NOVEL NEXT Chapter 806: Starting from Continental Drift...
Five o'clock in the afternoon.
It was the hottest time of the day, and Bi Fang and the camels were taking shelter from the heat under a rocky outcrop.
"The best times for travel in a day are from four in the morning to eleven, and then from four in the afternoon until seven. You could also travel through the night, but I've said before that it's the peak time for animal activity, so it's more dangerous. Besides, in the pitch black of night, the mental strain is usually greater,"
"And people need to rest. We're not camels. We can't go on for days without eating or drinking. Nights in the Sahara are very cold, and in the cold, you want to sleep as much as possible. Overexerting yourself will just make you lose heat that you won't get back."
"Don't worry about never waking from your sleep, unless you're completely exhausted. Before you freeze solid, the cold will wake you up."
Bi Fang sipped his water, letting his forearms hang naturally, resting on his knees, squinting as he watched the fierce sun outside the shadow; heat waves and desert were everywhere.
If it was a group outing, following along with a big crowd and a caravan of camels, one would naturally see the magnificent sights of nature, liberating one's view and spirit. But if you're alone, wouldn't your heart be filled with nothing but despair?
Bi Fang tightened the cap on his water bottle and gestured to the vast desert before him, "Can you imagine? The Sahara, now full of sand dunes, used to be a dense forest."
[I can imagine; it's crossed my mind.]
[Show some respect, Master Fang doesn't want to see that kind of reaction.]
[Italian pasta should be mixed with No. 42 concrete.]
[Although I can't believe it, I'm not an idiot. As soon as Old Fang said those words, I knew, as outrageous as it sounds, it's true. (Dog's head)]
[Reason tells me to accept it.]
The comments were always bizarre, but Bi Fang, long accustomed to them, didn't let them interrupt his narrative.
"Under the influence of the northeast trade winds, every year, the Sahara loses billions of tons of dust, the majority of which settles in the Atlantic Ocean,"
"Through the study of ancient sediments, scientists found that over the past several hundred thousand years, Sahara's climate has been regularly switching between dry and wet, with a cycle of over 20,000 years."
"And the ancient murals found in the Sahara Desert also confirmed this phenomenon from another angle. These murals featured many animals like horses, water buffaloes, elephants, giraffes—all known to be unable to survive in the desert, especially horses."
"About 40,000 to 20,000 years ago, the Sahara region was in a wet climate period with lush vegetation, crisscrossing rivers, numerous lakes, and frequent floods."
"Then from 20,000 to 10,000 years ago, the climate became dry, the vegetation scarce, and rivers ran dry to become dry river valleys."
"After this dry period, the climate once again shifted back to wet. Around 3,500 years BCE, there was abundant rainfall, lush vegetation, full rivers and lakes, and the water area reached its maximum."
"But after that, the fierce winds returned to this land, turning the lush forests into grasslands – a paradise for cattle, sheep, antelopes, giraffes, while animals like hippopotamuses, water buffaloes disappeared, and fishing and hunting ceased to exist."
"After 2,000 BCE, with the intensity of the dry climate increasing, grassland animals also left the stage, rivers stopped flowing, lakes shrank, dried up, or disappeared, the vegetation withered and degraded, and the grassland turned completely into desert, forcing many of the grassland animals to leave the historical stage of the Sahara."
"Until now, the Sahara has become the largest and most typical arid region in the tropics."
[Why did it become like this? Is it just the climate, or something else?]
[Environmental destruction?]
[Not necessarily, the Sahara has been like this for a very long time.]
"It isn't environmental degradation, but rather the climate is so because of the contraction of the Tethys Sea."
[What, what?]
[Something I've never heard of before.]
[Is there such a sea on Earth?]
"There used to be."
Bi Fang scooped up a handful of sand, letting it slide slowly through his fingers.
"Due to the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, the continents have always been slowly shifting. 40 million years ago, the African plate wasn't located where we see it today, but had a vast ocean to its north: the Tethys Sea."
"With the moisturizing air from the ocean, Northern Africa at that time didn't have the Sahara Desert, but rather a large oasis."
"However, it was from 40 million years ago that the African plate began to move northward continuously. As time passed, it eventually collided with the European plate. This caused the closure of the Tethys Sea, and the northern part of the African plate rose due to the compression, revealing more land above the sea surface."
"The shrinking of the Tethys Sea not only caused a change in the average climate of North Africa, but it also strengthened the response of the African summer monsoon to orbital variations, subsequently becoming the main factor influencing the extent of the Sahara Desert."
[Something strange flew into the Heavenly Spirit Cover]
[It's like I glimpsed the truth of the world]
[Crap, my brain is starting to grow]
"If the shrinking of the Tethys Sea is the underlying cause, then the precession of the Earth is the direct reason why the climate of the Sahara undergoes regular switching."
"The so-called precession of the Earth refers to the rotation of the Earth's axis of rotation around the axis of the Earth's orbit under the influence of the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. The path of this rotation in space is conical, and it takes approximately 25,700 years to complete one cycle."
"We know that the location on Earth where the sun's rays are directly overhead receives the most solar energy, and as the angle of sunlight increases, the amount of solar energy received decreases."
"The Earth's precession changes the angle of sunlight during the same season on Earth, thereby affecting the distribution of solar energy between the seasons."
"This means that the Earth's precession causes the sunlight energy in the same region on Earth to undergo a regular fluctuation of 'from less to more, and from more to less' in the same season, which directly affects the strength of the summer monsoon in the Sahara region."
"It's actually just about sea breezes and land breezes. If the summer monsoon is weak, the sea breeze is weak, and insufficient moist marine air enters the land, leading to gradual aridification."
[Damn it, I've never learned any of this...]
[Be confident, high school geography doesn't teach this]
[If I were still in high school, well, excuse me, even if I were in high school I couldn't say much about this topic.]
The audience was left stupefied.
This was something that one might not clearly understand without specialized study, from continental drift to climate change.
"How does this guy know so much?"
Riding a camel and looking at his phone, Mugalen from the Egyptian Camel Team had a constipated expression.
Is this something a person should know?
Bi Fang rifled through his backpack, checking his supplies.
The water resource was still plentiful, and the camels carried a few desert gourds for replenishment, enough to last at least five days, but the food was getting scarce, with only a few pieces of dried fish left.
The food from before was mostly what remained after catching some fish in the latter half of the crossing at Nemo Point, and after these few days, it was nearly gone.
Looking up at his surroundings, the Gobi had completely turned into an endless desert.
Pulling out a piece of dried fish, Bi Fang stuffed it into his mouth and chewed dryly while watching the slowly setting sun.
"We need to build a shelter now. We'll need to find some food tomorrow."