scorecardresearch
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Support Our Journalism
HomeScienceNile river flowing on the same course for last 30 million years,...

Nile river flowing on the same course for last 30 million years, claims study

The study provided new geographical evidence indicating that the river is 30 million years old, much older than the earlier estimate of 5 million years.

Follow Us :
Text Size:

Bengaluru: The Nile river, one of the earliest cradles of human civilisation, might be 30 million years old, a recent study indicates.

The study, published in Nature Geoscience Monday, provides new geographical evidence stating that the Nile is much older than the earlier estimate of 5 million years.

Rivers change and shape the geographical area around them over hundreds and thousands of years and as a result their own path also changes. However, according to the study, Nile has been flowing steadily along the same course, with the same drainage system for the past 30 million years.

The reason why it has maintained a steady path has been somewhat of a mystery to scientists but the researchers at the University of Austin, Texas proposed a new theory that credits the flow path of the Nile to a hotspot, shaped like an imbalanced seesaw, under the Earth’s surface in the mantle.

The mantle separates the surface of the Earth to its core, and a slope in it kept the river on its course northwards, without which it would have diverted westward and human history might have been very different than what we know today.


Also read: Egyptologist may have cracked the mystery of hauling large stone blocks to great heights


Ancient mantle convection cell

The Ancient Egyptian civilisation is truly old. We are closer in time to Cleopatra than she was in her time to the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Humans settled along the Nile thousands of years ago and the river itself has been flowing in the same direction for much longer than that.

According to the researchers, this is most likely because of a naturally occurring slope in the landscape that is caused by a deeper mantle process. The mantle is made up of molten rocks — the material that is spewed as lava during a volcanic eruption. Land is formed when this liquid rock comes up to the surface and the balance is usually maintained when chunks of rock underneath the sea floor or continents sink back into the mantle.

In the “mantle convection cell” like the one right beneath the Nile, a piece of mantle rock is pushing up against the mountainous region called Ethiopian Highlands in the southern part of the country. On the other end of this convection cell, in the northern region, right beneath the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the mantle is pulling the surface down by swallowing large pieces of rock. 

This process creates a slope on the surface that enables the Nile to flow in a set path and form the current drainage pattern.

The research

To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers traced the geological history of the Nile by studying ancient volcanic eruptions and rocks in the Ethiopian Highland. Simultaneously, they compared and correlated it with river sediment deposits buried under the river.

The data showed that the Ethiopian Highlands have remained at the same height since they were formed 30 million years ago, just when the Nile was formed.

“One of the big questions about the Nile is when it originated and why it has persisted for so long,” said lead author Claudio Faccenna, a professor at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences.

“Our solution is actually quite exciting,” she added.

The team’s computer simulations go back 40 million years and show that the outpouring of lava created the Ethiopian Highlands through the mantle convection cell, also known as the conveyor belt process. This process continues to this day.

The researchers state that the simulations reproduced the landscape exactly as it is today. This included minor geological formations that occurred around the river such as whitewater rapids.

The team now hopes to apply the same technique to other rivers around the world such as the Yangtze in China and the Congo in Africa.


Also read: Why Kalapani is a bone of contention between India and Nepal


 

Subscribe to our channels on YouTube, Telegram & WhatsApp

Support Our Journalism

India needs fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism, packed with on-ground reporting. ThePrint – with exceptional reporters, columnists and editors – is doing just that.

Sustaining this needs support from wonderful readers like you.

Whether you live in India or overseas, you can take a paid subscription by clicking here.

Support Our Journalism

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Most Popular