Today we invite you to touch down in Algeria and explore Timgad, a lost Roman city on the edge of the Sahara desert that remained hidden beneath the sand for nearly a thousand years.
Important cities located in the Sahara include Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania; Tamanrasset, Ouargla, Béchar, Hassi Messaoud, Ghardaïa, and El Oued in Algeria; Timbuktu in Mali; Agadez in Niger; Ghat in Libya; and Faya-Largeau in Chad.
Beneath the sands of the Sahara Desert scientists have discovered evidence of a prehistoric megalake. Formed some 250,000 years ago when the Nile River pushed through a low channel near Wadi Tushka, it flooded the eastern Sahara, creating a lake that at its highest level covered more than 42,000 square miles.
Billions of laser scans have revealed a lost city that was once a bustling epicenter in what is now South Africa's Suikerbosrand National Park, new research finds.
A video is making the rounds claiming “proof” that Atlantis existed in norther Africa. This video is by Jimmy from Bright Insight and it is an excellent example of crank pseudoscience.
The Sahara Desert was once underwater, in contrast to its present-day arid environment. This dramatic difference over time is recorded in the rock and fossil record of West Africa. The region was bisected by a shallow saltwater body during a time of high global sea level.
The hydrothermal alteration, which created this breccia, has been dated to have occurred about 98.2 ± 2.6 million years ago using the 40Ar/39Ar method.
Some lost cities have been discovered by chance, and some were discovered after long searches. Some were known and written about in ancient times, leaving clues for modern archaeologists, linguists, and other scholars.
The Sahel region of Africa is a 3,860-kilometre arc-like land mass lying to the immediate south of the Sahara Desert and stretching east-west across the breadth of the African continent.
Adventurer Alice Morrison has just embarked on a 2,000km walk across the Sahara, from the top of Morocco to the bottom.
If one measures from the bedrock up to an erg, the depth of the Sahara can be said to be between 21 and 43 meters. However, the sand dunes have an average height of 150 meters from the bedrock, and in windswept conditions, the height of the sand dunes can reach up to 320 meters.
The world's largest hot desert, the Sahara stretches across much of North Africa. Entire cities are located within the yellow sands of this barren landscape, but beyond there are entire swathes of the region that are still yet to be explored.
About 20% of the territory is controlled by the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), while the remaining 80% of the territory is occupied and administered by neighboring Morocco.
One kilometre out in the Mediterranean Sea, near Haifa, Israel, an ancient village lies hidden beneath the waves. It has been so well preserved by the sandy seabed that weevils sit in the grain stores, human skeletons lie undisturbed in their graves, and a mysterious stone circle still stands as it was first erected.
'with a population of 10 million, jakarta is considered by some to be the fastest-sinking city in the world and is projected to be entirely underwater by 2050. in december 2021, jarkarta was again submerged with parts of the capital 2.7m (9ft) underwater,' writes nash.
Construction begins in 2023. A floating city – the first of its kind ever – is currently being built in the Maldives by a Dutch multinational company, and will be able to house just over 20,000 people once opens (currently slated for sometime in 2027).
Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian Inca site situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru. Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is perhaps the most familiar icon of the Inca World. Machu Picchu was built around 1450, at the height of the Inca Empire.
Mohenjo-daro – Sindh
Listed among the ancient lost cities of the world, Mohenjo Daro was long lost until its discovery in 1922. Excavations revealed it to be one of the largest cities of Indus Valley Civilisation and one of the earliest urban settlements in the world.
As little as 6,000 years ago, the vast Sahara Desert was covered in grassland that received plenty of rainfall, but shifts in the world's weather patterns abruptly transformed the vegetated region into some of the driest land on Earth.
There was plenty of rain in the Sahara, so nobody needed the Nile. The Holocene Wet Phase lasted for more than 6500 years, until middle of 4th millennium BC (about 3500 BC, 5500 years ago), when the amount of rain falling dropped dramatically.
Paleoclimate and archaeological evidence tells us that, 11,000-5,000 years ago, the Earth's slow orbital 'wobble' transformed today's Sahara desert to a land covered with vegetation and lakes.