Sahara, or commonly the Sahara Desert, refers to the world’s largest subtropical desert that exists in the northern regression line of the African continent. Climatologically, Antarctica and the Arctic are also included in the desert, making it the third largest desert in the world. The area reaches 9.4 million km에, covering most of North Africa, and the boundary created racial and cultural differences between sub-Saharan Africa and north-Saharan Africa.
Sahara overview.
In fact, the word Sahara itself is a vocabulary from Sahara, which means desert in Arabic. However, since it has already become a proper noun, the expression Sahara Desert cannot be regarded as a double word. This is because the Korean word Sahara, which is based on Arabic حرءءء, refers only to specific deserts in northern Africa, not all deserts. In the region, it is called As Sahara Al-Cubra to distinguish it from other deserts, which means “great desert” and “the Great Desert.”
The exact area of the Sahara Desert varies depending on the measurement, but it ranges from about 9.4 million km,, as small as 9.06 million km에서 to as large as 10 million km에. Based on the former, this is larger than the size of 48 states on the mainland of the United States except Alaska and Hawaii, and remains the size of the entire Ural Mountains western Europe.
Surrounded by the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean, there is the Atlas Mountains in the northwest. The Sahara Desert is often reminiscent of a vast sandy desert, but it is only about 20% of the actual desert area, and most of it is occupied by rocky deserts. It was first created 2.5 million years ago, but thousands of years ago, a large meadow was created for a while. The average annual temperature seems normal at 27°C, but it is meaningless because it has an extreme daily temperature difference of nearly 12°C in winter, 5°C to 8°C at night, and even 3°C in severe cases. For this reason, nomads in the desert sometimes wear fur leather (mainly sheepskin) clothes in winter, even though they are the land of patriotic martyrs. It is used for insulation during the day and for insulation because it gets cold at night.
Sahara climate and environment.
The north extends almost to the coastline except for parts of the Mediterranean coast, the scales of the Atlas Mountains, and the Egyptian Delta, and the southern boundary (Sahil in Arabic) is gradually expanding into desertification. Compared to 1920, the size has already expanded to as little as 10% and as much as 16%, but the natural impact and global warming caused by humans are large.
In terms of the proportion of dry areas, Libya (99%) and Egypt (98%) have only deserts. The desert where Africa’s largest agricultural country, the Sudanese Republic, is located is also called the Nubian Desert. It is almost connected to the Sinai Peninsula and the Rubal-Hali Desert to Iran and the Indus region.
Opinions are divided over the time when the current Sahara was created. This is because deserts have been formed in their present place millions of years ago, but the Sahara Desert has been transformed into grasslands even in a very short period of time due to climate change. During the last ice age, which lasted from about 70,000 to 80,000 years ago to 12,000 years ago, deserts stretched 400 km south of now, and deserts stretched across Syria, Iraq, and Arabian Peninsula due to low sea levels. However, about 15,000 years ago (8500 B.C.), when the ice age ended and sea level soared [10 B.C., the dry desert was briefly turned into a meadow due to sudden monsoon rain in North Africa.# As a result, the Sahara Desert, the best holocene period, changed to the savanna climate at once. In fact, during this period, a river was temporarily formed in the middle of the Sahara Desert, and petroglyphs depicting elephants, rhinos, lions, and giraffes remain in southern Algeria, Libya, and northern Nigeria. Representative ruins are the Akakus petroglyphs in Libya. # Also, the current Sahel area and the upper Nile area quickly changed from dry to wetlands, and the climate changed to a suitable place for humans to live. Thus, about 7,000 human groups continued their nomadic culture in the current Sahara area, but the monsoon climate gradually cut off, starting with Egypt around 5300 BC, as the optimum holocene period ended and the Earth’s temperature gradually decreased. As the desert climate spread again, the Sahara Desert revived, and humans living in the grasslands flocked to the Oasis and Nile rivers, reducing their living areas. The time when it was completely dry as it is now was 3500 BC, consistent with the time when the early Egyptian civilization was formed.
Depending on when you view the starting point, the Sahara Desert may be formed millions of years ago or 7,300 years ago. Opinions are also divided among scholars. Although there was a period of desert disappearance for about 3,000 years, this is geologically only in a moment, and before that, a wider desert was formed than it is now. Some hypotheses say that the expansion of the Sahara Desert affected the formation of Egyptian civilization, and vice versa, that North African agricultural culture influenced the expansion of the Sahara Desert. Originally, until the Roman period, North Africa had a very developed agriculture, so there were several highly developed countries such as Carthage, and only on the outskirts of the Sahara Desert, where desertification progressed, the Bedouins, a nomadic race, lived under these countries. These North African civilizations developed agriculture from Carthage to the days of the Arab Empire in the Middle Ages, but agriculture was pushed out as the Bedouins took control of the region and the Bedouans took the center stage. Sometimes some say that desertification accelerated under the influence of the Arab Empire after the fall of the Roman Empire, which is a hypothesis without any basis.
In some parts of North Africa, there are desertified places beyond the Atlas Mountains to the coastline. However, not all North Africa regions have become desertified, and forests still remain in parts of Algeria and Morocco, and olives, grapes, oranges, and wheat farming are actively underway. Although there is no water, the soil itself is fertile. It is said that farming is good near the oasis or in places where waterways have been rebuilt in modern times. And this soil delivers nutrient-filled soil to the Amazon jungle across the sea in the wind. If the Sahara is destroyed, the Amazon is said to be a grassland. As such, the dust created in the Sahara crosses the Atlantic Ocean to the west (#) and sometimes crosses the Mediterranean to the European continent, just as huge soil dust in the Gobi Desert in early spring in Korea blows into yellow dust. Because of this, “red snow” falls in Paris in January. If you filter melted snow from the filter paper and look at it under a microscope, you can see a lot of quartz (11), which looks clear that it came over from the Sahara.
It also snows in Sahara about once every 10 years. In February 1979, snow fell for 30 minutes, and some snow fell in 2005, 2012, and 2015. In December 2016 and January 2018, the frequency of snow falling gradually increases, raising concerns that it may be caused by climate change. Article 1, article 2. There are also places in Sahara where earthquakes occur frequently like Haiti. Representatively, Algeria is quite famous as an earthquake-prone area. In addition, floods also occur occasionally with the probability of seeing each other once in a lifetime. When such floods occur, rivers suddenly form in the desert, usually disappearing again in a short period of time to a few days, and the spot remains smooth as if it were a road. This dry river topography is called Wadi, and it is often used as a transportation route because it is a terrain that can be traveled in sandy or rocky deserts.
Sahara travel culture.
When classifying Africa geographically and culturally, it is often based on this desert. The north of Sahara is classified as the Middle East in a broad sense and differs greatly from the image of Africa commonly thought of in Korea, such as Arabic and Islam. There are many people who eat Mediterranean cuisine and are close to white people. It is sub-Saharan Africa that matches Africa’s stereo type, where race composition is centered on black and jungle is thick. This is largely due to the fact that northern Sahara has been greatly influenced by the Western Asian region/Islamic world since ancient times, and cultural/human exchanges have been almost impossible thanks to this large and beautiful desert.
The Sahara Marathon exists as a sports event. # Regardless of whether you walk or run for seven days, you must somehow reach the designated checkpoint within time, regardless of the means except fouls. It is a competition full of participants from all over the world even though it is very difficult and you have to be prepared to die. In addition, the participation fee is quite high, and if you win, you will receive some prize money, but it is about 30 million won in Korean money, so it is not a large amount considering the risk. In addition to the Sahara, there are other similar marathons such as the Gobi Desert Marathon, the Antarctic Polar Marathon, and the South American Desert Marathon.