:46She is Berber on her mother's side, or, for example, well-known to many fans, Zinedine Zidane.
07:52There is also a lot of red in the traditional clothing of the Berbers.
07:56The fact that the Amazigh tribes are of the Caucasoid type is also confirmed by numerous genetic studies which have
08:03identified the so-called Berber marker,
08:05the E1B1 haplogroup, which is found not only in East, North, and South Africa, but also in Europe and Western
08:13Asia.
08:14However, politically correct scholars are hesitant to directly classify the Berbers as part of the white race.
08:20They refer to them as white Arabs.
08:23Unfortunately, no Berber sources about their own history and culture have survived,
08:27which is not surprising considering the number of conquerors who repeatedly swept over this ancient people.
08:34Modern history has not spared them either.
08:36For example, after the occupation of Libya by NATO forces, almost all museums and museum collections in Libya were looted
08:43and destroyed.
08:43The ancient cities of Libya, Sabrata and Leptis Magna, were barbarically bombed.
08:49Unique mosaics with ancient symbols, which the sands of Libya had preserved for hundreds of years, were irretrievably destroyed.
08:57The same thing happened in Yugoslavia and in Iraq, and in Libya they even managed to steal an ancient rock
09:03painting.
09:04They soaked a canvas with a special chemical compound, pressed it against the images, and the images would stick to
09:09it.
09:10The eye of the Sahara.
09:12Perhaps the most unusual wonder of the Sahara and one of the main mysteries of the planet is located in
09:18Mauritania.
09:19This unique geological formation, clearly visible even from space, is called the eye of the Sahara or the Richat structure.
09:26It is a series of huge concentric rings and has a diameter of about 50 kilometers.
09:34The site gained worldwide fame after it was discovered in 1965 from the manned spacecraft Gemini 4.
09:42Since then, scientists have been searching for answers to the main question.
09:46What is the nature of this structure?
09:48If it is the site of an ancient meteorite impact, then where is the actual crater and why are there
09:54no traces of an impact?
09:55If it is the mouth of an extinct volcano, then why are there no volcanic rocks at all?
10:00Alternative researchers present the following facts.
10:03In this area, the rocky terrain is melted as if after an explosion of enormous power.
10:09Look at this.
10:10The top layer is made of scorched stones, and below it is a layer of light-colored stone.
10:14In other photos, the stones are melted on the top side, while the bottom side has a light shade,
10:20which clearly indicates powerful radiation in all spectra coming from one direction.
10:25This place roughly corresponds to the city of Howden on old maps,
10:29but with such power it's not quite logical to talk about individual cities.
10:33And here's why.
10:34In modern military terminology, to create a crater of this size,
10:38an explosion would be needed that can be estimated at around 200 to 250 megatons in TNT equivalent.
10:45For comparison, when the Tsar bomba was detonated in 1961 with its 50 megatons,
10:52a multiplier effect was triggered, increasing the yield to 58 megatons.
10:57That is, matter from the surrounding space began to be involved in the thermonuclear fusion,
11:02starting a highly dangerous chain reaction,
11:04as a result of which the air itself began to burn.
11:07No one knows why the process stopped back then.
11:10Here's what happened.
11:11At first, the warhead was assembled with a yield of 100 megatons,
11:15but at the last moment, it was dismantled and reconfigured to 50 megatons.
11:20Perhaps it was because they were afraid of a multiplier effect,
11:23which, nevertheless, still happened.
11:26And now imagine that a similar process, with part of the atmosphere burning out,
11:30happened at the very moment when the Richard Crater appeared.
11:33The burning out of the atmosphere, the destruction of cities and entire civilizations,
11:38and the appearance of a huge desert area in an instant by geological standards.
11:43Although, of course, it wasn't like that at all.
11:45Because it's simply the result of natural geological processes.
11:49It's just a round structure shaped by the wind.
11:52And in general, there are no secrets of the Sahara at all, right?
11:56What do you think about this?
11:58It's the perfect time to go down to the comments and find out what the experts think.
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