European scientists initially got acquainted with sands far from deserts - on the banks of rivers, moraines and oceans. The sands brought by the rivers are exposed from under the water only in low water and in the climatic conditions of Europe they are almost not blown. Ancient river sands European countries distributed in small strips, overgrown with forests, and therefore river sands in Europe do not bring much harm and are not afraid of anyone.

Another thing is the sands on the shores of the oceans. Storm waves and tidal waves throw more and more masses of sand ashore every time. Winds walking over the ocean easily pick up dried sand and carry it deep into the mainland. It is not easy for vegetation to establish itself on such constantly shifting sand. And then goats will come from the village and pit, trample, or even uproot fragile shoots. And more than once it happened that the villages of fishermen, and even large villages and towns, turned out to be buried under sand dunes on the coast of Europe. Centuries passed, and only the top of the high spire of the old Gothic cathedral, sticking out of the sands, reminded people of the death of the village that had once occurred.

Almost everything Western atlantic coast France has been covered in sand for centuries. Many areas of the northern coasts of East Germany and the Riga seaside also suffered from them. Raging Atlantic, North and Baltic Sea and the thrusting of the sands generated by them were the most formidable picture of nature, familiar to the inhabitants and scientists of Europe.

And it is natural that when the Europeans got into the deserts and got acquainted with their huge, like the sea, sandy massifs, they involuntarily considered that the sands of the deserts were the brainchild of the sea. This is how the “original sin” appeared in the study of deserts. The usual explanation was applied both to the sands of the Sahara, allegedly being the bottom of the recent ocean, and to the sands of Central Asia, which, they say, were covered in ancient times by the inland Khanhai Sea.

Well, what can we say about our deserts, where indeed the Caspian Sea used to flood spaces that rise 77 meters above its current level?

And, however, it is precisely Russian researchers who have the honor of overthrowing these incorrect views, according to which sea waves were considered the only powerful creator of sand on earth.

In this regard, on the right way there were many of our researchers of the 19th century, who for the first time began to study various regions of Central and Central Asia. Among them, first of all, it is necessary to name Ivan Vasilievich Mushketov, a pioneer in the geological study of Central Asia, and his student Vladimir Afanasevich Obruchev, who made many difficult and long journeys through Central and especially Central Asia. These two researchers, combining geologists and geographers, showed that, along with truly marine sands, sands of other origin are widely developed in deserts.

I. V. Mushketov believed that, in addition to sea and river sands, in many areas of deserts, including the Kyzyl-Kum, sands are formed during the destruction of various rocks in the conditions of a sharply continental desert climate. One of the merits of V. A. Obruchev was the substantiation by a number of facts of the position that the sands of another empty Central Asia - the Kara-Kums - were formed due to the deposits of the ancient Amu-Darya, which previously flowed from the area of ​​​​the city of Chardzhou directly to the west to the Caspian Sea.

He also proved that in the deserts of the eastern part of Central Asia, in Ordos and Ala-Shan, the main creator of sands is the destructive forces of the atmosphere.

The arguments of these scientists were logical and convincing, but they had too few facts to completely resolve the questions of the origin of each mass of sand in the deserts.

IN Soviet period Incomparably more research has been devoted to a comprehensive study of sands. As a result, it was possible to establish the sources and ways of accumulation of a wide variety of sand massifs, although it was not always easy to restore their biography.

In western Turkmenistan alone, we counted twenty-five sand groups of different origin. Some of them were formed due to the destruction of ancient rocks of different age and composition. This group of sands is the most diverse, although it occupies a relatively small area. Other sands were brought by the Syr Darya to the area of ​​the modern Khiva oasis. The third sand was brought by the Amu Darya and deposited on the plains, now located at a distance of 300 - 500 kilometers from the river. The fourth sands were carried by the Amu Darya into the sea, the fifth, very special sands, accumulated in the sea due to the shells of sea mollusks crushed by waves. The sixth sands were formed in the now waterless, but formerly lake-like Sarykamysh depression. They contain a mass of calcareous and silicic skeletons of microorganisms.

sea ​​of ​​sand. From the northern Aral Sea to the south, along the eastern shores of the Aral Sea, through the entire Kyzyl-Kum desert and further, through the expanses of the Kara-Kum to Afghanistan and the foothills of the Hindu Kush, and from east to west, from the foothills of the Tien Shan to the shores and islands of the Caspian, there is a huge, covered waves of the sea, above which only individual islands rise. But this sea is not blue, its waves do not splash, and it is not filled with water. This sea shimmers now red, then yellow, then gray, then whitish tones.

Its waves, in many places immeasurably higher than the breakers and waves of the ocean, are motionless, as if frozen and petrified in the midst of an unprecedented storm that has engulfed colossal spaces.

Where did these enormous accumulations of sands come from and what created their motionless waves? Soviet scientists have studied the sands well enough to be able to answer these questions definitively.

In the Aral Sea Kara-Kum, in the sands of Big and Small Badgers and on the eastern shores of the Aral Sea, the sands have a dull white color. Each grain of them is rounded and polished like the smallest pellet. These sands consist almost exclusively of quartz alone - the most stable of minerals - and a small admixture of smaller black grains of ore minerals, mainly magnetic iron ore. These are old sands. They were long life path. It is difficult to find the remains of their ancestors now. Their family originates from the destruction of some ancient granite ridges, the remains of which are now preserved on the surface of the earth only in the form of the Mugodzhar mountains. But since then, many times these sands have been redeposited by rivers and seas. So it was in the Permian, and in the Jurassic, and in the Lower and Upper Cretaceous. Last time the sands were washed, sorted and redeposited at the beginning of the Tertiary period. After that, some layers turned out to be so tightly soldered with solutions of silicic acid that the grains were merged with cement, and a hard, fatty in a fracture, pure as sugar, quartzite was formed. But even this strongest stone is affected by the desert. Loose layers of sand are blown out, hard stones are destroyed, and again the sands are redeposited, this time not by sea or river water, but by the wind.

Our studies have shown that during this last "air travel" of the sands, which began as early as the late Greek time and continued throughout Quaternary period, they were carried by the wind from the northern Aral Sea region, along the eastern shores of the Aral Sea up to the shores of the Amu Darya, and possibly further south, that is, approximately 500 - 800 kilometers.

How Red Sands Happened. It is not for nothing that the Kazakhs and Karakalpaks call their largest sandy desert Kyzyl-Kumami, that is, the Red Sands. Its sands in many areas really have a bright orange, reddish-red, and even brick-red color. Where did these layers of colored sand come from? From the destroyed mountains!

The ancient mountains of the Central Kyzyl-Kum are now low, rising 600 - 800 meters above sea level. Millions of years ago they were much higher. But for the same amount of time, the destructive forces of wind, hot sun, night cold and water act on them. Remaining hills, like islands, rise above the surface of the Kyzyl-Kum. They, like trains, are surrounded by strips of gently sloping gravelly drifts, and then sandy plains stretch.

In the Middle Ages of the history of the earth, and the Mesozoic and at the beginning of the Tertiary period, the climate here was subtropical and red earth soils were deposited on the slopes of the mountains. The destruction of the remnants of these soils, or, as geologists say, "ancient weathering crusts," in some places paints the sands of Kyzyl-Kum in red tones. But the sands of this desert are far from being of the same color everywhere, since their origin is different in different regions. In places where the ancient sea sands were re-wept, the sands of these plains are light yellow. In other areas, these yellowish-grayish sands are the ancient deposits of the Syr Darya. Take a look at the diagram on page 64 and you will see that we have been able to trace these sediments both in the southern and in the central and western parts of the desert. In the south of the Kyzyl-Kum, their sands are dark gray and they were brought by the Zeravshan River, and in the west of this desert the sands are bluish-gray and contain many sparkles of mica - they were brought here by the Amu Darya to one of the standards of her wanderings. Thus, the history of the Kyzyl-Kums is far from simple, and the biography of their sands is perhaps more complex and diverse than most other deserts in the world.

How did the Black Sands form? . The southernmost desert of the USSR - Kara-Kum. This name - Black Sands - was given to them because they are heavily overgrown with dark saxaul bushes and the horizon in many places darkens, like the edge of a forest. In addition, the songs here are dark - grayish.

In those depressions between the ridges, where the wind opens up fresh sands that have not been overwhelmed before, their color is steel-gray, sometimes bluish-gray. These are the youngest sands - baby sands in the history of our planet, and their composition is very diverse. 42 different minerals can be counted in them under a microscope. Here, in the form of small grains, there are also garnets and tourmalines, familiar to many from necklaces and rings. Large plates of shiny mica, quartz grains, pink, greenish and cream feldspar grains, black-green sand grains from hornblende are visible to the eye. These grains are so fresh, as if they had just ground and washed granite. But where the wind has managed to winnow the sands, their color changes, taking on a grayish-yellow color. And along with this, the shape of sand grains slowly, gradually begins to change: from the angular, characteristic of young river sands, it increasingly takes on the rounded shape of the so-called “eolian” sands blown by the wind.

The composition of the Kara-Kum sands, the shape of their grains, the good preservation of unstable minerals, their gray color, the conditions of occurrence and the nature of the stratification indisputably testify to their riverine origin. But the question is, what kind of river can we talk about if the Kara-Kums begin in the south from the very foothills of the Kopet-Dag, and the nearest large river - the Amu-Darya - flows at a distance of 500 kilometers? And where can such an amount of sand come from in the river to wash up a huge desert - more than 1300 kilometers long and 500 kilometers across?

Every time I visited various regions of the deserts of Central Asia, I took samples of their sands and gave them for microscopic analysis. These studies showed that the Kara-Kums were indeed deposited by the Amu-Darya, and partially, in its southern part, by the Tejen and Murghab rivers (see the map on p. 69). The composition of the sands of these rivers, carried directly from the mountains, turned out to be exactly the same. as well as in the areas of deserts created by them, lying a hundred kilometers from the current channels of the Murgab and Tejen and 500-700 kilometers from the modern Amu Darya. But one wonders where it comes from mountain rivers such a huge amount of sand? To get an answer to this question, I had to get to the area of ​​the origin of the Amu Darya - in the highlands of the Pamirs.

Tract of upland sands. In 1948 I had the opportunity to visit the Pamirs. And here among mountain ranges and impregnable rocky cliffs, almost a thousand kilometers from the sandy deserts, I came across a small tract lost in the mountains, which turned out to be a genuine natural laboratory for the formation of sands.

The Nagara-Kum tract, which we called by consonance "The tract of highland sands", is located at the junction of three intersecting valleys, at an altitude of 4-4.5 thousand meters above sea level. One of the valleys stretches in the meridional direction, while others in the latitudinal direction. These valleys are not particularly long, their width does not exceed 1 - 1.5 kilometers, but they are deep. The flat, undivided bottom of the valleys is not indented by traces of water streams or ancient channels. And therefore, perhaps, the contrast between the even and flat bottoms of the valleys and the steep dissected rocky, bare slopes of the mountains is so striking. It seems as if someone cut deep and wide corridors in the mountains.

Everything indicated that these valleys, geologically relatively recently, were the bed of powerful glaciers sliding down from snowy mountains. And the smoothed, unweathered rocks of the slopes of the amphitheater, located in the eastern part of the latitudinal valley, indicated that quite recently they were buried under a layer of firn snow.

A whole series of data led to the assumption that with the disappearance of glaciers, lakes took possession of the valleys. However, now in this cold mountainous kingdom there is too little precipitation, so little that even in winter the snow does not cover the area with a continuous cover. Therefore, over time, the lakes also disappeared.

In neighboring valleys, thick ice does not melt even in summer. Here, around the tract, the peaks, exceeding Kazbek and Mont Blanc, turn black against the background of a clear blue sky - they are almost not covered with snow in summer, but sometimes there is little of it in winter.

We were in Harapa-Kum at the very warm time year - in mid-July. In the afternoon, when there was no wind, the sun burned so strongly that the skin on our face (and we had been in Kyzyl-Kum for a month before) cracked from burns. During the day it was so hot in the sun that I had to take off both my coat and jacket, and sometimes even my shirt. But it was extremely rarefied air of the highlands, and as soon as the sun went down and its last rays disappeared behind the tops of the mountains, it instantly became cold. Temperatures plummeted, and were often well below freezing throughout the night.

Considerable height of the terrain, dry rarefied air and clear sky and lead to extreme temperature changes.

The transparent rarefied air of the highlands almost does not prevent the sun's rays from heating the earth and rocks during the day. At night, intense radiation is emitted from the earth heated during the day back into the atmosphere. However, rarefied air itself hardly heats up. It is equally transparent to both sunlight and night radiation. It heats up so little that it was enough for a cloud to pass through during the day or a wind to blow, as it immediately became cold. This sharp change in temperature is perhaps the most characteristic and, in any case, the most active climatic factor in the high mountain regions.

It is also important that at these heights night frosts in summer occur almost daily, and if the stone does not crack from rapid cooling, then water will continue to complete this work. It seeps into the smallest cracks and, freezing, tears them apart and expands more and more.

The rocks of the eastern slopes of the tract are composed of rounded blocks of coarse-grained gray granite-porphyry with well-faceted greenish feldspar crystals up to 4-5 centimeters long. The mountain slopes formed by these rocks seem at first glance to be a grandiose accumulation of large moraine boulders, a heap of perfectly round glacial boulders rising above the plain. And only the contrast between steep heaps and table-smooth bottoms of the valleys, where there is not a single such boulder, makes one more cautious about the assumption that these are glacial boulders.

Carefully looking at the slopes of the tract, we discovered an amazing thing. Many boulders of gray granite-porphyry turned out to be dissected by white stripes of veins, consisting of only feldspars - the so-called aplites. It would seem that aplite veins should have been located in the boulders brought by the glacier in the most disorderly way. But why is it absolutely clear that the vein of one boulder is, as it were, a continuation of the vein in another boulder? Why, despite the heap of boulders, do aplite veins retain a single direction and structure along the entire slope, although they cross dozens and hundreds of granite blocks?

After all, no one would have been able to diligently lay all these boulders in this order, strictly making sure not to change the direction of the veins. If a glacier had dragged them along, it would certainly have piled up the boulders in the most chaotic way, and the veins of the aplites could not have had the same direction in the neighboring boulders.

For a long time I examined the large rounded boulders, until I became convinced that many of them were only half separated from the mountain, like a bump on the lid of a porcelain teapot. This means that these are by no means glacial boulders, but the result of the destruction in place of bedrock, from which, over many centuries, nature has made these blocks under the influence of sudden changes in temperature, or, as geologists call them, spherical weathering units. This was also evidenced by the fact that many balls had a shell exfoliating from them, which is typical for the processes of mechanical destruction - peeling of rocks.

Granite round logs, the most diverse in size, from 20-30 centimeters to 2-3 meters in diameter, were half buried under a layer of gruss and sand formed during granite peeling, crumbling from them. These decay products turned out to be mineralogically so fresh that the sand grains retained completely their original appearance; they had not yet been touched by chemical decomposition or abrasion, and sharp-cut crystals of feldspars - a mineral chemically the least stable - lay here in the sand, shining in the sun with completely fresh surfaces of the faces.

Many of these lumps crumbled into grains at the slightest touch. The whole area was a clear proof of the strength, power and inevitability of the processes of destruction of rocks that change and shape the earth's surface over the course of millennia.

"Hard as granite" - who does not know this comparison! But under the influence of sunlight, night cold, freezing of water in cracks and wind, this hard granite, which has become synonymous with a fortress, crumbles into sand under a light touch of the fingers.

In high-mountain regions, the process of thermal destruction proceeds so rapidly that the chemical decomposition of minerals does not have time to affect the decay products at all. The destruction is so intense that the slopes of the mountains are almost half covered with stone scree and sand.

Strong winds that often break here pick up the smallest products of the decay of granites and blow out all the dust and sand from them. Dust is carried by the air stream far beyond the boundaries of the tract; sand, heavier than dust, is discharged here, in all those places where the strength of the wind falls due to obstacles encountered.

Over time, along the entire meridional valley for 13 kilometers, a sandy rampart was formed. Its width ranges from 300 meters to one and a half kilometers. In some places it is quite flat, smoothed, overgrown with grassy vegetation. To the north, at the intersection of the valleys, where the sand is open to latitudinal winds blowing in opposite directions, the shaft is completely bare and the sand is collected in several dune chains parallel to each other.

These chains are high, up to 14 meters, their slopes are steep, the ridges constantly change their shape, obeying the blowing wind, and the wind blows from the east, then from the west.

Naked, free-flowing, high and steeply uplifted sands, the burning sun and the "smoking" crests of dunes - all this involuntarily took us to the hot deserts of Asia.

But the tract of upland sands lies in the realm of permafrost. Around the dunes, wherever you look, the tops of the ridges, covered with eternal snows and sparkling ice. And in the valleys lying a little lower, huge icings of thick ice appeared white, formed from the freezing of spring waters in winter.

The most powerful accumulation of sands in the tract is located at the southern intersection of the valleys. The winds here are the strongest.

Reflecting in all directions from the surrounding steep slopes, the winds experience powerful eddies. The relief of the sands therefore turns out to be the most complex and most rearing. Dune chains either scatter in different directions, or merge with each other, forming huge knots of pyramidal uplifts rising tens of meters above the depressions.

The array of these pure, wind-blown sands covers an area of ​​only 14.5 square kilometers, but nevertheless, the thickness of these sand accumulations is quite large, about one and a half hundred meters.

Having experienced these turbulences, the wind rushes further to the east. Rising to the nearby pass, air jets uplift the sand and pull it up the slope. The sand is drawn out in the direction of the prevailing winds in a strip narrowing to the east. This strip stretches upwards for almost 500 meters and goes from the main massif of sands not along the lowest and widest main valley, but in a straight line to the pass, while climbing a rather steep slope.

So, high in the mountains of the "Roof of the World" and "Foot of the Sun" - the snow-covered Pamir - there was a corner of the sandy desert! A corner in which nature from beginning to end carries out the entire process of formation and development of sands! First, the exit to the surface of igneous rocks, their destruction temperature fluctuations, the formation of scree, crushing it into sandy grains and, finally, powerful heaps of sands blown away by the wind. And not only blown away, but also reared up by him into dune pyramids with a height of a twenty-story house, collected in a sandy relief typical of deserts!

All these processes took place within a comparatively short geological time interval. However, the strength and power of these processes are such that everything that takes thousands of years in the deserts, in the tract of upland sands, took place literally ten times faster.

It is important, however, that this destruction of rocks and their transformation into sands is not an exceptional phenomenon, but, on the contrary, is very typical for all dry high-mountain regions. On the greatest uplands of the world - Tibet - there are many such sandy tracts. In the Pamirs and Tien Shan, sands rarely accumulate in massifs due to the conditions of the relief, but they form there constantly and continuously for several million years. Lake Kara-Kul, located in the Pamirs in the permafrost region, is bordered from the east by solid sands. And almost every grain of sand of these highlands, formed under the influence of sudden changes in temperature, melting and freezing of water, soon becomes the property of scree, and then the mountain stream. That is why the rivers of the highlands carry gigantic amounts of sand to the foothill plains. This is where up to 8 kilograms of sand comes from in the Amu Darya during floods, and on average it carries 4 kilograms of sand in every cubic meter of water. But there is a lot of water in it, and in just one year it brings a quarter of a cubic kilometer of sediment to the shores of the Aral Sea. Is it a lot? It turned out that if we take the duration of the Quaternary period as 450 thousand years, consider that during this period the Amu Darya carried out the same amount of sand, and distribute it mentally in a uniform layer over all those areas where the mighty Amu wandered during this time, then the average thickness only its Quaternary deposits would be equal to three quarters of a kilometer. But the removal of sand was carried out by the river before, in the second half of the Tertiary period. That is why there is nothing surprising in the fact that in its former mouths, in southwestern Turkmenistan, oil wells penetrate this stratum of sands and clays to a depth of up to 3.5 kilometers.

Now it is clear to us that most of the foothill sandy deserts of Asia are the brainchild of the highlands. Such are the Kara-Kums, which are the result of the destruction of the high-mountainous Pamirs. Such are many areas of the Kyzyl-Kum, formed as a result of the destruction of the Tien Shan. These are the sands of the Balkhash region carried from the Tien Shan by the river Ili. This is the greatest sandy desert of the world Takla Makan, the sands of which are deposited by rivers from the Himalayas, the Pamirs, the Tien Shan and Tibet. Such is the great Indian Thar desert, created by the sediments of the Indus River flowing from the Hindu Kush.

A sharp change in temperature in the deserts and in the highlands destroys rocks and creates sands. Above - flaky layers of sandstones in Western Turkmenistan. Below - dune sands in the Nagara-Kum tract in the Pamirs, formed from the destruction of granites. (Photo by the author and G. V. Arkadiev.)

Material about sands and deserts (rather thinking aloud), based on the data that we have today ...

(From the Arabic "sahra" - desert)

Tell me, where do we have the most sand?

That's right .. under water, in the oceans and seas. Deserts, this is the bottom of the seas and oceans. Yes Yes exactly. As a result of movements earth's crust something went down and something went up. But this process took more than one thousand years.

As you know, deserts cover about a third of the planet's land mass. But, it happens that the desert that you see, in fact, is not a desert at all. Today you will learn about several such places on our planet.

Sahara

Almost the entire north of Africa is occupied by the world's largest desert - the Sahara. Now its territory extends over 9 million square kilometers, and the semi-desert Sahel adjoins from the south. Temperatures in the Sahara reach the extreme 60 degrees, and yet there is life there. Moreover, life in this territory was not only hidden from bright sun behind every grain of sand, leaving freedom only at night. Even 2700 - 3000 years ago, forests grew in this place, rivers flowed and the windows of countless lakes shone.

And about 9,000 years ago, a very humid climate prevailed in the Sahara desert. And for several thousand years it has been home to people, as well as many steppe and forest animals.

Photographer Mike Hetwer has kindly shared his photographs showing what remains of the era of the "green" Sahara desert. (© Mike Hetwer).

During an expedition to find dinosaur fossils in the state of Niger in West Africa, photographer Mike Hetwer discovered a large burial containing hundreds of skeletons from two different cultures - Kiffian and Tenerian, each of which is thousands of years old. Hunting tools, ceramics and bones of large animals and fish were also found.

An aerial view of the desert and the barely visible tents of a small group of archaeologists excavating. Looking at this photo, it is hard to believe that a few thousand years ago it was the "green" Sahara.

This is a 6,000-year-old skeleton found that, for unknown reasons, had the middle finger in its mouth. At the time of the excavation, the temperature in this part of the Sahara desert was +49 degrees, far from the temperature in the "green" Sahara 9,000 years ago.

Six thousand years ago, a mother and two children died at the same time and were buried here holding each other's hands. Someone took care of them, as scientists discovered that flowers had been placed on top of the bodies. It is not yet known how they died.

This 8,000 year old giraffe rock art is considered one of the finest petroglyphs in the world. The giraffe is depicted with a leash on its nose, which implies a certain level domestication of these animals.

Interestingly, ancient sands can store information. Optical luminescence studies of the sand, produced in a US laboratory, proved that the bottom of this lake was formed 15,000 years ago during the last ice age.

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Most deserts formed on geological platforms and occupy the most ancient land areas. Deserts located in Asia, Africa and Australia are usually located at altitudes from 200-600 meters above sea level, V Central Africa And North America - at an altitude of 1000 meters above sea level. Most deserts border or are surrounded by mountains. Deserts are located either next to young high mountain systems(Karakum and Kyzylkum, deserts of Central Asia - Alashan and Ordos, South American deserts), or - with ancient mountains (Northern Sahara).

Something unpleasant, perhaps even the terrible word "desert" itself.

She does not leave any hope, resolutely declaring - there is nothing here and cannot be. Here is emptiness, desert. Indeed, if we sum up even those brief information about the desert that has already been reported, the picture will not be very cheerful. There is no water, several tens of millimeters of rain or snow falls annually, while other regions receive an average of many meters of moisture per year. In the summer it is sizzling heat, forty or even more degrees, and in the shade, and it’s even scary to pronounce it in the sun - the sand heats up to eighty. And mostly very bad soils - sands, cracked clay, limestone, gypsum, salt crusts. For many hundreds of kilometers the desert stretches, no matter how much, it would seem, neither go nor go, all the same lifeless land.

It is hot, there is no water, there is no one for tens of kilometers .. But it is still beautiful.

The insane stuffiness subsides only at night, when the sands cool down.

Sand - well, what is it? - silicon dioxide, that's what it is. Sand from the bottom of the ancient sea - ocean. I don't even know how long the desert was the sea. It's hard to say exactly. There is some kind of panic with dates today. But 12,000 years ago, there was a completely different world here. The drawings on the walls of the cave depict a tropical paradise where people hunted antelopes, hippos, elephants. An abundance of food, thousands of hunters and gatherers - that was what was in this blooming savannah, but not only here.

Photographs taken as proof spaceship Shuttle in different ranges, which show that riverbeds that once stretched throughout the Sahara Desert are buried under the sand.

North Africa was inhabited.

Where did this green world come from? The answer lies outside of this place. The earth's orbit is not stable. In ancient times, a slight deviation of the Earth from its axis caused global changes. One hundred thousand years ago, the deviation was only one degree, but for the Earth this had a disastrous effect. The territory moved a little closer to the sun. And that changed everything...

Five thousand years ago, the earth's axis again deviated from its trajectory, which led to disastrous consequences for the Sahara. The deadly sands returned to the place where life flourished. For the people living here, this was the beginning of the apocalypse. Those who managed to survive moved to the western part of the desert, where the last patch of vegetation remained - the Nile River.

This single source of water supported the lives of the millions of people who settled on its banks. These were the ancient Egyptians. Their great civilization originated as a result of catastrophic climate change.

The Sahara is the largest and hottest desert. Theoretically, there are more than a million trillion grains of sand. This sand seems ordinary, but to the experts it is unique. Sandboarding champions claim that this is the "slipperiest" sand. In addition, it is the oldest sand on the planet.

225 million years ago, the Sahara was much larger.

She was part of a planet that looked completely different than it does now. Almost the entire surface of the world consisted of one continent. It was the ancestor of the Sahara Desert. A huge part of the land area of ​​​​30 million square kilometers was called Pangea. Today, evidence of the existence of this ancient desert is found all over the world, even in places where you least expect to see it.

In this lifeless environment, scientists have made one of the most amazing discoveries throughout the history of the Sahara. A huge ocean in the middle of the desert. There used to be rivers and lakes, but that was a long time ago. The Sahara Desert was much larger. The discovery began with the discovery of one of the largest creatures on the planet. It was the skeleton of a paralithitan, the largest dinosaur. It weighed approximately 40-45 tons. In addition, irrefutable evidence of the existence of marine life in the vast desert space was found: shark teeth, turtle shells. 95 million years ago, a huge ocean stretched across the territory of North Africa. Scientists call it the Tethys Sea.

Paralytitan

How much did such a giant need to eat in order to maintain himself ..? This indicates that there was plenty of green food in this area.

100 million years ago, the continents were still moving in different directions. Africa gradually separated from the rest of the world.

As soon as it separated, 80 trillion liters of water burst into the vacant space. Water flooded the earth and formed new huge seas.

On the coast, life flourished and for more than 60 million years, the Sahara remained one of the greenest and most fertile places on Earth. But the same forces that gave birth to the Tennis Sea also destroyed it.

As Africa moved across the globe, the continent experienced tremendous tectonic stress. In the blink of an eye, the Tethys Sea flowed north, towards mediterranean sea. A rapid stream of water formed. Its power cut a channel through the stone, creating a fissure like the Grand Canyon.

This cleft alone will create something that will change the course of human history. The landscape of the Sahara Desert is varied. The line between life and death is very thin. But even here, among 5.5 million km² of sand, there is something amazing - the most fertile arable land.

The banks of the Nile stretch for 3 km. This thin strip provides a population of 1 million people. But mighty river exists here only due to the clash of the forces of nature, which occurred a thousand kilometers to the south of here. Here monsoons and rains equatorial Africa moving south to meet the snowmelt of the Ethiopian highlands.

Each year, billions of gallons of water overflow the banks of the Nile, flooding the country with valuable silt and minerals, some of nature's best fertilizers.

Outside this area, there is a struggle for survival. Only a few plant species have adapted to desert life. The palm trees have wide, shallow roots that need very little moisture. The grass has thinned leaves, which reduces the evaporation of the precious liquid. Even man has adapted to live in these harsh conditions.

Nomads live in this desert. To survive, they use unique geological structures - oases. Wonderful sources of water hiding among the dunes. In these natural reservoirs there is a liquid that has accumulated here for several million years. This is the most effective method storage of water on the planet.

The secret of oases in the unique sand of the Sahara. Usually, water is quickly absorbed, penetrating deep into the earth through the sand. But the Sahara desert has the smoothest and roundest sand on the planet. Wind-blown for millions of years, the grains of sand are compressed and compacted. This retains moisture and water is not absorbed anywhere.

The Egyptian oases have enough water to supply the Nile River for 500 years. These oases bring the desert to life, but human intervention upsets the delicate balance of desert life.

Once people move here, construction, pollution and Agriculture, destroy the upper layers of the soil, they disappear. Human civilization is increasing pressure on environment changing its balance.

Now the desert is increasing by 80,000 km² per year. This growth is dangerous.

Light sand in the desert reflects heat into the atmosphere. The atmosphere is getting hotter. Clouds are more difficult to form and without rain, the desert becomes even drier. The deadly reflector is a global issue as these events affect people beyond North Africa. Everything that happens in the Sahara affects people living thousands of miles away.

The history of the Sahara is more than just the history of the North African desert - it is the history of our planet. We are just beginning to understand the significance of the complex interconnections that take place in remote parts of the world. But the Sahara plays a central role in Earth's fragile ecology. The clue lies in its location and life-giving properties that can change the whole world.

So where does the sand come from in such quantities?

The origin of deserts can be found out from the geology, hydrogeology and paleogeography of the region, historical information, archaeological work. Satellite images of the Sahara show light-coloured sand spreading in the direction of the prevailing winds from dry valleys. And this is not surprising. Because the main source of sand in the desert is alluvial deposits, river sediments. ( Alluvium (lat. alluviō - "alluvium", "alluvium") - uncemented deposits)

How is sand formed? (Traveling grains of sand)

The ancient Greek philosopher-mathematician Pythagoras somehow puzzled his students by asking them how many grains of sand there are on Earth.

In one of the tales told by Scheherazade to King Shahriyar during 1001 nights, it is said that "the troops of the kings were countless, like grains of sand in the desert." It is difficult to calculate how many grains of sand on Earth or even in the desert. But on the other hand, it is quite easy to establish the approximate number of them in one cubic meter of sand. Having calculated, we find that in such a volume the number of grains of sand is determined by astronomical figures of 1.5-2 billion pieces.

Thus, the comparison of Scheherazade was at least unsuccessful, because if the fairy-tale kings needed as many soldiers as there are grains in only one cubic meter of sand, then for this the entire male population would have to be called under arms the globe. Yes, and that would not be enough.

Where did myriad grains of sand come from?

To answer this question, let's take a closer look at this interesting breed.

The vast continental expanses of the Earth are covered with sands. They can be found on the coasts of rivers and seas, in the mountains and on the plains. But especially a lot of sand has accumulated in the deserts. Here it forms mighty sandy rivers and seas.

If we fly in an airplane over the deserts of Kyzylkum and Karakum, we will see an immense sandy sea. Its entire surface is covered with mighty waves, as if frozen "and petrified in the midst of an unprecedented storm that engulfed colossal spaces." In the deserts of our country, sandy seas cover an area exceeding 56 million hectares.

Looking at the sand through a magnifying glass, you can see thousands of sand grains of various sizes and shapes. Some of them have a rounded shape, others differ in irregular outlines.

Using a special microscope, you can measure the diameter of individual grains of sand. The largest of them can be measured even with a regular ruler with millimeter divisions. Such "coarse" grains have a diameter of 0.5-2 mm. Sand, consisting of particles of such sizes, is called coarse-grained. The other part of the sand grains has a diameter of 0.25-0.5 mm. Sand consisting of such particles is called medium-grained.

Finally, the smallest grains of sand have a diameter of 0.25 to 0.05. mm. It can only be measured using optical instruments. If such grains of sand predominate in the sands, then they are called fine-grained and fine-grained.

How are sand grains formed?

Geologists have established that their origin has a long and complex history. The progenitors of sand are massive rocks: granite, gneiss, sandstone.

The workshop in which the process of turning these rocks into sand accumulations takes place is nature itself. Day after day, year after year, rocks are exposed to weathering. As a result, even such a strong rock as granite breaks up into fragments, which are more and more crushed. Part of the weathering products dissolves and is carried away. The minerals most resistant to the action of atmospheric agents remain, mainly quartz - silicon oxide, one of the most stable compounds on the surface of the Earth. The sands may contain feldspars, micas and some other minerals in much smaller quantities. The story of grains of sand does not end there. For the formation of large clusters, it is necessary that the grains turn into travelers.

(I will say right away that this version of scientists does not suit me - scientists are dark, oh they are dark)

This one doesn't work either...

"Where does the sand come from?"- The short answer is that grains of sand are pieces of ancient mountains.

But this one seems to fit:

Desert sand is the result of the tireless work of water and wind. It comes mainly from ancient oceans and seas. For millions of years, waves have rubbed coastal rocks and stones into sand. During the development of the Earth, some seas disappeared, and in their place were huge masses of sand. Winds blowing in the desert separate light river sand from pebbles and often carry it over long distances, and sandy mounds are formed there. Sand may also come from the sandbars of rivers that used to flow through deserts, or we are talking about rocks that have weathered and turned into sand.

(Just let's imagine how long it takes to "grind" the rocks so that there is so much sand?)

For the reader to understand where I'm getting at, here's a hint:

Sand is time.

Time of the planet Earth. (since its inception, foundation) +/- (like all watches in the world)

We can say that every grain of sand has its own unique story. Only here is the key to pick up in order to get data from this sand array.

# - If you understand that water was a primary or secondary substance when our world was created, then another substance, the firmament (stone, rock) interacted with water, rubbed, rolled, along the bottom of the seas, oceans, rushed by the wind ..

How much time (millions of years) did it take for water to make a grain of sand out of pieces, fragments of silicon, granite? - and you try to imagine ...

Another version (not mine)

Origin of the Sahara desert and its sand:

Sand in air currents, especially sand carried from the African Sahara across the Atlantic to South America, helps support an astonishing diversity of life in the jungle and the Amazon. And what happened to the Sahara desert, which in rock art portrayed as a territory of lakes, rivers, boats and animals?

From lakes and meadows with hippos and giraffes to a vast desert, North Africa's sudden geographic transformation 5,000 years ago is one of the most dramatic climate changes on the planet. The transformation took place almost simultaneously in the entire northern part of the continent.

Scientists write that the Sahara turned into a desert, almost instantly!

Transformation of North Africa 5,000 years ago is one of the most dramatic climate changes on the planet.

If the Sahara turned into a huge desert a few thousand years ago or so, what event contributed to this - turned the substance into sand or led to the release of huge amount sand in this area?

The research team has tracked the region's wet and dry periods over the past 30,000 years by analyzing sediment samples off the coast of Africa. Such deposits consist, in part, of dust blown off the continent over millennia: the more dust accumulated over a certain period, the drier the continent was.

Based on the measurements they made, the researchers found that the Sahara emitted five times less dust during the African Humid Period than it does today. Their results, which show much more significant climate change in Africa than previously thought, will be published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Theories on the origin and formation of sand

The origin and formation of most sand on Earth and in the Sahara comes down to:
Natural - due to erosion or influenced by the atmosphere
Extraterrestrial - massive sand release during planetary interactions (scenario described in Velikovsky's book Worlds in Collision)
Extraterrestrial - Earth's capture of debris/sand from solar system after planetary catastrophes like the capture of satellites.
Creation/transformation of matter by the phenomena of the Electric Universe such as cometary and planetary discharges in the solar system
Formation of the Electric Universe by local geological phenomena?
Bringing from the bowels of the planet (mud storms, etc.)
Still being formed in real time as a result of the phenomena of Electrical Geology in the Electrical Universe?

And here's another interesting suggestion:

The theory of the origin of sand in the context of the Electric Universe

The theory is that Mars has been involved in hundreds of catastrophic close encounters with Earth in historical times.

Immanuel Velikovsky with his theory and book Worlds in Collision: planets, satellites and comets electrically discharge and explode.

Velikovsky's ideas about catastrophes and geology, described in the book Earth in Revolution.

When there is a highly charged object such as a comet heading towards the earth, there will be an electrical discharge between the two bodies prior to its impact, the magnitude of which will be sufficient to destroy the incoming object - thus, everything will end with a hail of sand and the like.

During famous Chicago fire the entire territory of the United States was illuminated by strange lights, accompanied by falling sand and similar phenomena. It happened during the disappearance comet Biela. (1871)

Is it possible that the Earth is covered in debris from recent cosmic catastrophes? Could debris such as large boulders, rocks, rocks, dust and sand that are believed to have originated on Earth actually be extraterrestrial in origin?

Countless tons of rocks bombard the Earth's atmosphere, fragmenting and breaking down into tiny particles of sand. Falling to Earth, they cover vast areas that were once green and fertile lands, turning them into the deserts that we see today.

This and much more suggests that the catastrophic events of the past had a real basis, but were transformed into a kind of symbolic clues. It is also important that our present time, quite possibly, may soon also become only a symbolic hint for the future generation of people.

The Earth is like a magnet, it attracts everything that flies by, in the form of comets, fireballs, asteroids and ... (Well, yes, it’s possible that the version is passable) For millions of years, such an amount of sand could be collected.

And so what do we know?

5,000 years ago, things were different in the Sahara. Greenery was everywhere.. Animals that needed grass, and... Carved in stone (see picture) There is also a sailboat. That is, there was water on which boats floated.

A grandiose event in its scale took place on Earth about 5000 years ago. It's hard to imagine what it was. The term is not as short as ... It remains only to guess .. (build various versions) from space to ..

There is no water, the sailboats crumbled into dust, the animals went closer to water and food. And only sand in an incredible amount, quietly keeps a secret...

Where did the sand come from in our Shibaev quarry? Imagine, although it is very difficult to imagine, you need to try to imagine that many, many millions of years ago there was not a single grain of sand in the world. But there was also no air, no water, no plants, no animals...

The planet Earth was at a very young (by geological standards) age, and its main attractions were only mountain ranges and volcanoes, spewing hot lava flows. It was the rocks that became the "raw material" for the production of sand.

However, this required our planet to acquire oceans, rivers - what is called the hydrosphere, and air - the atmosphere. Only then did the wind and water set to work. Slowly, over millions of years, they worked on durable granite and other rocks. No wonder there was a saying about a drop that sharpens a stone.

Imagine, pieces broke off from the rocks, large fragments turned into small ones, which in turn broke up into stones, and those into pebbles. Well, pebbles and up to grains of sand, which are already separate indivisible grains of rocks and various minerals.

This happened all over the planet, and on Savina Gora too, which is why so much sand eventually formed at the foot of Savina Gora. Mount Nekhoroshka and Savina Gora have always been adjacent to the Zeleninka River and the Chumlyak River. Water penetrated into the cracks of the mountains and this led to their destruction. Therefore, what breed is more in it. Pink sands are composed of feldspar, red sands are the most sand along the banks of these rivers. Sand, fine-grained loose sedimentary rock, consisting of at least 50% of grains of quartz, feldspars, garnet, tourmaline, topaz of rock fragments 0.05-2 mm in size; contains an admixture of clay particles.

But the Shibaevo sands are green - glauconite, colored in green tones, the intensity of which is determined by the content of the mineral glauconite in the sand.

And I also found out that on the planetthere are places where the sands behave unusually. They are singing.For example, Jebel Nakug (Bell Mountain) on the shores of the Red Sea. It has long been covered with legends. Tourists claim that when you climb to its top, the sand seems to groan under your feet. In the bowels of this mountain, as the inhabitants of the Sinai Peninsula believe, a large monastery lurks. At the appointed hour, its underground bells hum, calling the monks to prayer. And the whole mountain trembles from these powerful sounds.

A similar phenomenon is observed in Chile: in the valley of Copiano rises a large sandy hill El Braiador, which means Howling. “Crying” and “groaning” several hills and in the Californian deserts. And if you go down from Mount Reg Ravan, which is not far from Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, the white sand under your feet makes sounds similar to drumming. The phenomenon of singing sands is quite widespread on our planet. The first "singing" hills are described in written monuments Ancient China. A huge sandy hill 150 meters high served as an object of worship. On the fifth day of the Moon, the feast of the Dragon, the priests climbed it to slide down. During this rapid descent, the sand spoke to them in the voice of the Dragon, predicting the future.

On Lake Baikal there is a beach with singing sand. When you walk on it, tourists describe, it makes a creak. And if you rake the sand with your feet, then the creak turns into a jerky howl. It is almost impossible to distinguish an area with singing sand from a “silent” one by eye. A detailed study showed that the grains of singing sand, as a rule, are round or oval, have the same size, are well “polished” by nature and practically do not contain any impurities, even dust. Researchers studying the singing sands of the Hawaiian Islands found that each of the grains of sand there is pierced by a thin channel open at one end, so the sound could be made by the wind breaking through the tubules? However, there is nothing like this in other singing sands ... There are many hypotheses explaining the nature of the amazing phenomenon. There is, for example, this one: the sound of sand is associated with electrification that occurs when grains of sand rub against each other. However, scientists have not come to a consensus.

Do our Shibaevsky sands sing? I decided to do some experiments at home. Scored on the banks of the river Boy of different colors of stones. Then he broke them with a large nail and hammer, the resulting pieces and grains of sand were different color. Thus, I was convinced that the composition of the sand is different because it consists of different rocks and minerals. The color of the sand depends on what kind of rock it has more. In another experience, I wanted to make sure which rocks and minerals dissolve best. To do this, I dissolved salt, chalk and sand from a quarry in water. The salt dissolved completely, the chalk did not dissolve well, but after a while it precipitated. But the sand from the quarry did not dissolve at all, but remained unchanged at the bottom of the glass. That is, the sand turned out to be the most insoluble and hard, which is why there is so much of it along the banks of rivers and seas.

What can make sounds? To do this, I heated chalk, salt and sand. When salt and chalk were heated, nothing happened, no sounds were heard. But with strong heating of the sand, a slight crackling was heard and some grains of sand “jumped” and changed their place.This means that our Shibaev sands can also make sounds!

I tried to understand the question of why the sands sing and made the following conclusions:

grains of sand are composed of very hard and different rocks. In hot countries, the sand may crackle when heated. And when there is a lot of sand, the sound seems to be singing. And therefore, if warming occurs in the Urals, then our Shibaev sands will sing!

For many, it is no secret that the north of ancient Africa in the past was a fairly fertile area. With a large number of rivers, both crossing the current territory of the Sahara desert, and flowing into the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic.

Map 1688 Clickable.

Could the cartographers of the Middle Ages have been wrong in drawing this? Or did they all write off from one more ancient source?
But whether this North Africa, unknown to us, existed in ancient times, or in times closer to us, is not so important yet. Moreover, it is difficult to say when such a change in climate and the accumulation of such an amount of sand occurred. I will dwell on the question - where does so much sand come from in the Sahara. And how did it happen, what kind of processes took place, what is now a lifeless desert in this place?

Official science says that the Sahara - in the past the bottom of a huge ancient ocean. Even whale skeletons are found there:

excavations in the Eastern Sahara.
Thirty-seven million years ago, a 15-meter flexible beast with a huge mouth and sharp teeth died and sank to the bottom of the ancient Tethys ocean.

And they came up with the age of the whale and the name of the ancient ocean is. If I dwell on this fact in more detail, then I have the following question for the scientific world: over 37 million years, how thick should the ground cover accumulate over the skeleton? Officially, the soil growth rate averages 1-2 mm per year. It turns out that in 37 million years the skeleton should be at a depth of at least 37 km! Even allowing for various erosions, erosion and swelling of rocks, uplift of the earth's crust - with such an age, it is impossible to find skeletons on the surface.
In Egypt, there is even a Valley of the Whales, which is included in the UNESCO list of sites with the status of "World Heritage":

Wadi al-Khitan: The Valley of the Whales in Egypt. They write that even the contents of the stomachs of some samples have been preserved. So, not everyone is in a state of skeletons, but in a mummified or petrified one. Of course, they won't show us.

Remains of other animals found in Wadi al-Hitan - sharks, crocodiles, sawfish, turtles and rays

So how could whale skeletons end up on the desert surface? Following this path, and the skeletons of dinosaurs - not terry antiquity in (at least) 65 million years. Their skeletons are also found on the surface of other deserts, in the Gobi, Atacama (Chile), for example.

Many readers probably already guess about my answer. Kita (or his remains) was brought here by a flood, water from the ocean. At the source link, you can look at the photo (it’s small, I didn’t upload it) of a shell rock, in the same place in the desert.

Below I want to show some photos of satellite images from the Google Earth program:


The territory of the Sahara is not all covered with sand. But we are presented with the image of this desert: solid sands, dunes with rare rocky massifs.

For example, there are often such plateaus with a rocky desert landscape:

Libya. Link

From a height, these places appear to be such a spot-hill, surrounded by sands:

And somewhere endless sands, dunes:

But where did so much sand come from in most of the Sahara? In addition to the official version of the “bottom of the Tethys ocean”, there are fantastic ones, like the version of V. Kondratov in his films: Fabric of the Universe. Mine And

In his opinion, all this sand is dumps from the processing of underwater ores by giant alien mechanisms and the dumping of soil from them. aircraft. I will not defend or refute this version, but put forward my own, within the framework of one of the topics of this blog - the flood and its manifestations.

First, let's see some scenery of the Sahara that few people know about:

Egyptian desert

Do you think it's somewhere in North America? You are mistaken, this is the Sahara, landscapes in Mali. 21° 59" 1.68" N 5° 0" 35.15" W

This is Chad. 16° 52" 24.00" N 21° 35" 31.00" E

There are a lot of such remains

Mali. Link

These rock masses are composed of sedimentary rocks. Their tops are flat

This is what the place looks like from above:

These are remnants approaching the surface. It can be seen that these are remains, islands from the ancient surface. What happened to the rest of the territory? And the rest of the soil was carried away by the flood when the wave passed through the continent. All washed away soil is the sands of the Sahara. Soil, rocks, washed by water erosion of the flow grain of sand to grain of sand.


IN this place there are signs of erosion. But they are parallel, as if washed by streams of water. Maybe that's how it is?


And here, too, the same "furrows" going to the northeast (or southwest). Link

Of course, a version of their formation is possible, as the deposition of erosion products along the wind rose.

But when approaching, it is clear that only water erosion could make these furrows in the rock:


Erosion marks on a rocky hill

This is my conclusion about the origin of the sands of the Sahara desert.
But in the process of creating this material, another conclusion emerged. It is possible that mud, mudflow masses appeared from the depths in the course of one event. But more on that next time...