Geological history of the Sahara – Could it have been Atlantis?
Horses in Giza Desert by Anna Serio. Public Domain photo.
For the last couple of days, I’ve been wondering if the Sahara desert could have been Atlantis? It turns out that at one time the greatest desert on earth was under the sea.
Atlantis was supposed to have plummeted into the sea around 9000 B.C. according to Plato.
Therefore, the question is, if Atlantis sunk under the sea 11,000 years ago, could the Sahara have risen from the sea sometime after that? According to an online Encyclopedia of the Earth article:
“Only a few thousand years ago the Sahara was significantly wetter, . . .”
Then, the next question is: Was the Sahara significantly wetter a few thousand years ago because of greater precipitation or because it had risen from the sea?
The article goes on to say that, in truth, the Sahara had once been under the sea.
“During the Mesozoic much of North Africa was under water and marine deposits were deposited.”
The Mesozoic includes the time the dinosaurs ruled the earth and ended 65 million years ago.
Therefore, as much as I’d to have discovered something really exciting–that the Sahara could have been Atlantis risen from the depths of the sea--it is not so, since the land of the Sahara rose long before Atlantis sank.
It was an interesting theory, but it doesn’t hold much water (couldn’t help myself).
