Surprisingly, not really even that. As pointed out in the Wired article The Deadly Global War for Sand [1]: "Desert sand generally doesn’t work for construction

Surprisingly, not really even that. As pointed out in the Wired article The Deadly Global War for Sand [1]: "Desert sand generally doesn’t work for construction; shaped by wind rather than water, desert grains are too round to bind together well." [1] http://www.wired.com/2015/03/illegal-sand-mining/ http://www.wired.com/2015/03/illegal-sand-mining/