5 Things About Geography You’re Wrong About

the earth a pretty big place and it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone to find out that there are fun facts or trivia about our world that they've yet to encounter but today we're not just here to bring you new information all on its own but to dispel common myths in this video we're going to cover and correct five misconceptions about geography that you might have perhaps changing your view of our planet in the [Music] process the Sahara is not actually very Sandy the Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world and is usually the stereotypical landscape people imagine when you ask them to picture a desert generally what comes to mind are endless Horizons of Sands piled up in large Rippling Dunes constantly scorching under a hot sun with the occasional Oasis providing relief for travelers and to be fair this is often how it's portrayed in movies perhaps coupled with a dehydrated and hallucinating protagonist stumbling through the stand and getting stung by a scorpion but the reality is quite a bit different from this popular perception in fact only a portion of the Sahara is covered with pure sound estimated to be between 15 and 25% nearly all of the rest is covered with plain old rock mostly in the form of a thin layer of gravel and most of this Rocky landscape comes in the form of something called a ham which is essentially a large flat Plateau giving a very different picture of the Sahara than many people have come to believe but even for the portion that is made out of sand dunes you're still likely to be in for a surprise what most people don't know is that sand unes aren't simply Hills covered with a thick layer of sand they are actually structures made entirely of sand that move and shift with the wind over time when viewed over a time lapse they shift and move almost like waves on the ocean only instead of water they're made of Tiny Little Rock particles and you definitely shouldn't try swimming in them speaking of water learning that the majority of the Sahara is Rock instead of sand doesn't change the fact that it's still a Barron Wasteland the whole region only receives an average of about 3 in of rain every year and the oases are so few and far between that you'd have to be a Madman to attempt Crossing it on foot which is why it's so surprising to learn that the Sahara wasn't always like this around 14,000 years ago the region experienced the African humid period caused by changes in the Earth's Tilt that strengthened the African monsoon season and radically changed the landscape of the Sahara vegetation lakes rivers grassy Fields all of it this led to numerous hunter gatherer societies settling in the region leaving behind artifacts such as rock paintings of people swimming and the Duna canoe one of the oldest boats ever found however this green period began nearing its end around 6,000 years ago pushing most of its inhabitants into more favorable places such as Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley as the Sahara transformed into the rocky hot desert that we recognize today maps are very very warped it's a fairly well-known fact that Maps don't represent a perfect image of the Earth the Distortion comes as a result of trying to stretch and squish the spherical surface of the Earth and fit it into a flat wreck rectangle or so the government would have you believe we all know the Earth is flat the different approaches to this task have resulted in several different map projections that all have their strengths and weaknesses but the most popular in classrooms and in the public eye by far is the mercor protection which is single-handedly responsible for many geographical misconceptions because While most people are aware that Maps distort the image of the earth many don't realize just how much this Distortion has affected their view of the world the main issue with the Mercator protection is that the further you get from the equator the more distorted and stretched the image becomes which is why places like Central America or South Asia are very normal looking While others blo up to many times their own size so let's go over some of the worst instances first up Antarctica you may have actually never seen the full size of Antarctica on the mercor projection as the bottom of the map is often cropped out but the full picture makes the Frozen continent look absolutely gigantic in fact directly comparing the size this map would lead you to believe that Antarctica is much larger than Asia while in reality it has only about 1/8 of the area likewise if we head north you'll see that Greenland is absolutely ginormous appearing to be larger than the entire continent of Africa while in reality greenlands would not even be the largest country in Africa in fact the size of Africa is one of the true tragedies of the Mercator prodection you wouldn't guess this by looking at a map but Africa's land area is basically large enough to Encompass the United States China India Mexico Japan and several European countries all at once if you want to see the size difference for yourself there are several tools online to do so the best of which is probably the trueu size.com which will let you drag Nations around to see how they would be distorted in different places on Earth one of the best comparisons you can make with these tools is with Chile which in 2020 BBC calls thin strip of land in South America in reality if you drag Chile over Europe you'll see that it's actually about the width of Great Britain coastlines are not what you think Canada has the world's longest coastline which shouldn't come as a surprise since it's the second largest country in the world contains thousands of islands and is surrounded by water on three sides however if you were asked to name the country with the second longest coastline you'd probably get it wrong it's not Russia with its massive Northern real estate on the edge of the Arctic Ocean it isn't Indonesia or the Philippines with their respectable sizes in numerous islands and it isn't even Australia the country with the second longest coastline is actually Norway now looking at a map you might be left scratching ahead as Norway isn't all that large but this is where it gets tricky because measuring coastlines is not as simple as it might seem the main issue is that there is no defined feature or clear set of rules used for measuring a coastline a classic example measures the outline of Great Britain using sticks that are 100 km long which would give you a total Coastline of 2,800 km however if we make the unit of measurement smaller Say by using sticks that are only 50 km long we get a longer answer of 3,400 km the smaller we make the unit of measurement the longer and more accurate the result becomes and that's exactly the issue there is no well-defined unit of measurement to use no feature to use as a reference no inherent rules this is why it is referred to as the coastline Paradox with the actual length of the coastline often being described as fractal essentially the more you zoom in the more you find and ultimately you end up with a coastline of infinite length as you can just continue finding smaller and smaller frames of reference to us as measurement not to mention if you could measure things by say the size of a grain of sand well the tide and the weather are going to constantly shift the location of these things and make measuring your Coastline essentially impossible to avoid getting trapped in this Paradox scientists are forced to agree upon certain approximations for measurement which allows them to more or less come to a conclusion about the length of the coastline in Norway's case the reason its Shoreline is so surprisingly long is due to its many Fords and Islands carved by the Sea giving it its iconic Jagged Edge if you were to stretch out this Coastline and smooth out all of the little bumps and ridges it would wrap around the Earth 2 and a half times the longest river might not be the Nile for many years the Nile was universally recognized as the longest river in the world stretching through Northeastern Africa it flows northward through 11 countries countes before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea the Nile has been Central to the many civilizations that have flourished along its banks for Millennia earning it prestige in both history and geography traditionally the length of the Nar was calculated to be about 6,650 km long including its tributaries however in recent years its title as the world's longest has come under some scrutiny the challenge to the Nars Crown first came from Brazilian scientists in the early 2000s who believed that a more accurate measurements of the Amazon's length would prove that it was indeed longer the issue is that unlike the Nile whose sources are relatively well defined the Amazon is less visible running through the Amazon rainforest with a vast network of interconnected tributaries much of which had never been explored by employing modern technology such as GPS satellites and by taking novel trips into new territory the team arrived at the shocking conclusion that the Amazon River was 7,062 km in length making it considerably longer than the Nile but this one finding wasn't going to be the end of the debate though not as complex as coastlines r are still difficult to measure and all manner of natural events can affect their flow shift bends or create new streams all potentially affecting a River's overall length which is why right now the river that's the longest depends entirely on who you ask with the US geologic survey saying the Nile is ever so slightly longer and a more recent research team putting the Amazon at just 65 km ahead of the Nile however all things considered the consensus in the scientific Community does seem to be trending in the favor of the Amazon if indeed the Amazon is longer than the Nile being the the longest river on Earth would only be one of its two major achievements the other being that it is also the largest river on Earth with an output greater than the next seven largest rivers combined there are many continent Splitters the last thing you might be getting wrong about geography has to do with the borders between continents and the countries that cross these firstly depending on where you're from you may have been taught a different model of how many continents there are in the world the most popular seven continent model is T in North America Western Europe India and China but also very popular is the sixth continent model in Russia and several places in Eastern Europe Europe and Asia are combined into the singular Eurasia leaving us with six continents while many countries that speak romance languages including most of Latin America North and South America are the ones combined into a single continent now with that out of the way we're going to be basing this off of the seven continent model and it's time to investigate the countries that end up with territory on more than one continent the most well-known is Russia who has the majority of its land mass across the top of Asia but with the majority of its population centered in the European part of the country Turkey is also famous for crossing the continent boundary with a small portion Crossing into Europe and with the city of Istanbul widely regarded as having parts that exist on both continents however the misconception lies in the fact that most people aren't aware that these aren't the only two transcontinental Nations there are in fact several for instance there is Egypt whose Northeast section is actually not in Africa but crosses over into Asia and then there are the nations of the caucuses the boundary of Europe extends a bit further Eastward than many people realize giving both aaban and Georgia small European sections of their countries likewise Kazakhstan is mainly located in Asia but its Western regions cross the Euro River placing them geographically within Europe according to most Maps however the list of transcontinental Nations gets a lot longer if you start including non-contiguous regions for example this would make France trans Continental as they have smaller territories in South America Asia and off the coast of Africa just like our Spain as territory that is considered part of Africa likewise Denmark is located entirely within Europe but Greenland is part of the Danish realm and thus extends the nation into North America that said the non-contiguous Nations aren't generally considered to be truly part of the Transcontinental Nations like turkey but it is still an interesting aspect of our world that isn't widely known [Music]