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Tectonic Forces: The Reason Cultures Divided in North Africa · Chapter by Chapter — The Lost Library

• 0:00
  I know you are out there listening right now because,
• 0:02
  well, you're the kind of person who looks at the world and wants
• 0:04
  to know exactly why things are the way they are.
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  You don't just want those, you know, surface level facts.
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  You want to understand the hidden forces pulling the
• 0:14
  strings behind the scenes. The deeper blueprint.
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  Exactly. And if you have that kind of
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  curiosity, you are going to absolutely love what we're
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  jumping into today. I want you to try and picture
• 0:28
  something in your mind right now.
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  OK? Imagine you're standing in the
• 0:32
  middle of the Sahara desert. The heat is just shimmering.
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  It's absolutely punishing and there is nothing but sand and
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  baked rock in literally every direction.
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  Just a completely hostile environment.
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  Yeah, totally hostile, but right in front of you is a perfect
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  line of palm trees. An Oasis.
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  And I don't mean like a small cluster where a few travellers
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  might stop. No, this is massive.
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  Right, this street of palm tree stretches in a perfectly
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  straight, great, totally unnatural line for over 1000
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  kilometers across the desert. It's just a stunning visual
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  really, like a ribbon of lush, vibrant life completely defying
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  this barren sun scorched landscape around it.
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  It's wild. And now I want you to take that
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  image. Just hold onto it and suddenly
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  transport yourself hundreds of miles north, looking out over
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  the sparkling blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
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  Oh, this is where it gets good. Deep down at the bottom of that
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  sea, lost to time, lies a sunken ghost continent, a massive
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  landmass that just, well, it just collapsed and vanished
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  beneath the waves. Just gone.
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  Gone. So you've got 1000 kilometer St.
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  of palms in the dead of the desert and a drowned ghost
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  continent at the bottom of the ocean.
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  And the question is, how on earth do these two things
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  connect? That is the ultimate puzzle we
• 1:49
  are decoding on this deep dive because, you know, those two
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  seemingly unrelated anomalies are actually the hidden
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  underground architects of human history.
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  Which is just mind blowing. We are jumping into a truly
• 2:00
  fascinating text today. It's an old one, a 1922 French
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  geological study called Structure de la Gerie, The
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  Structure of Algeria, by Emil Felix Gauthier.
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  Yeah, Gautier was really ahead of his time with this.
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  And our mission today isn't just to look at ancient rocks.
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  Yeah. Our goal is to uncover how
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  massive tectonic collisions, vanished oceans and, you know,
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  deep terrestrial scars actively dictated the cultures, the
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  languages and the historic battles of North Africa.
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  We're basically looking at the geological blueprint of an
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  entire civilization. Exactly.
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  OK, so before we even touch the sands of Algeria, we have to
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  look out into the water. Because to understand how North
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  Africa got squeezed into its current shape, the text suggests
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  we have to talk about the Alpine system.
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  We do. Which, to be honest, threw me
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  off a bit at first. I mean, what do the Alps have to
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  do with the Sahara? Yeah, it sounds completely
• 2:54
  counterintuitive, but when geologists talk about the Alpine
• 2:57
  system, they mean a massive that includes the Alps, the Apennines
• 3:01
  in Italy, the Beta Cordillera in Spain, and the Rift Mountains in
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  Morocco. Oh wow, so it's huge.
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  It spans across all of that, and if you look at these mountain
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  ranges on a map, they don't run in straight lines, they curve.
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  They form this massive sweeping hook that wraps all the way
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  around the western Mediterranean.
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  OK, let's unpack this. Because, you know, mountains
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  don't just curve for no reason. It's not like nature just made a
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  stylistic choice, no. Definitely not.
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  When I was looking at the maps and the source, I was thinking
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  about it like watching a river. If you see water suddenly divert
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  and curve in a stream, you instantly know there is a
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  massive invisible boulder under the surface, causing it to bend.
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  Right, that's a really good way to look at it.
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  The mountains are acting like water flowing around something
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  massive. So what exactly did these huge
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  mountain ranges crash into? They crashed into a colossal
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  battering ram. Geologists call it the Tyrrhenis
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  or the Tyranny in Mass. Tyranid, yeah.
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  Yeah, it was an ancient, incredibly rigid continent made
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  of hard, crystalline rock that once occupied the entire western
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  Mediterranean. Wait, crystalline rock?
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  Like what are we talking about here?
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  Quartz or diamonds? Oh, no, not quite.
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  Think of it more as rock that has been cooked and compressed
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  under so much heat and pressure that it becomes incredibly dense
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  and hard, like granite, you know?
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  Oh gotcha, like the tower tops? Exactly.
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  And as the Earth's crust shifted, this rigid continent
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  acted as an immovable block. It literally shoved the Atlas
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  Mountains southward. Yeah, forcing the whole Alpine
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  mountain system to warp and wrap entirely around it.
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  And then, having done its monumental work, the tyranny
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  just shattered and sank to the bottom of the sea.
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  A sunken continent. I know, I know.
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  It sounds exactly like Atlantis. It really does.
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  But what kind of hard evidence does a 1922 geology book
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  actually have to prove that a massive landmass just fell into
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  the ocean? Well, the evidence is actually
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  incredibly tangible. Fragments of this ghost
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  continent are still clinging to the modern coast right now.
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  Really. Where?
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  If you look at islands like Corsica and Sardinia, they're
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  made entirely of these ancient crystalline rocks.
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  And here is the kicker, those rocks have absolutely 0 relation
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  to the mainland of Italy, which they're sitting right next to.
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  Oh. That's wow.
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  So there are basically like geological orphans.
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  Exactly like orphans. And you see the exact same thing
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  in Algeria. Oh right, the text mentioned
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  that. Yeah, at coastal points like
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  Boozeria and Cat Matifu, there are these jagged, alien
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  crystalline rocks glued to the coast that just don't match the
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  inland geology of Africa at all. Gautier calls them the jagged
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  edges left behind from the fracture.
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  Yes, but the evidence isn't just in the rocks that remained, it's
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  actually in the scars of the collapse itself.
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  What do you mean by scars? Well, when a massive landmass
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  like the Tyranny breaks apart and sinks, it violently tears
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  the Earth's crust open, and the scar of that collapse is
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  actually a ring of coastal volcanoes.
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  Wait, hold on, are you saying famous volcanoes like Vesuvius
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  are just the leftover scars of this continent ripping away?
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  That is precisely what they are, yeah.
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  Vesuvius, Monetna, Capgata in Spain, they all trace the
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  outline of this sunken mass. That is fascinating.
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  And in Algeria, this contrast is incredibly striking.
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  The entire interior of the country has absolutely 0
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  eruptive volcanic rocks, but the exact moment you hit the coast
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  and the coastal islands, volcanic rock is everywhere.
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  It's the literal tier line where the continent ripped away.
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  That is just wild, but what about life?
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  Like animals? Yeah, if there was a massive
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  landmass connecting all these places, wouldn't there be some
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  kind of biological proof left behind, like fossils or
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  something? There is, and it is arguably the
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  most fascinating proof of all. Gautier cites the findings of a
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  zoologist named Forsyth Major OK.
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  He examined tiny 200 hectare Italian islands, places like
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  Pianosa, and on these tiny specks of land they found sub
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  fossils of full size deer. Hold on a second, a full size
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  deer doesn't evolve on a rock the size of a golf course.
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  I mean, there literally wouldn't be enough food to sustain a
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  population for a single generation, let alone enough
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  time for them to evolve there. Exactly, they had to have walked
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  there back when it was part of a massive landmass with a
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  sprawling ecosystem. That makes perfect sense.
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  And the connections get even more specific.
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  There are 16 mammal species native to Corsica and Sardinia
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  today. OK, seven of those species match
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  the animals living in North Africa in Algeria.
• 7:34
  Oh wow. But those same 7 species are
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  entirely missing from mainland Italy.
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  Wait, really? So at some point you could
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  literally walk your dog from Algiers all the way to Sardinia
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  without getting your feet wet. You absolutely could.
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  The biological isolation is basically the smoking gun for
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  the geological collapse. Wow, that's cool.
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  So we've established that the Atlas Mountains were squeezed
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  horizontally from east to West by the crushing weight of this
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  sunken continent. But to truly understand how this
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  shaped North Africa, we have to look at how this horizontal
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  mountain chain was violently sliced apart by north-south
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  forces coming up from the deep Sahara.
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  Which brings us right back to that 1000 kilometer St. of
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  palms. We started with the Rue de
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  Palmier. Yes, if I am understanding this
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  right, that line of trees is actually hiding a massive NS
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  fracture called the Tuat Rusulov Fault.
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  Exactly. No, it is a massive structural
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  crack running perpendicular to the mountains, just intersecting
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  them. OK, I have to push back on this
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  a bit though. Sure, go ahead.
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  Because when I hear the words massive geological fault, I
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  picture total devastation and abyss earthquakes tearing the
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  ground apart. Right.
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  Destruction, yeah. How does a violent tear in the
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  Earth equal a lush 1000 kilometer garden in the middle
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  of the most hostile desert on the planet?
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  You have to visualize what a fault line actually does to the
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  hidden layers of earth beneath your feet.
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  OK, when the ground fractures and shifts vertically, it brings
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  completely different types of rock into direct side by side
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  contact with one. Another Oh, I see where this is
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  going. Let's say you have a highly
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  permeable rock like sandstone, which is super porous and allows
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  underground water to flow right through it, right?
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  Suddenly, because of the fault, that sandstone gets slammed
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  right up against a layer of dense impermeable clay.
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  So the water flowing through the sandstone suddenly hits a brick
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  wall. Yes, the underground water hits
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  that impermeable wall of clay and has absolutely nowhere to go
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  but straight up. So this violent geological
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  fracture is essentially functioning as 1000 kilometer
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  long natural plumbing system. That is brilliant.
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  It forces deep, life saving artesian water directly to the
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  desert surface. That is the exact mechanism that
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  allows those oases to form in that perfect straight line.
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  The destruction of the rock is literally what brings the water
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  to the surface. Exactly.
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  And if we follow that street of Palms, N, we eventually hit the
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  Atlas Mountains at a place called Figyug, specifically in
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  the Zeusfana Valley. And the Zeusfana Valley is where
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  the Saharan fault line literally crashes into the Atlas
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  Mountains. The result is a total split in
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  reality. Yeah, the source text describes
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  the terrain on either side of this valley, and they sound like
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  2 entirely different planets. They really do.
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  If you look to the West, you have the Maize and the Grouse
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  Mountains. The text notes.
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  This area is made of violently folded, jagged Jurassic
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  limestone. And when we say Jurassic
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  limestone, we are talking about rock laid down 10s of millions
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  of years ago, back when dinosaurs walked the earth.
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  Rock that has since been totally crushed and twisted by the
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  earth, its movements. And because it has been so
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  violently twisted, it is just a barren desert of stone.
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  The rock is described as yellow like honey, a completely naked
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  and contorted into these terrifying sharp needles.
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  It's totally welcome. There is absolutely no human
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  habitation there. A few hunters might pass
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  through, but you cannot survive there.
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  But then you just step across the fault line to the east.
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  And to the east you have the Benny Smear.
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  And it is completely different. It is flat, calm, slightly
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  undulating. Albion in sandstone.
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  And because sandstone acts like that spun we talked about.
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  It holds a vast spring of water. There are ancient rock
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  engravings. There are cultivated fields.
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  It's an Oasis. There is an entire permanent
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  human village called Taterint perched right on top of it.
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  You literally step across an invisible geological line and go
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  from a jagged, uninhabitable deathscape to a thriving ancient
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  human village. It perfectly illustrates how
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  geology dictates habitability. But you know that contrast
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  scales up dramatically when you look at something called the
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  Tamelot Plain. Oh, the Tamelot is hard to even
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  wrap your head around. It's like someone took a giant
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  eraser and just wiped out the mountains for 50 kilometers.
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  Imagine a massive flat plain 50 kilometers wide.
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  Slightly facing the entire Atlas mountain range in half.
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  On the western edge of this flat plain you have the towering
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  Moroccan High Atlas Mountains, peaking at 4000 meters very
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  tall, but on the eastern edge you have the Saharan Atlas,
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  which are only half that height. The Tamo Plain is basically an
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  exposed nerve of the ancient earth.
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  It is made of Silurian rock, which means it is incredibly
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  ancient. How ancient are we talking?
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  We are talking over 400 million years old, long before trees or
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  complex land animals even existed.
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  That is almost impossible to fathom.
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  It really is. It is a slice of the primary
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  planetary crust, laying completely bare right in the
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  middle of a much younger mountain range.
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  But what makes a Tamlet so crucial isn't just the age of
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  the rock, it is the profound impact it had on human
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  civilization. At the wells of the Tamlup, 2
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  totally different worlds collide.
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  OK hold on, I want to challenge this.
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  Go for it. I can easily see how rocks
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  dictate where a village goes because of water, right?
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  We just talked about that. Sure, but the source claims this
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  geology literally created 1000 year blood feud between peoples.
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  Aren't we giving rocks a little too much credit for human
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  sociology and behavior? It sounds like a stretch at 1st
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  until you look at the mechanics of survival in those two
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  environments. OK, lay it out.
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  For me, to the east of the plain, out on the flat expanse,
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  you have the Benny Gill. They are nomadic, Arabic
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  speaking horsemen. OK.
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  Their entire culture, economy, and military strength rely on
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  movement, grazing animals, and open plains.
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  They literally need the flat geography to exist.
• 13:33
  OK, that makes total sense for the nomads.
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  But to the West, up of the towering craggy mountains, you
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  have Berber speaking villagers. They are sedentary farmers.
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  They stay put. Exactly.
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  They build fortified stationary communities rooted deep in the
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  valleys. They rely on defensive high
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  ground and terrace farming. I see the problem.
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  A nomad cannot maneuver horses in those crags and a farmer
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  cannot grow crops on the bait. Windy plains of the nomads.
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  They're completely incompatible. Exactly.
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  The geography doesn't just separate them, it forces them
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  into entirely incompatible ways of life right next to each
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  other. They have looked across this
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  geological divide and fought for over a Millennium because
• 14:16
  they're fundamental modes of survival which are dictated by
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  the terrain are completely at odds.
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  The tectonic scar literally became the cultural scar.
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  OK, I see it now. The environment shapes the
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  economy, the economy shapes the culture, and the cultures clash.
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  Precisely. It just blows my mind that human
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  conflicts can be traced back to the way rocks fractured hundreds
• 14:37
  of millions of years ago. It's geology as destiny.
• 14:40
  But this raises another question for me.
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  We've seen the grid, the East West Mountains squeezed by the
• 14:45
  Ghost Continent, and the north-south faults slicing
• 14:47
  through them. Yeah, but how did this landmass
• 14:50
  physically build itself up from the the desert floor to become
• 14:53
  mountains in the 1st place? I mean, if it wasn't a sunken
• 14:56
  continent and it wasn't a desert, what was it?
• 14:58
  To understand the construction of the land itself, we have to
• 15:00
  look at a concept called a geosyncline.
• 15:03
  OK, let's pretend I don't have a PhD in Earth sciences.
• 15:06
  What exactly is a geosyncline? Fair enough.
• 15:10
  Think of it as a giant geological accordion operating
• 15:12
  entirely underwater. An underwater accordion.
• 15:15
  I like that. Yeah, for long geological ages,
• 15:18
  Algeria wasn't solid land at all.
• 15:20
  It was a highly unstable, watery trench trapped between two
• 15:24
  massive, rigid continents. Which ones?
• 15:26
  The Saharan platform down to the South and our ghost continent,
• 15:29
  the Tyrrhenis to the north. OK, because it was constantly
• 15:33
  being squeezed like a vice between these two immovable
• 15:35
  blocks. The floor of this sea was
• 15:38
  constantly buckling, flooding, folding and sinking over
• 15:41
  millions of years. So it's just a restless ocean
• 15:43
  floor getting crumpled into mountains.
• 15:45
  Exactly. And the depth of this sea varied
• 15:47
  wildly, which ended up having massive economic implications
• 15:50
  for the modern world. Really.
• 15:52
  How so? During what geologists call the
• 15:54
  EOC in ERA, roughly 50 million years ago, long after the
• 15:58
  dinosaurs went extinct, the northern part of this sea, the
• 16:01
  Tell region, was a deep, dark abyss, OK, but the southern
• 16:05
  part, over the high plateaus was made-up of very shallow, warm
• 16:08
  waters. And that shallow water is where
• 16:11
  the magic happened, right? It is.
• 16:13
  The text describes how in those shallow southern waters,
• 16:17
  millions upon millions of marine animals died and settled on the
• 16:21
  bottom. Because the water was so
• 16:23
  shallow, the bones didn't dissolve before hitting the
• 16:26
  seabed. They just piled up layer upon
• 16:29
  layer over eons. Just massive bone yards, yeah.
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  And today, those compacted layers of ancient marine death
• 16:37
  are the source of Algeria's massive modern day wealth of
• 16:41
  phosphate deposits, which are crucial for global agriculture.
• 16:45
  The shallow water is essentially built a modern economic empire
• 16:49
  out of fossils. It's incredible.
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  It really is. But the deep waters in the in
• 16:52
  the north left an entirely different, yet equally vital
• 16:56
  legacy. In that deep abyss, immense
• 16:59
  layers of distinct sandstones and clays were deposited, which
• 17:03
  geologists call the Numidian flesh.
• 17:05
  When I was reading about the Numidian flesh in the source
• 17:07
  material, I kept trying to picture how it works.
• 17:09
  Tell me if this analogy holds up.
• 17:10
  Let's hear it. It's like taking a giant,
• 17:12
  incredibly porous natural sponge and setting it down directly on
• 17:15
  top of a heavy waterproof tarp. The sandstone is the sponge.
• 17:20
  It drinks up every single drop of rainwater that hits it, but
• 17:23
  the dense clay underneath is the tarp.
• 17:26
  It prevents the water from draining away deep into the
• 17:28
  earth. I love that.
• 17:29
  So the sponge just holds all that water perfectly right near
• 17:32
  the surface. That is a brilliant way to
• 17:34
  visualize it. The porosity of the sandstone
• 17:37
  combined with the impermeability of the clay creates an
• 17:41
  incredible massive natural reservoir.
• 17:45
  And that's specific geological quirk creates a true botanical
• 17:48
  miracle. It is the sole reason why the
• 17:51
  mountainous kabilia region, located in an otherwise harsh
• 17:54
  and very dry part of the world, boasts these massive, unexpected
• 17:58
  forests of giant cork oak trees. Which makes that specific region
• 18:02
  a global hub for Cork production today.
• 18:04
  It does. It's amazing to think that
• 18:06
  ancient mud settling at the bottom of a dark abyss 50
• 18:10
  million years ago is literally determining modern global
• 18:13
  economics. The geological history actively
• 18:15
  writes the human history. It determines where the wealth
• 18:17
  is, where the water is, and ultimately where the people can
• 18:20
  survive. So we know how the terrain
• 18:22
  forced nomads and farmers into conflict.
• 18:25
  But how did these ancient, dried up seas shape the massive
• 18:29
  empires that swept through North Africa?
• 18:31
  That's a great question. I mean, humans moving massive
• 18:35
  armies must have stumbled into geological traps set millions of
• 18:38
  years before they were even born.
• 18:40
  They absolutely did, and to see exactly how, we have to look at
• 18:43
  another one of those deep NS trenches we discussed earlier.
• 18:47
  This specific trench created what historians and geologists
• 18:51
  call the Biskra Breach. The Biskra breach and standing
• 18:56
  guard over this breach is a geological anomaly called
• 18:59
  Elutaya which is just wild to read about.
• 19:02
  It is entirely bizarre. It is a monstrous 300m tall
• 19:05
  solid mountain of salt. Yes, it's a sheer massive block
• 19:09
  of salt towering over the landscape.
• 19:11
  How does salt even become a mountain?
• 19:13
  Doesn't it just wash away when it rains?
• 19:14
  Well, under normal circumstances, yes it would.
• 19:17
  But mountains of salt like Elutaya are clear geological
• 19:20
  markers of deep, violent fractures in the.
• 19:22
  Oh, because of the pressure. Exactly Deep underground,
• 19:27
  ancient beds of salt were subjected to immense tectonic
• 19:31
  pressure because salts can behave plastically under extreme
• 19:34
  pressure. Wait, plastic like toothpaste?
• 19:36
  Yeah, exactly like toothpaste. It was violently squeezed upward
• 19:40
  through the fracture in the Earth crust until it just
• 19:43
  breached the surface. That is so weird.
• 19:45
  It is, but historically the Biska breach itself was even
• 19:49
  more important than the Salt Mountain guarding it.
• 19:51
  Why is that? Because the breach completely
• 19:54
  interrupted the continuous, impenetrable line of the
• 19:57
  mountains, creating a natural flat highway.
• 20:00
  From the deep Sahara straight into the northern plains.
• 20:03
  And because it was the easiest path, like the path of least
• 20:06
  resistance for horses and foot soldiers, it became the ultimate
• 20:08
  invasion highway. Yes, human empires behave
• 20:11
  exactly like water. They constantly seek the easiest
• 20:14
  path through an obstacle. That makes sense.
• 20:16
  The Ibadites used it to push N the Zanada people spread through
• 20:19
  it. And when the monumental Arab
• 20:21
  invasion swept into North Africa, led by historical
• 20:23
  figures like CD Akba, they poured their massive armies
• 20:26
  right through the bisk or Breach.
• 20:28
  The history of conquest in Algeria is essentially the
• 20:31
  history of armies blindly following the paths carved by
• 20:35
  water and tectonic faults millions of years prior.
• 20:38
  It's like the Earth laid out a red carpet for invasion and just
• 20:42
  waited for humans to use it. That's exactly what happened.
• 20:44
  And it wasn't just about how to get in, either.
• 20:47
  The geology also dictated where empires built their unassailable
• 20:51
  strongholds. Right, the fortresses.
• 20:53
  The source goes into deep detail about the great Hogger Lego at
• 20:56
  Ridge. It's this massive subterranean
• 20:59
  spine of rock that acts like a solid wall between the eastern
• 21:03
  and western halves of the Northern Tell region.
• 21:06
  It is the ultimate geographical choke point.
• 21:09
  If you control that Ridge, you control the flow of trade, the
• 21:12
  movement of armies and communication between the East
• 21:14
  and the West. You divide and conquer.
• 21:16
  Which is exactly why, for thousands of years, every single
• 21:20
  major empire built their fortress capitals right along
• 21:23
  that exact Ridge. Couldn't resist it.
• 21:25
  You have the ancient city of Akir hidden in the mountains.
• 21:28
  You have Caesarea, which is modern day Churchill down on the
• 21:31
  coast, and eventually the modern capital of Algiers itself.
• 21:35
  They aren't there by accident. They are all perched on top of a
• 21:38
  tectonic spine because it offers the ultimate strategic high
• 21:42
  ground. And the kings and generals who
• 21:44
  built those cities likely knew absolutely nothing about the
• 21:47
  deep tectonic forces colliding beneath their feet.
• 21:50
  They just knew the terrain made them powerful.
• 21:52
  They were just the latest temporary residents sitting on
• 21:56
  top of an ancient geological masterpiece.
• 21:58
  That is such a good way to put it.
• 22:00
  We have covered an incredible amount of ground today.
• 22:03
  We really have. We started by looking out over
• 22:05
  the Mediterranean at a sunken ghost continent, the Tyranid,
• 22:09
  whose violent collapse left a ring of volcanoes and isolated
• 22:12
  deer stranded on tiny islands. Which is still my favorite
• 22:16
  detail. Same.
• 22:17
  Then we traced a 1000 kilometer fault line that disguised itself
• 22:21
  as a street of palm trees across the deep Sahara by pumping
• 22:25
  artesian water to the surface A. Literal line of life.
• 22:28
  We looked at how the ancient buckling Susonian Sea turned
• 22:31
  marine bones into modern phosphate wealth, and how a
• 22:34
  sponge and tarp layer of deep sea rock created giant cork
• 22:38
  forests. Geology driving the modern
• 22:40
  economy. And finally we saw how the very
• 22:43
  boundaries between nomadic horsemen and sedentary villagers
• 22:47
  and the invasion roots of ancient empires were perfectly
• 22:50
  mapped onto these deep million year old tectonic scars.
• 22:55
  You know, when you look at how completely our human story is
• 22:58
  dictated by these ancient terrestrial scars, it raises an
• 23:02
  entirely new, incredibly provocative thought.
• 23:05
  Oh yeah. What's that think about the
• 23:07
  future? Right now, humanity is looking
• 23:09
  up at the stars, planning to build the first human colonies
• 23:12
  on Mars or the Moon. Right, the new frontier.
• 23:15
  When we get there, we won't be looking for pre-existing cities
• 23:18
  or human borders. We will be doing exactly what
• 23:21
  our ancestors unwittingly did here on Earth.
• 23:23
  Wait, you mean we'll be looking for geology?
• 23:25
  Yes, we will be aggressively scanning for ancient fault
• 23:28
  lines, dried up geosync lines, and geological intersections
• 23:31
  because that is exactly where the trapped ice and resources
• 23:33
  will be. So the very first
• 23:35
  extraterrestrial cities will be dictated by tectonic scars from
• 23:38
  billions of years ago on another planet.
• 23:41
  Exactly. Yeah, we are going to repeat
• 23:43
  this exact same geological blueprint, blindly following the
• 23:48
  hidden architecture of another world.
• 23:50
  We might leave the earth behind, but we can never truly escape
• 23:52
  the geology. Something to chew on.