Ships of the Desert (for real)

There ARE some. Real ships. Found in natural desert areas or in humanity-devastated deserts.

In 1954 in the ancient Giza plateau of Egypt, archaeologists discovered the solar boat of Pharaoh Khufu. Almost 5,000 years old, the ship had been buried in a pit covered by enormous stone slabs. In a dismantled state, it took years of painstaking reconstruction. Although this solar boat was not the only one known or found, it is the oldest and best preserved. Its location at the foot of the Great Pyramid indicates its dedication to Khufu.

Why "solar"? Well, it's been determined it is not a funeral vessel:

"Despite its exemplary design, it was not intended for sailing or any other use on actual water. Dedicated to Khufu (King Cheops), the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the Khufu ship was most certainly a ritual vessel."[1]

You can see why it took years to reassemble, finally being put on display in the 1980s in a special building. Restoration experts had to carefully study ancient shipbuilding The boat symbolizes the travels of the sun god but all the mysteries have not been understood or interpreted yet.

A different place, a different story.

The Aral Sea in central Asia was the fourth largest fresh-water lake on the planet. Scenes like this, of abandoned fishing boats, have been common in the past forty-fifty years. In the late 1950s Soviet engineers began diverting the two great rivers that fed the sea, in order to construct an enormous irrigation system for the agricultural steppes of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

As a result, the Sea dried up at a fearsome rate until only small lakes remained of total volume less than 10% of its original size. Once providing one-sixth of the Soviet Union's entire fish industry, jobs were lost, prosperous towns died, people migrated. Not to mention the ecological effects.

"As a result of the drying over the past decades, millions of fish died, coastlines receded miles from towns, and those few people who remained were plagued by dust storms that contained the toxic residue of industrial agriculture and weapons testing in the area."[2]

The good news is that restoration attempts since 2005 by a World Bank-financed project are making some recovery in the northern section. Replenishing fish stocks has been successful there.

What anthropogenic havoc we wreak on our beautiful planet!

1. http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180510-the-egyptian-boat-buried-for-5000-years

2. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141001-aral-sea-shrinking-drought-water-environment/

© 2019 Brenda Dougall Merriman