Like the Amazon Rainforest or the Himalayas, Africa’s Sahara Desert is one of the great wonders of the natural world. In the public’s collective consciousness, it’s often seen as a vast, inhospitable region, stretching all the way from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the more temperate Sahel region in the south. So, why would anybody ever want to visit?
Secrets
The Sahara, like the Amazon, is famed for its secrets. In media, the 2005 box office bomb Sahara utilized this idea, telling the tale of an explorer seeking a lost American warship deep within the Desert. It was the fifth movie to carry the Sahara name, with another example including a Humphrey Bogart-starring film from 1919.
James Bond’s 2015 outing Spectre sequestered the base of the villainous Oberhauser (played by Christoph Waltz) in the Sahara, too. Beyond movies, casino game developer Playtech borrows the aesthetics of Arabian Nights for its Sahara Riches Cash Collect™ title, as part of their Mythological and Legends series.
This 5×3 reel slot imagines the Sahara as a place of mysterious kingdoms and peoples. Symbols also echo tropes surrounding the desert’s secret treasures, showing the prevalence of the Sahara in popular culture.
Source: Pexels.
Of course, tropes such as these aren’t far from the truth. The 9.2m km space is growing, according to research from the University of Maryland that recorded a 10% increase in the Sahara’s limits since 1920. With it, the desert’s potential for burying evidence climbs, too.
In a real-life example, an aircraft belonging to missing pilot Dennis Copping reappeared in the Egyptian Sahara in 2012, despite the Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk crash-landing decades earlier in June 1942. The lost army of King Cambyses II of Persia was also found in 2009.
Destroyed by a sandstorm, the now-skeletal troops lay in the sand for 2,500 years. These interesting events demonstrate the historical appeal surrounding the Sahara.
Trans-Sahara Highway
Crossing the Sahara, even today is no small feat. The 4,600km Trans-Sahara Highway offers a vital artery between Algeria and Nigeria but was underdeveloped as recently as 2021. The 12-member OPEC Fund reports that a 225km unpaved section in Nigeria – the Arlit-Assamaka Road – represented the final stage of Highway modernization, fifty years after construction started in 1970.
Inevitably, the Trans-Sahara Highway represents a gateway for travelers to different parts of Africa, and routes to Mali and Chad are under construction. The concept of going off-grid is ill-advised, though, which means that satellites and aerial imaging are the only way to find hidden sites. The trip may also not be suited for people traveling light, but ViralRang has an article on this topic for the determined adventurer.
In Libya, a key historical discovery was the uncovering of the hundreds of fortresses belonging to the Garamantes people (c. 1,000 BC – 700AD) in 2010. The Garamantes occupied small water-producing areas called wadis in the Sahara, building underground pipes to survive. This discovery echoes one in the Amazon Rainforest from the same year when more than 200 “lost” earthworks were detected by satellite near Bolivia.
The re-emergence of the Garamantes points to the fact that the Sahara has always supported life, despite the high temperatures, which can exceed 104 °F in the summer. Additionally, in Egypt, Nabta Playa to the west of Abu Simbel, hides the world’s first set of stones aligned to the stars. This discovery even pre-dates Stone Henge.
King Tutankhamun
However, we are not limited to human history. Arguably, the Richat Structure in Mauritania, an eroded, rocky dome visible from space, is one of the most famous geological structures in the region. NASA’s Earth Observatory website claims that astronauts have been captivated by this “eye”-lookalike since they first went to space.
Elsewhere, the Saharan sands are pock-marked with impact creators, presumably from rocks not of this earth. Kamil Crater in Egypt is the fault of a 5,000-year-old meteorite, while the newly discovered (2020) El Bahr Crater may have an inexplicable link to King Tutankhamun.
A breastplate found in his tomb by archaeologist Howard Carter contained a gem of the rarest mineral on earth – Libyan Desert Silica. Evidence points to this yellowish stone as a tektite, flash-melted glass from a meteor impact.
But was the Sahara always so difficult to live in? Like other places on the earth, the region’s shape and climate have changed many times. It’s only been a desert for 13,000 years, meaning humans already had language when the Sahara still had grass. Scientists report the dryness of the Sahara is influenced by the North African monsoon, which changes position every 20,000 years with the Earth’s axis.
Put another way, the spreading Desert still has plenty of time to overcome a larger part of Africa – although, efforts are underway to stop it, such as the Great Green Wall of trees along the Sahel region.
So, is the Sahara a place you’d like to visit?
