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The Nile IS Just a River in Egypt · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant
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2:17
Speaker 1: stuff you should know right all right back to denial, Okay,
2:20
Speaker 1: so denial, Chuck, Yes, have you ever heard of an
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Speaker 1: ancient man eating crocodile named Gustav. Yeah. Man, I watched
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Speaker 1: the video on him, did you. He is enormous and scary.
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Speaker 1: He's pretty creepy looking. So for those of you who
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Speaker 1: aren't in the know, like Chuck, let me tell you
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Speaker 1: a little bit about Gustaf. He's what twenty ft long,
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Speaker 1: Chuck six? Okay, he weighs a ton, he does way ton,
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Speaker 1: which is what more than two thousand pounds these days,
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Speaker 1: isn't it? It's a ton? Uh. And he's about sixty
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Speaker 1: years old, they think, which is pretty substantial because wild crocodiles,
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Speaker 1: he's a now crocodile. Wild crocodiles lived too, about forty five.
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Speaker 1: I think it's the seventy now. Actually, yeah, that's right,
3:02
Speaker 1: because he was about sixteen two four. So yeah, he's
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Speaker 1: pushing seventy and he is very old. And he also
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Speaker 1: has a real taste for humans. Yeah, I think some.
3:14
Speaker 1: I think a lot of that is true. I think
3:15
Speaker 1: there's a lot of legend built up to though. Well.
3:18
Speaker 1: They there's this guy, this hunter, um of him. His
3:22
Speaker 1: last name is Fate. What's his first name, Chuck? No,
3:26
Speaker 1: his his first name is Um Patrese Faye. Yeah, he
3:30
Speaker 1: was the documentary that I watched when he tried to
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Speaker 1: catch him. He seems to be something of a controversial
3:34
Speaker 1: figure and he's a bit of a captain ahab and
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Speaker 1: Gustaf is his quick quake, yes at least um and uh. Anyway,
3:43
Speaker 1: that the point is, I would say I think about
3:46
Speaker 1: three hundred people are attributed to dying to Gustav. Yeah,
3:50
Speaker 1: and one some legend has it that he sometimes won't
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Speaker 1: even eat you, he'll just kill you, which makes me think,
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Speaker 1: you know, that's probably not true, right, he kills for
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Speaker 1: sport or something exactly. So goose Off has been on
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Speaker 1: the loosen Burundi for a long time, and he is
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Speaker 1: a now crocodile and he's in Burundi because the Nile
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Speaker 1: actually flows partially through Burundi, which is the whole reason
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Speaker 1: I brought up Goosetad in the first place. It's a
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Speaker 1: great way to start. It was, Okay, you know much
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Speaker 1: about the Nile, A little bit. I know a thing
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Speaker 1: or two. It is just a river in Egypt, but
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Speaker 1: it's not just in Egypt. So if you have a
4:26
Speaker 1: problem with the title stuff emailing, because we know what
4:29
Speaker 1: we're talking about. It's in technically, if you want to know,
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Speaker 1: it's in Uganda, Sudan, Egypt, Zaire, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia,
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Speaker 1: and the aforementioned Burundi. Yes, and throughout all those countries. Um.
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Speaker 1: But now it gets fairly wide. I think it's up
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Speaker 1: to tin kilometers wide at its widest point. Yes, that's
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Speaker 1: good to know. But ten kilometers that's that's a substantial
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Speaker 1: width for a river, right. Um, it's over five miles wide,
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Speaker 1: so um, and which is kind of wide. But at
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Speaker 1: the same time, for flowing through ten countries, it's still
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Speaker 1: fairly narrow compared to its length. Yet about three hundred
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Speaker 1: and seventy million people depend on the Nile to survive
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Speaker 1: and have for a long time, not that many people,
5:14
Speaker 1: a very long time as a matter of fact. Um.
5:17
Speaker 1: In Ethiopia, where one of the Nile's headwaters are the
5:20
Speaker 1: the it's considered the cradle of the Cush people, which
5:25
Speaker 1: are which is the black race, I guess, um, and
5:29
Speaker 1: possibly the human race is the cradle of the human race.
5:33
Speaker 1: But don't tell the Arian brotherhood because they will be mad. Yeah,
5:38
Speaker 1: get mad about everything. Yeah, they do. Josh, to tell
5:41
Speaker 1: us some more about the Nils, like there's some amazing facts.
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Speaker 1: It is a river, but it's an amazing river, and
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Speaker 1: it's not even the longest river, is it. Now? The
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Speaker 1: Amazon generally is quoted as a little bit longer by
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Speaker 1: I think they said the most recent expedition. Uh, they
5:57
Speaker 1: found out and they used advanced mapping equipment, which is advanced.
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Speaker 1: That the Niles about four hundred I'm sorry, four thousand,
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Speaker 1: one seventy five miles long, nineteen kilometers and the Amazon
6:11
Speaker 1: clock sit and we're gonna do an Amazon show too
6:13
Speaker 1: at so it's about sixty five miles longer. And that's
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Speaker 1: I think that the New Nile, as we'll call it,
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Speaker 1: includes the new headwaters south of Lake Victoria. Is that
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Speaker 1: what they determined because he used to say it was
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Speaker 1: originated in Lake Victoria? Yeah? There, Now it's south a
6:31
Speaker 1: little bit right. There was a guy that was controversial.
6:34
Speaker 1: Um when when the guy came up? But there was
6:36
Speaker 1: a guy named John Hanning speck or speak, and he
6:40
Speaker 1: was an English explorer who lived to eighteen sixty four.
6:44
Speaker 1: Before his death, he went on an expedition to Africa
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Speaker 1: and went off by himself. He got his co expedition
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Speaker 1: leader got injured, so he went off by himself and
6:53
Speaker 1: found I don't think it was good father, um. And
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Speaker 1: he found Lake Victoria and said, well, this is guy
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Speaker 1: to be the Nile and lake must be the headwaters.
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Speaker 1: And there was this big public debate over whether it
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Speaker 1: was real or not, and um between the guy who
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Speaker 1: was injured and not on the expedition and Speak, and
7:12
Speaker 1: so finally Speak was like playing, you know what, let's
7:14
Speaker 1: go back. So we went back and they found the
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Speaker 1: place where the Nile exits Lake Victoria. So Lake Victoria
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Speaker 1: has traditionally been the source of the Nile, but they
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Speaker 1: found that actually, no, there's some headwaters somewhere in some
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Speaker 1: forests in Rwanda. And you say that it's south of
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Speaker 1: Lake Victoria, which is crazy, chuck, because that means that
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Speaker 1: the Nile flows south to north. Yeah. I remember when
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Speaker 1: I was a kid, I thought that was so strange
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Speaker 1: because I thought south meant lower and it's just not
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Speaker 1: the case. In Africa. The low Land, I'm sorry, the
7:43
Speaker 1: highland is south, and so it just flows towards the
7:46
Speaker 1: equator with gravity like it should towards the equator. Never
7:51
Speaker 1: had of cavity, not just not one. So um, yeah,
7:56
Speaker 1: the the that is kind of big news though, that
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Speaker 1: the head water is the source of the nile. Um
8:03
Speaker 1: it has changed that. It's I like how it's somewhere
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Speaker 1: deep in a forest in Rwanda. That's pretty cool. That's
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Speaker 1: fairly mysterious. So it still has a mysterious origin. It's
8:12
Speaker 1: always had this kind of mysterious dark Africa vibe to it.
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Speaker 1: The nile has. So, Josh, let's talk about the tributaries.
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Speaker 1: If you're gonna talk about the nile, you got to
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Speaker 1: talk about the fact that there's the White Nile and
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Speaker 1: there's the Blue Nile. The white is the the newest
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Speaker 1: source south of Lake Victoria. Is is the White Nile
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Speaker 1: easiest to navigate. It's the longer section but actually has
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Speaker 1: less water feeds less water. So we're gonna talk about
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Speaker 1: how the nile like raises and lowers in a little bit.
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Speaker 1: But it's the white Nile that's responsible for that. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: And it's Uh. It's lightish gray in color for the sediment,
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Speaker 1: which is why they called the white Nile. The Blue
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Speaker 1: Nile is very sparkly blue in its origins and the
8:55
Speaker 1: Ethiopian mountains, and UH provides about two thirds of the
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Speaker 1: water to the river. And then it turns darker as
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Speaker 1: it goes in the Sudan, things get dark. The Blue Nile,
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Speaker 1: yeah Um, and the there's also another tributary that's that's
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Speaker 1: the two largest tributaries, the Blue Nile in the White. Now.
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Speaker 1: I also found out that after the nile exits a
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Speaker 1: lake like it comes out of Lake Victoria. That's called
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Speaker 1: the Victoria Nile. Then it gets the Lake Albert, Victoria's
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Speaker 1: lover boy, and then after it exits that it's the
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Speaker 1: Albert Nile. So that it's named kind of based on
9:29
Speaker 1: where it isn't any given part in time. But the
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Speaker 1: other the third major tributary that at Bara River Um,
9:37
Speaker 1: which comes out of the eastern portion of Sudan, is
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Speaker 1: actually Um. They think it's the original source of the
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Speaker 1: nile thirty and now is about thirty million years old
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Speaker 1: from the Tertiary period. But they think that that was
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Speaker 1: the original source, and other rivers started coming out and
9:53
Speaker 1: joining together and now it forms the huge, massive nile. Well,
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Speaker 1: it goes to a lot of twists and turns on
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Speaker 1: the way, and we'll talk about a couple those, but
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Speaker 1: let's go ahead and just tell you the ending. Now
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Speaker 1: spoiler alert, it splits again in Egypt into the Damietta,
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Speaker 1: which is on the east side or is that on
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Speaker 1: the west. Damia is on the west the east, Damiette
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Speaker 1: is on the east, Rosetta is on the west. I
10:18
Speaker 1: had it right to begin with. I had it right
10:20
Speaker 1: one of those times and that uh, and then you
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Speaker 1: know it splits in the two main things. But it's
10:25
Speaker 1: really a fan of many, many little fingers that all
10:28
Speaker 1: spill out into the Mediterraneans. But did you notice what
10:30
Speaker 1: those two things were called, the Damietta and the Rosetta.
10:33
Speaker 1: They were called distributaries, right, You have tributaries coming in,
10:36
Speaker 1: distributaries distribute. Yeah, that's where the word distribute comes from.
10:41
Speaker 1: That was what's sad is. I was like, wow, there's
10:44
Speaker 1: the fact of the puk. That was it. Yeah, I
10:48
Speaker 1: like all the canal stuff do Yeah. Well, I mean
10:53
Speaker 1: it's not the fact, but I just thought that was
10:54
Speaker 1: the coolest stuff. How they made it work for them. Yeah.
10:58
Speaker 1: So as the niles flowing from south to north, it's pretty,
11:01
Speaker 1: it's pretty. I mean it's wide, it flows, but I
11:04
Speaker 1: mean like it's not You're not gonna get thrown out
11:06
Speaker 1: of a kayak on it until you get to as one. Right,
11:10
Speaker 1: Once you get to as One. There's six cataracts after
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Speaker 1: that between as One and the Nile Delta. And these
11:15
Speaker 1: cataracts are basically rapids. I wonder how like really really
11:19
Speaker 1: navigable the boat, Like, okay, you gotta get out and
11:22
Speaker 1: put your boat on a trailer and drive around and
11:24
Speaker 1: then get back in. What do you call that unnavigable?
11:28
Speaker 1: Navigable word for that when you have to to pull
11:29
Speaker 1: your canoe out and do some walking besides sucks? Yeah, bummer,
11:35
Speaker 1: I'm just Monday morning, Friday afternoon. I would have that
11:38
Speaker 1: word at my ready. I'm sure that, um, people have
11:42
Speaker 1: hit these rapids before. But I mean you're talking not
11:44
Speaker 1: just this isn't you know, like a normal river creek.
11:48
Speaker 1: This is the Nile hitting rapids. So there's six of
11:52
Speaker 1: those and then you get to um the delta and
11:55
Speaker 1: then calms down again. Um, it's the longest kiss in history.
12:00
Speaker 1: That's what they call it the Arab poets. Isn't it nice?
12:02
Speaker 1: That is nice? Like when they meet that's the kiss
12:06
Speaker 1: huh and at Khartoum. Yeah, that is very nice. I
12:10
Speaker 1: thought that was very poetic, which is I guess why
12:12
Speaker 1: poets wrote it, right, Okay, So um, you want to
12:17
Speaker 1: hear a little more, a few more stats. I actually
12:20
Speaker 1: have a couple of stats. Let's hear it, just a
12:23
Speaker 1: couple more things. If you live on the Nile and
12:26
Speaker 1: you're a member of a certain ethnic group, a few
12:28
Speaker 1: ethnic groups, especially in Sudan, you're described as nihilotic, like Caucasian,
12:35
Speaker 1: you're nihilotic. Um. If you were to measure the amount
12:39
Speaker 1: of water that passes down the Nile every day at
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Speaker 1: its peak, you would come up with seventy nine billion,
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Speaker 1: two d fifty one million, six hundred fifteen thousand, three
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Speaker 1: hundred seventy two US gallons, which is three hundred million
12:54
Speaker 1: cubic meters of water every day. And if you wanted
12:59
Speaker 1: to get to the root of the name of the Nile,
13:02
Speaker 1: Nelios is Greek for are you ready for this river valley?
13:10
Speaker 1: It's a disappointed. It was a little disappointed. I thought
13:12
Speaker 1: so too. Sometimes it just makes too much sense. So, um,
13:16
Speaker 1: there's a certain culture of people that grew up along
13:20
Speaker 1: the Nile. We mentioned the Kush people from Ethiopia. Um,
13:24
Speaker 1: But they get a lot less press than their neighbors
13:28
Speaker 1: to the to the west, the ancient Egyptians. Yes, this
13:32
Speaker 1: is after the Great Bend north of the Great Bend.
13:37
Speaker 1: We left out the Great Bend. Well, the Great Bend
13:39
Speaker 1: is interesting because it literally runs east to west for
13:43
Speaker 1: a little while, then bends back and runs the other way. Yeah,
13:45
Speaker 1: it's going just due north and then it cuts It's
13:49
Speaker 1: pretty switch back. You would call that if you were
13:51
Speaker 1: a hiker. Yeah. And they they found out finally, like
13:53
Speaker 1: this is perplexed people who um navigated the river and
13:57
Speaker 1: mapped it and they're like, what the what is this?
13:59
Speaker 1: Stinds this because it actually does it in one of
14:02
Speaker 1: the driest points of Earth on Earth. Um, the whole
14:05
Speaker 1: area around it is dry. To that's worth pointing out
14:08
Speaker 1: is it's in the middle of some serious, serious sand. Well,
14:11
Speaker 1: it depends on what part you're at. It goes through
14:13
Speaker 1: a lot of different clients, but when it hits the
14:16
Speaker 1: Great Band, it's like in the middle of the Sahara
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Speaker 1: Desert and it should just keep going north, but it didn't.
14:22
Speaker 1: So they found in I think through um through satellite photos,
14:27
Speaker 1: they found that there's this ancient river bed that it
14:30
Speaker 1: did used to go straight and something happened. They they
14:33
Speaker 1: estimate between ten thousand and one million years ago something happened.
14:38
Speaker 1: Uh and now it takes this bend. No one knows
14:41
Speaker 1: what that. It just ain't the same sense then though. Wow. Interesting.
14:46
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was superstitious in nature, if like
14:49
Speaker 1: some person stood and said halt to the Nile and
14:53
Speaker 1: it went around him. I don't think so. I think
14:55
Speaker 1: it was the other way around. I think the Nile
14:56
Speaker 1: just is kind of like, we're your boss. So I
15:00
Speaker 1: mentioned that a lot of the northern part, especially in Egypt,
15:04
Speaker 1: is in the middle of serious sand, and that sand
15:06
Speaker 1: is what protected the Nile in the Nile River basin
15:10
Speaker 1: and the people there because it was you know, you
15:13
Speaker 1: couldn't just like walk over there and attack them. You
15:16
Speaker 1: were lucky to make it through the desert to get
15:18
Speaker 1: to the Nile. It served as a natural protection plan.
15:23
Speaker 1: That's I didn't realize that. Yeah. Um, so you you
15:29
Speaker 1: know about ancient Egypt. Of course there were several kingdoms,
15:33
Speaker 1: each of which collapsed. UM. Very advanced people. So they
15:37
Speaker 1: were one of the cool things. We we talked about
15:39
Speaker 1: the Nile rising and falling every year. UM. The blue
15:45
Speaker 1: Niles steady, slow and steady coming out of the Ethiopian highlands. UM.
15:49
Speaker 1: And it's the white now coming out of Rwanda. And
15:52
Speaker 1: through Lake Victoria, UM and through Sudan UH that that
15:57
Speaker 1: is subject to fluctuations because there's heavy rainfall, and Rwanda
16:00
Speaker 1: there's also I saw a heavy rain in the Ethiopian
16:03
Speaker 1: highlands too, though there is but for some reason, the
16:05
Speaker 1: Nile stays steady. The Blue Nile coming out of Ethiopia
16:08
Speaker 1: stays steady. And snow melting too was another big reason.
16:12
Speaker 1: So I think what it is Maybe Africa rains on
16:15
Speaker 1: one during one part of the year, and then the
16:17
Speaker 1: snowmel happens in another, and it equals basically just an
16:20
Speaker 1: equal volume coming out. So in UH on the White
16:24
Speaker 1: Nile it's subject to a wild fluctuation and UM it
16:29
Speaker 1: drops down, it raises up to twenty feet at its
16:33
Speaker 1: highest point. And the ancient Egyptians, UM, we're pretty smart
16:39
Speaker 1: about capturing this stuff. They could capture the water and
16:42
Speaker 1: canals and basins so much so that they would have
16:45
Speaker 1: all the water they needed for next year's crops. All
16:49
Speaker 1: let me say that again, they could capture all the
16:52
Speaker 1: water they needed for next year's crops through the nile.
16:57
Speaker 1: That's right, Uh. Specifically, John, the river is at its
17:01
Speaker 1: lowest in May, it's at its highest in September. So
17:05
Speaker 1: between May and September. Uh, there's something called the rise,
17:08
Speaker 1: which is the uh inundation, and then there's the fall,
17:12
Speaker 1: which is the relinquishment. Happens around October's when it starts
17:16
Speaker 1: to fall. And during that that time where it rises
17:19
Speaker 1: so much, like you said, they would capture this water.
17:22
Speaker 1: It would flood the sand there and when it receded,
17:26
Speaker 1: it would leave this mud. This's awesome rich fertile silt.
17:30
Speaker 1: They would dry that out for about a week and
17:33
Speaker 1: then they would start a plant. That's why the um
17:36
Speaker 1: the nile delta is so lush. It's that annual you know,
17:40
Speaker 1: bringing of the silt. That's dude. This that changed the
17:45
Speaker 1: history of the world and definitely Africa. And apparently the
17:50
Speaker 1: silt is between fifty and hundred feet deep and it's
17:54
Speaker 1: just this black, rich, nutrient rich soil that you could
17:58
Speaker 1: take rocks in. Yeah. Um yeah, but still I know
18:03
Speaker 1: what you meant, um and uh yeah, like you said,
18:06
Speaker 1: it changed the history of the world. And um there
18:10
Speaker 1: was problematic is it was a gift as well as
18:12
Speaker 1: a curse because it would not only um bring the silt,
18:17
Speaker 1: sometimes it would bring way too much water. It would
18:20
Speaker 1: ruin it would come in at the wrong time and
18:21
Speaker 1: they couldn't harvest fast enough. But the Nile giveth, it
18:24
Speaker 1: taketh away, right exactly, So to prevent the flooding and
18:27
Speaker 1: to allow for more settlement because you know, you need
18:31
Speaker 1: to pack people in there. As a matter of fact,
18:33
Speaker 1: the Nile is one of the most densely populated areas
18:35
Speaker 1: on Earth, right. Yeah, there's a stat here somewhere. I
18:39
Speaker 1: think it's like thirty eight people per square mile, Yeah,
18:44
Speaker 1: which is um, Yes, that's dense, my friend, is very dense.
18:48
Speaker 1: And it was always that dense or not that dense,
18:51
Speaker 1: but it's always been very dense with people because that
18:53
Speaker 1: was the life, the life blood, as they say. So
18:56
Speaker 1: when you have a bunch of people, um, you need
19:00
Speaker 1: to settle them where you can. And you can't just
19:03
Speaker 1: let the Nile flood everybody every year and then rebuild.
19:06
Speaker 1: So what they did is they started building a system
19:08
Speaker 1: of dams and uh, they started controlling them now a
19:12
Speaker 1: little more so they can keep the flooding in check.
19:16
Speaker 1: They've got plenty of water for irrigation, but they're losing
19:20
Speaker 1: out on the sediment. Yeah, reduced the fertility some. So
19:23
Speaker 1: they started using fertilizer. They kind of rolled with the
19:27
Speaker 1: punches over the years from what I gathered as far
19:30
Speaker 1: as you know, building the dams, and they realized that
19:32
Speaker 1: saved the land from being flooded too much. But it
19:36
Speaker 1: also they said, we get start using fertilizer now. They did.
19:39
Speaker 1: It was part of the green Revolution, I think. So
19:42
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, yeah, we've got all this fertilizer,
19:45
Speaker 1: but now we're screwing up the land two different ways.
19:50
Speaker 1: It's basically it's just another example of humans controlling nature
19:54
Speaker 1: and shooting themselves in the foot, you know. Yeah. But
19:56
Speaker 1: the the good thing, the good news is though that
20:00
Speaker 1: through their control and through this silt in the flooding,
20:03
Speaker 1: it allowed for a lot of kind of crops that
20:05
Speaker 1: you wouldn't think you would be able to grow out there,
20:08
Speaker 1: like wheat and barley. Um. I think these days, what
20:11
Speaker 1: do they grow? Uh, cotton even sorghum, well, Egyptian cotton
20:16
Speaker 1: the best. It's very very solid. What kind of threadcount
20:20
Speaker 1: you go with these days? Higher the better? You know.
20:23
Speaker 1: What I just recently learned is higher actually means heavier too.
20:28
Speaker 1: So if you go out and get like a one
20:29
Speaker 1: thousand thread count sheet, you might not be getting what
20:32
Speaker 1: you're looking for because it might feel more a blanket. Right.
20:34
Speaker 1: It depends on what what thread, what type of fabric
20:38
Speaker 1: they're using. Yeah, exactly. Um, it's on the weave, it is.
20:41
Speaker 1: And also you have to look out for you you
20:43
Speaker 1: definitely get what you pay for if you find like
20:45
Speaker 1: six hundred thread count sheets for like internet. The reason why, Um,
20:50
Speaker 1: it is six hundred thread count, but they're counting each
20:52
Speaker 1: of the three strands of thread. So with rather than
20:56
Speaker 1: a single thread counting, you know, six hundred times, it's
21:01
Speaker 1: one thread divided by into the three strands that make
21:03
Speaker 1: up that single thread thread counts. Because I've seen those
21:08
Speaker 1: on the internet, you know, six undred thread count front
21:12
Speaker 1: and then you'd like pull it up over you and
21:14
Speaker 1: you get like a rash. You might as well sleep
21:16
Speaker 1: in a potato sack or something. You get the Nile rash. Yeah. So, um, Chuck,
21:20
Speaker 1: we talked about damns. I did a little extra research.
21:24
Speaker 1: It turns out that the Nile connects nine countries, and
21:28
Speaker 1: it connects them geo politically as well as just geologically geographically.
21:36
Speaker 1: Um and I apparently Egypt and Sudan like to make
21:41
Speaker 1: agreements over water use for the Nile. And this has
21:43
Speaker 1: been going on for a really long time. Used to
21:45
Speaker 1: be Egypt and Ethiopia, and Egypt would occasionally, um accused
21:50
Speaker 1: Ethiopia of you know, controlling the Nile and keeping the
21:54
Speaker 1: water to themselves, which they had no no way of doing.
21:58
Speaker 1: And then every once in a while, Ethiopia would threat
22:00
Speaker 1: and to do that, and Egy would be like, okay, alright, alright,
22:02
Speaker 1: let's talk to keep all the water right. Um. So uh,
22:06
Speaker 1: then it changed between EAGYPT and Sudan, and that's those
22:09
Speaker 1: are still two of the biggest players now. So Egypt
22:11
Speaker 1: has a really long history of blocking projects that would
22:15
Speaker 1: kind of equitably distribute the Nile waters. And you remember
22:20
Speaker 1: in Ethiopia had this horrible famine, um do you remember, um?
22:27
Speaker 1: But the Nile was just fine. They just hadn't figured
22:30
Speaker 1: out or they weren't using it to eargate properly, and
22:33
Speaker 1: the world didn't really care that much at first. It
22:36
Speaker 1: took a little while to remember it took it took
22:40
Speaker 1: a while. It was a big deal before I found
22:41
Speaker 1: out about it. In other words, yes, exactly, I have
22:45
Speaker 1: a little factor. The show for me is to measure
22:48
Speaker 1: the the the recession and the rising of the river.
22:52
Speaker 1: They used a staircase. They built a staircase down into
22:55
Speaker 1: the river and literally just marked it. It It was called
22:57
Speaker 1: a nilometer and they just mark to what stair it
23:00
Speaker 1: was on from time to time. Pretty basic. That is basic.
23:06
Speaker 1: But because you can't have a big pole, you know,
23:07
Speaker 1: you can't stick a big pole down. How old are
23:09
Speaker 1: those stairs, I don't know if there's I don't think
23:11
Speaker 1: they're still around. Oh that was into Egypt, the old Kingdom.
23:15
Speaker 1: Now they just measure it with advanced equipment. So nor
23:20
Speaker 1: advanced mapping equiping, danced mapping equipment. So what else? Do
23:23
Speaker 1: you want to talk some more about some animals? Uh?
23:26
Speaker 1: Sure that the nile is is well known to house crocodiles.
23:30
Speaker 1: The nile crocodile is a fish eater for the most part,
23:34
Speaker 1: goats or chickens and whatever happens to be lurking nearby. Yeah, goats,
23:38
Speaker 1: I did know. Fish I didn't think of. But they
23:41
Speaker 1: do attack humans. They say roughly two d human deaths
23:44
Speaker 1: per year thanks to the crocodile. And goostaf that we
23:48
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier is he's large for a nile crocodile, but
23:53
Speaker 1: it's not like he's some freak of nature. I mean,
23:56
Speaker 1: there's plenty of crocodiles that get to be twenty feet
23:58
Speaker 1: in length. Well, the saltwater crocodiles tend to grow larger,
24:02
Speaker 1: so he's just big for the area. Which and he's
24:04
Speaker 1: old as the hills, so that that gave him the
24:08
Speaker 1: spooky legend. He's as old as a seventy year old hill. Yeah,
24:11
Speaker 1: sixty seven year old, best neighborhood kids. Uh. And then hippopotamus.
24:15
Speaker 1: They don't the hippopotamus doesn't live in the Nile anymore.
24:19
Speaker 1: And I didn't find why they're not natives. They don't
24:21
Speaker 1: live in Egypt. Oh, they live on the Nile, but
24:24
Speaker 1: they Yeah, they get around Sudan more. Now Egypt gets
24:27
Speaker 1: all the press, but they used to be around Egypt.
24:29
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly why they left. Well, probably because
24:32
Speaker 1: the crocodiles, although the crocodiles everywhere, but they would eat
24:37
Speaker 1: hippos even though they're not supposed to. And the hippos
24:40
Speaker 1: were pretty fearsome in their own right. Yeah, they like
24:43
Speaker 1: to mess up crops, run over people. I mean, we
24:46
Speaker 1: think of them as very lovable, hungry, hungry hippos um,
24:50
Speaker 1: but yeah, you don't really want to get too close
24:52
Speaker 1: to him, because well, it's like an elephant. An elephant
24:54
Speaker 1: is not going to like necessarily mean to kill you.
24:57
Speaker 1: If it means to kill you, you're dead, sure, but
25:00
Speaker 1: it can still kill you just by you being in
25:02
Speaker 1: its way, right, So you just don't you don't want
25:05
Speaker 1: to get too close to the hippotami. Okay, what about insects, Josh,
25:09
Speaker 1: who cares the c D c uh. Apparently they've gotten
25:14
Speaker 1: the malaria pretty well in check there so that you
25:17
Speaker 1: don't even have to get vaccinated any longer. If you
25:20
Speaker 1: travel to that area, going to the city, if you're
25:23
Speaker 1: if you're on an expedition on the Nile, you're probably
25:26
Speaker 1: gonna need to get the valaria. Now. Even if they
25:28
Speaker 1: didn't recommend it, I would get it. But they do
25:31
Speaker 1: recommend that, you know, if you're traveling there, to take
25:33
Speaker 1: the standard anti diarrhea stuff, ida and tablets, water purification,
25:38
Speaker 1: all the good stuff that you're gonna need to stay
25:41
Speaker 1: alive and to keep from pooping your skeleton out like
25:44
Speaker 1: that guy I said, you said that, one of the listeners, Remember, Oh, yeah, yeah,
25:49
Speaker 1: that's right. What else, Josh? The Nile today still booming,
25:54
Speaker 1: and you know, that the the way they farm there
25:57
Speaker 1: today is still really similar to the way they did
26:00
Speaker 1: it back in the day. Like I saw video of
26:03
Speaker 1: from last week of you know, the oxen pulling the
26:06
Speaker 1: stuff right on the banks of the Nile. Yeah, it's
26:07
Speaker 1: pretty cool. That is cool. Um. The Arab spring that
26:12
Speaker 1: led to the revolt in Egypt. Um, you know, Egypt
26:15
Speaker 1: and Sudan or the two big players with water now.
26:18
Speaker 1: Um to get around that, a bunch of other countries,
26:21
Speaker 1: some of the smaller countries started the Nile Basin Initiative,
26:25
Speaker 1: which is basically like trying to figure out how to
26:27
Speaker 1: do it on their own without depending on Egypt. And
26:30
Speaker 1: Egypt kept going around and blocking their bonds. Yeah, however
26:34
Speaker 1: they could because you need money for it. These are
26:36
Speaker 1: countries that you know, have just enough infrastructure to keep
26:41
Speaker 1: their people going. So a new project that's going to
26:45
Speaker 1: really develop the country, they need some money for it.
26:47
Speaker 1: So Egypt would go to the World Bank and be like,
26:49
Speaker 1: you don't, you don't want to do that. So now
26:52
Speaker 1: now that there's like a leadership vacuum in Egypt, people
26:55
Speaker 1: are hopeful and worried because Egypt still has you know,
26:58
Speaker 1: commitments to water agreement and Um, it's kind of up
27:02
Speaker 1: in the air at this point, like how it's gonna go.
27:04
Speaker 1: Are they gonna get stintier, are they gonna get better?
27:07
Speaker 1: Who knows? Interesting? I got one more step for you.
27:12
Speaker 1: You talked about how densely populated it is, despite the
27:16
Speaker 1: fact that the Nile River basin only makes up five
27:19
Speaker 1: of Egypt's land mass. Of the population lives along the
27:23
Speaker 1: Nile in Egypt. It's nuts, it is, but necessary. Yeah.
27:31
Speaker 1: And the Nile River Delta itself, not just the Nile,
27:35
Speaker 1: but the Delta is so significant that the ancient Egyptians
27:39
Speaker 1: worshiped the Delta as a god copy happy h a
27:43
Speaker 1: p I who is represented by a frog. Really yeah,
27:47
Speaker 1: happy than delta frog. Yeah. Uh. And despite the fact
27:51
Speaker 1: that they do grow things like cotton and wheat and
27:54
Speaker 1: sugar cane there and citrus fruits, there's still a lot
27:57
Speaker 1: of poor people doing the farming. It hasn't to like
28:00
Speaker 1: this abundance of riches as farmers. No, it's pretty sad.
28:06
Speaker 1: I don't know what the problem is either, I don't know.
28:09
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I mean, they are they exporting tons
28:11
Speaker 1: of this stuff or is it mainly for their use?
28:13
Speaker 1: I wonder I don't know. Jerry's laughing at it. They're
28:20
Speaker 1: also getting into hydro electric power, which that could change things. Well,
28:24
Speaker 1: that's one damn. Yeah, I think it's been producing powerful
28:27
Speaker 1: a while it opened in nineteen seventy while they're getting
28:29
Speaker 1: more and more into it these days. Two like more
28:31
Speaker 1: hydro electric power and more damns. It's huge. So it's
28:34
Speaker 1: like three sixty four ft tall above the river and
28:39
Speaker 1: it's twelve thousand feet wide. That's an enormous damn. That
28:43
Speaker 1: is big. Took eleven years to build. Really, Yeah, how
28:47
Speaker 1: does that compare to the Hoover damn? And in generation
28:50
Speaker 1: of power? I wonder I keep asking for stats. We don't.
28:53
Speaker 1: I hate my name? Man, you got anything else? No?
28:58
Speaker 1: I wish I did, but I don't. That's pretty amazing. Yeah,
29:01
Speaker 1: and this one we're going to chalk up to. If
29:05
Speaker 1: you want to know the entire world, we gotta we
29:08
Speaker 1: have to explain the Nile eventually. So that's what we did.
29:10
Speaker 1: We're gonna kill the Amazon or not little not really
29:14
Speaker 1: kill it. Nobody can. We're gonna shut it off. No,
29:19
Speaker 1: I should be asking you that, Chuck, You got anything else?
29:22
Speaker 1: Uh don't? Okay, Well, if you want to learn more
29:24
Speaker 1: about the Nile. You can type in Nile and I
29:27
Speaker 1: l e in the search part at how stuff Works
29:29
Speaker 1: dot com, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh,
29:35
Speaker 1: you know that we read our email emails occasionally from
29:39
Speaker 1: our younger listeners. Yes, we like kids, and we like
29:44
Speaker 1: them learning stuff and we like to be uh role
29:47
Speaker 1: models as far as our show goes the kids. That's
29:51
Speaker 1: a good good This comes from a listener from Wiscon.
29:54
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Minnesota, Okay, you can't say it like that.
29:58
Speaker 1: I am Eli of Lyndstrom, Minnesota. It's a small town
30:02
Speaker 1: located on the nose of Wisconsin, which is why I
30:05
Speaker 1: send that. I'm fourteen years old and I've been listening
30:07
Speaker 1: to your podcast for about six months. I really like
30:10
Speaker 1: it a lot. It is straight to the point, yet
30:12
Speaker 1: it isn't so facty you got that right, unlike Radio Lab.
30:17
Speaker 1: But I really enjoy your sense of personality. You add
30:19
Speaker 1: you guys don't sound like robots. I was having an
30:22
Speaker 1: anger attack when I heard the Underground Railroad podcast That
30:26
Speaker 1: lady wouldn't a real genius if it hit her in
30:28
Speaker 1: the ear. Drums, harsh words. Your topics include a variety
30:33
Speaker 1: of pop culture, science, psychology, and some downright obscure ones.
30:36
Speaker 1: I listened to you on the lawnmower along with wait waite,
30:39
Speaker 1: don't tell me? And how to do everything I haven't
30:41
Speaker 1: heard of. That one sounds suspiciously like our own like
30:46
Speaker 1: Catholic stuff. You should know exactly. One of the people
30:50
Speaker 1: who turned me onto your podcast is my scout Master, Dana.
30:53
Speaker 1: He and I have a very have very heated arguments
30:56
Speaker 1: and discussions about certain topics on our way to and
30:59
Speaker 1: from boy Scout camp. Me being the senior patrol leader,
31:02
Speaker 1: I need to have a certain connection with the scout
31:04
Speaker 1: Master in order for things to run smoothly. I appreciate
31:07
Speaker 1: what you guys are doing for me, and I hope
31:10
Speaker 1: that you right back. I would get all warm and
31:11
Speaker 1: fuzzy if you went as far as to read this
31:13
Speaker 1: on the air and Dana would not believe it. I
31:17
Speaker 1: hope you have a wonderful fault. Sincerely, Eli from Minnesota.
31:21
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Eli, and Dana take that. Yeah, I
31:24
Speaker 1: think Eli just one up to Dana from that. Yeah.
31:30
Speaker 1: I's had s'mores the other day. You mean, and I
31:31
Speaker 1: are into smores right now? You build a fire? How
31:35
Speaker 1: do you do it? Uh? In the Hey, dude, I don't.
31:40
Speaker 1: I don't have like a backyard to have a fire
31:42
Speaker 1: in and set it on fire on fire. Okay, Well,
31:47
Speaker 1: if you have a good s'more story, or how about this,
31:51
Speaker 1: if you have a good autumn treat recipe, we're in
31:54
Speaker 1: the we're in the market. Uh, we want it. Okay,
31:58
Speaker 1: A good punkin pie perhaps something like that, something that
32:01
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of. Good, um, good autumn cocktail recipe
32:05
Speaker 1: is always appreciated as well. I had a nice autumn
32:07
Speaker 1: beer the other night the doctors had punkin. Yeah, you've
32:10
Speaker 1: been talking about that ever since too. I just had
32:12
Speaker 1: it two nights ago. What are you talking about? No,
32:14
Speaker 1: you didn't, because this is like the third time you've
32:16
Speaker 1: mentioned added two nights ago. You're thinking of your other friend, Chuck. No,
32:20
Speaker 1: I think well then Chad had one. Okay, Okay. So
32:23
Speaker 1: if you have a good recipe of some sort for
32:25
Speaker 1: an autumn treat, we want to hear it. You can
32:28
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32:30
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32:33
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32:36
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32:41
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32:50
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