Looking through ancient maps, I constantly paid attention to how the cartographers of that time depicted the Caspian Sea. On early maps, it has an oval shape, slightly elongated in latitude, in contrast to its modern form, where the waters of the Caspian Sea stretch from north to south.
The Caspian on the map in its modern form.
And the size of the Caspian Sea is completely different. The pool area is larger than the modern one.
Let's take a look at a few ancient maps and see for ourselves.
Promotional video:
Here the Caspian already has slightly different outlines, but it is still far from modern ones.
All these maps show that the Caspian Sea has a system of deep rivers flowing into it along the entire perimeter. Now, the main river flowing into the Caspian is the Volga. With so many rivers in the past, this should be a densely populated, fertile land. Ancient cartographers could not be so wrong in the geometric shapes of the reservoir and in the number of rivers flowing into it.
Note that not a single map has an image, not even a hint of Lake Baikal (this will be useful to us later).
There is no Aral Sea on the maps - it is absorbed by the Caspian Sea, it is one basin.
It is known that the Aral Sea is rapidly drying up, just catastrophically quickly. About 25 years ago, the USSR even had projects to save this sea by turning Siberian rivers. The coastline of the Aral Sea literally before our eyes, over the years went beyond the horizon.
The official reason for such a catastrophic decrease in the water level in the Aral Sea-Lake is a huge water intake from the Amu Darya and Syrdarya rivers for irrigation of cotton fields.
Yes, this process is taking place. But not that much. It seems to me that we have witnessed climate change, which began long before excessive human economic activity in this region. Many deserts in this region, steppes are the bottom of the ancient Caspian Sea. But not all. Below I will try to explain why.
In the meantime, I will add information from official science confirming changes in the shape and area of the Caspian basin:
The Russian scientist, academician PS Pallas, having visited the low-lying flat shores of the North Caspian, wrote that the Caspian steppes are still in such a state as if they had recently come out from under the water. This idea comes by itself, if you look at these leveled vast spaces, this sandy-clay soil, mixed with sea shells, and countless salt marshes. What sea could flood these steppes, if not the Caspian Sea adjacent to them?
Pallas also found traces of the higher standing of the Sea on small hills scattered across the Caspian lowland, like islands in the sea. He found ledges, or terraces, on the slopes of these hills. They could only be produced by sea waves acting for a long time.
Soviet scientists have established that on the shores of the Caspian, especially on the eastern ones (Mangyshlak and others), there are three coastal terraces at an altitude of 26, 16 and 11 m above the present level of the Caspian. They belong to the last stage of the Khvalynsk Sea, that is, to the period 10 - 20 thousand years ago. On the other hand, there is reliable information about underwater terraces at depths of 4, 8, 12 and 16 - 20 m below the current level.
At a depth of 16–20 m, there is a sharp bend in the transverse profile of the underwater slope, or, in other words, a flooded terrace. The period of such a low sea level dates back to the post-Khvalyn time. Later, in the New Caspian time, which began 3 - 3.5 thousand years ago, the level of the Caspian Sea in general increased, reaching a maximum in 1805.
It turns out that relatively recently in geological time, the level of the Caspian Sea experienced significant fluctuations with an amplitude of about 40 meters.
A large number of coastal ledges - terraces could form only during transgressions (sea advancing on land) and regressions (sea retreat). During the transgression, the sea level remained at a certain height for a long time, and the sea surf had time to process the coast, creating beaches and coastal embankments.
Those. scientists do not deny that even in a very recent geological era, the Caspian Sea was different.
What some figures of the past wrote about the Caspian, let's read:
The first information about the Caspian Sea and its shores was found in the works of ancient Greek and Roman scientists. However, these information, obtained by them from merchants, participants in wars, seafarers, were not accurate and often contradicted each other. For example, Strabo believed that the Syr Darya flows simultaneously with two branches into the Caspian and into the Aral Sea. In the general geography of Claudius Ptolemy, which was the handbook of travelers until the 17th century, the Aral Sea is not mentioned at all.
Ancient maps of ancient geographers have come down to us. Distances between geographical points were then determined by the speed and time of movement of caravans and ships, and the direction of the path was determined by the stars.
Herodotus (who lived about 484-425 BC) was the first to define the Caspian as a sea isolated from the ocean with the ratio of its width to length as 1: 6, which is very close to reality. Aristotle (384-322 BC) confirmed the conclusion of Herodotus. However, many of their contemporaries considered the Caspian to be the northern bay of the ocean, which, in their opinion, surrounded all the land known then.
Ptolemy (90-168 AD), like Herodotus, considered the Caspian Sea closed, but depicted it incorrectly, in a shape approaching a circle.
Later, in the years 900-1200. AD Arab scholars, following Ptolemy, imagined the Caspian to be closed and round. You can go around the Caspian (Khazar) Sea, returning to the place from which you went, and not encountering obstacles, except for the rivers flowing into the sea, Istakhari wrote. The same was confirmed in 1280 by Marco Polo, the famous Venetian traveler who visited China. As we will see below, a misconception about the shape of the Caspian persisted in the Western scientific world until the beginning of the 18th century, when it was refuted by Russian hydrographers.
From all this, we can conclude that the climatic conditions in this region were different, this is indirectly proved by this map of Africa:
The climate was different not only in Central Asia, but also in the largest desert on the planet - the Sahara. See the huge river that crosses modern desert Africa from east to west and flows into the Atlantic. In addition, a huge number of rivers flow into the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic - this indicates abundant rainfall in this region, and at least the savannah vegetation. The Arabian Peninsula, too, is full of rivers and vegetation.
And this is the climate of the not so distant past, of the past, when people made maps in full.
What could have happened that changed Central Asia, northern Africa beyond recognition? Where did so much sand come from in the Karakum Desert, Sahara?
I will put forward a version based on these cards, which at first glance may be incomprehensible:
It can be seen that the Black Sea and the Caspian are united into one basin and a huge water area flows into them from the northeast and in the center - a huge river flowing from somewhere in the north. There is a connection with the Persian Gulf.
These data are confirmed by scientists:
It turned out that for a very long time, measured in millions of years, the Mediterranean, Black, Azov and Caspian Seas constituted a huge sea basin connected with the World Ocean. This basin has repeatedly changed its shape, area, depth, split into separate parts and rebuilt again.
The stages of development of this basin in the historical sequence received various, purely conditional, names: the Miocene basin, or the sea that existed in the Miocene time, several million years ago, the Sarmatian, Meotic, Pontic, Akchagyl, Apsheron and Khvalynsk seas, closest to our time.
Or this is an image of the postglacial period, when from the melting of glaciers, water flowed southward. But who could have drawn such an accurate map at that time?
Or this is an image of a catastrophe in the very recent past, when the Caspian Sea was at first oval in shape, and then acquired a modern look. In any case, there were streams of water, a huge layer of sand, silt was deposited, deserts and steppes were formed in this region.
With Africa, the issue is more complicated and requires a more complex study.
I will give a good analysis by A. Lorets: “Ancient civilizations were covered with sand”, which just shows that not so long ago there were cataclysms, information about which is absent in the present history. Perhaps St. Petersburg was covered with silt and sand at this time and for this reason, and Peter I and Catherine - dug up and restored this ancient city.
One of the possible reasons for what happened could be the fall of a large asteroid into the Arctic Ocean …