6 ms·

The Paratethys Sea Was the Largest Lake in Earth’s History

72 points by diodorus 4y ago

dr_dshiv 4y ago
It always blows my mind that the Black Sea was freshwater until about 7500 ago [1] (5600 BCE). For comparison, the nearby Gobekli Tepe culture was already 3000 years old [2] (9500 BCE). There must have been many cultures covered over by the Black Sea (which hopefully we can discover with aquatic archaeology in the future!) And, until about 8000 years ago, you could walk from Europe to Britain over Doggerland! (6200 BCE)[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
- AustinDev 4y ago
  The great flood.
  - simonh 4y ago
    There are about as many of those as there are Atlantii.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  I find the geological history of California's central valley pretty fascinating, in particular, Lake Corcoran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Corcoran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Corcoran
- elihu 4y ago
  That's about the same time period when Mount Mazama effectively ceased to exist in a rather dramatic fashion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Mazama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Mazama
  - kibwen 4y ago
    To entice people to click the link, today this place is known as Crater Lake in Oregon, who formation via the eruption of Mount Mazama was so tremendously earth-shattering that records of the event were passed down via oral history for seven thousand years by the Klamath people.
    - hodgesrm 4y ago
      You can still see the ash layer from the soon-to-be-Crater Lake eruption hundreds of miles away on hillsides and in gullies. [0] It's as much as 8 inches thick in the Okanogan in Washington State. That's 400+ miles away. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazama_Ash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazama_Ash
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Growing up in an arid climate, I always thought lakes were small bodies of water. The largest lake I had ever seen personally was barely a few KMs wide. Still boggles my mind to think that there are lakes bigger than entire countries.
- jamiek88 4y ago
  When I first flew to the USA from UK we took off from London then were almost immediately over water, for about 6 hours, then (I had a window seat) we we finally over land! Then we went over water again for about an hour and I was confused. The Atlantic was behind us? Turns out we flew over the great lakes, which took an hour at circa 500 mph. Mind blown. Then I went to Chicago and they have a beach. With an ocean. Looks exactly like a normal beach. Except it's a lake! Fresh water beach blew my tiny mind again. The largest lake I'd seen before that was in the lake district (imaginatively named) in England. They were big, to me. But they were not horizon to horizon like Lake Michigan was.
  - tleilaxu 4y ago
    I think part of this is down to a failure of the English language around the word ‘lake’. If we had a word for “inland freshwater sea” then we would be able to distinguish between a lake and a _lake_. The best we can do right now is add “great” preceding it!
    - rcme 4y ago
      The surface area of Lake Bakal isn’t even that large. It’s just really deep.
    - ithinkso 4y ago
      There is a Caspian sea in Asia, which is a lake to make it more clear. In the end, the disctinction based on size is a wonky one and makes no sense in the long run so I don't mind having large lakes that are bigger than some seas
    - dmurray 4y ago
elihu 4y ago
> "The idea of a body of water this vast yet now completely vanished brings home an uncomfortable truth: The physical parameters or our world—continents and oceans, mountains and lakes—appear fixed only because our own lives are so infinitesimally short, measured against geological eras." On the contrary, large bodies of water are currently shrinking substantially on timescales that humans can experience directly. The Aral Sea is probably the best example. The Great Salt Lake is another. Lake Mead was created by the Hoover dam in the 1930's, and now it's well on its way to turning back into desert. https://brilliantmaps.com/aral-sea/ https://brilliantmaps.com/aral-sea/
- noduerme 4y ago
  Well - the drying of all three of these endorheic lakes since the 1980s has been a direct result of man-made irrigation systems diverting water away from them. Not because anything geologically shifted.
simonh 4y ago
What a great map for a Hyborean style fantasy campaign.
dwighttk 4y ago
The article mentions twice that the Aral Sea was part of the lake, but the map shows it outside the greatest extent line.
- simonh 4y ago
  The map is of a particular point in time, but the sea/lake grew, shrank and shifted considerably over millions of years.
  - dwighttk 4y ago
    map has largest and smallest extent lines and the Aral Sea is outside the largest extent line
    - simonh 4y ago
      Fair enough, so I suppose at some point the Aral basin sank below the waterline and filled from the Paratethys or what remained of it. Those waterline marks must still only pertain to a particular period of time.
pfdietz 4y ago
It's interesting that the Caspian Sea is a true ocean: the crust below it is oceanic crust, not continental crust. EDIT: why was this downvoted? I do know there's a large amount of sediment that's accumulated on top of that oceanic crust.

72 points by diodorus 4y ago

It always blows my mind that the Black Sea was freshwater until about 7500 ago [1] (5600 BCE). For comparison, the nearby Gobekli Tepe culture was already 3000 years old [2] (9500 BCE). There must have been many cultures covered over by the Black Sea (which hopefully we can discover with aquatic archaeology in the future!) And, until about 8000 years ago, you could walk from Europe to Britain over Doggerland! (6200 BCE)[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

AustinDev 4y ago
The great flood.
- simonh 4y ago
  There are about as many of those as there are Atlantii.
bcrosby95 4y ago
I find the geological history of California's central valley pretty fascinating, in particular, Lake Corcoran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Corcoran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Corcoran
elihu 4y ago
That's about the same time period when Mount Mazama effectively ceased to exist in a rather dramatic fashion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Mazama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Mazama
- kibwen 4y ago
  To entice people to click the link, today this place is known as Crater Lake in Oregon, who formation via the eruption of Mount Mazama was so tremendously earth-shattering that records of the event were passed down via oral history for seven thousand years by the Klamath people.
  - hodgesrm 4y ago
    You can still see the ash layer from the soon-to-be-Crater Lake eruption hundreds of miles away on hillsides and in gullies. [0] It's as much as 8 inches thick in the Okanogan in Washington State. That's 400+ miles away. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazama_Ash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazama_Ash

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Growing up in an arid climate, I always thought lakes were small bodies of water. The largest lake I had ever seen personally was barely a few KMs wide. Still boggles my mind to think that there are lakes bigger than entire countries.

jamiek88 4y ago
When I first flew to the USA from UK we took off from London then were almost immediately over water, for about 6 hours, then (I had a window seat) we we finally over land! Then we went over water again for about an hour and I was confused. The Atlantic was behind us? Turns out we flew over the great lakes, which took an hour at circa 500 mph. Mind blown. Then I went to Chicago and they have a beach. With an ocean. Looks exactly like a normal beach. Except it's a lake! Fresh water beach blew my tiny mind again. The largest lake I'd seen before that was in the lake district (imaginatively named) in England. They were big, to me. But they were not horizon to horizon like Lake Michigan was.
- tleilaxu 4y ago
  I think part of this is down to a failure of the English language around the word ‘lake’. If we had a word for “inland freshwater sea” then we would be able to distinguish between a lake and a _lake_. The best we can do right now is add “great” preceding it!
  - rcme 4y ago
    The surface area of Lake Bakal isn’t even that large. It’s just really deep.
  - ithinkso 4y ago
    There is a Caspian sea in Asia, which is a lake to make it more clear. In the end, the disctinction based on size is a wonky one and makes no sense in the long run so I don't mind having large lakes that are bigger than some seas
  - dmurray 4y ago

elihu 4y ago

> "The idea of a body of water this vast yet now completely vanished brings home an uncomfortable truth: The physical parameters or our world—continents and oceans, mountains and lakes—appear fixed only because our own lives are so infinitesimally short, measured against geological eras." On the contrary, large bodies of water are currently shrinking substantially on timescales that humans can experience directly. The Aral Sea is probably the best example. The Great Salt Lake is another. Lake Mead was created by the Hoover dam in the 1930's, and now it's well on its way to turning back into desert. https://brilliantmaps.com/aral-sea/ https://brilliantmaps.com/aral-sea/

noduerme 4y ago
Well - the drying of all three of these endorheic lakes since the 1980s has been a direct result of man-made irrigation systems diverting water away from them. Not because anything geologically shifted.

simonh 4y ago

What a great map for a Hyborean style fantasy campaign.

dwighttk 4y ago

The article mentions twice that the Aral Sea was part of the lake, but the map shows it outside the greatest extent line.

simonh 4y ago
The map is of a particular point in time, but the sea/lake grew, shrank and shifted considerably over millions of years.
- dwighttk 4y ago
  map has largest and smallest extent lines and the Aral Sea is outside the largest extent line
  - simonh 4y ago
    Fair enough, so I suppose at some point the Aral basin sank below the waterline and filled from the Paratethys or what remained of it. Those waterline marks must still only pertain to a particular period of time.

pfdietz 4y ago

It's interesting that the Caspian Sea is a true ocean: the crust below it is oceanic crust, not continental crust. EDIT: why was this downvoted? I do know there's a large amount of sediment that's accumulated on top of that oceanic crust.