Live Wilderness Adventure

Chapter 842: The Nile River

Bi Fang galloped through the desert on a camel, causing wind and sand to blow up.

The pyramid gradually shrank behind him, and finally disappeared above the horizon.

After being delayed by the mummy for two days, Bi Fang hadn't forgotten about his business, and the reminder to complete the task of crossing the Sahara hadn't appeared yet.

The surrounding scenes gradually changed, from the sandy dunes to the grasslands, the surrounding colors gradually became richer and brighter, as if far away from the fiery world of yellow sand.

In the end, the drone that was constantly shooting in the sky captured a river above the ground.

A fluffy reed-like plant grows on the side of the river bank, swaying with the wind, green and lush.

Summer, although hot and dry, is also a season full of vitality.

After turning over a hillside, Bi Fang overlooked the deep and wide river from the highest point, which is the longest river in the world.

When seeing this incomparably wide river, its name sounded in everyone's mind - the Nile!

[The Nile! Nile! Nile! 】

[Chong Chong Chong, I succeeded, I really crossed the Sahara! 】

【World number one! ! ! 】

[What is a world-class explorer! ! ! 】

[Prince Mu gave the host a spaceship*66—the world's number one! ! ! 】

[Rise up in the sky and give it to the host as a spaceship*6——the world's first! ! ! 】

[Fifteen centimeters are given to the anchor spaceship*1—the world's first! ! ! 】

Bi Fang got off Alpha, stepped on the hillside and then slid down some sand grains, staggered a few steps, and stopped on the river bank.

For two months, two full months, he could clearly feel the changes in his body, like a sponge that was constantly absorbing water and being squeezed dry again and again.

Tired, sleepy, hungry, thirsty, hot.

Excited, excited, full, moist, cool.

Complicated emotions and physical sensations are intertwined, forming a large net of memories, and the nets become a rich fruit, which is entwined in the memory forest, and finally crumbling, falling from the branches and falling into the soil.

Rooting, sprouting, branching, leafing, and finally turning into a towering tree, completely becoming a member of the forest.

Bi Fang's eyes became brighter and deeper, and all the fatigue was swept away.

[Congratulations to the host for completing the mission: ocean currents, traveling through death, leaving ancient tombs, reward statistics are in progress]

[The final rewards are: high-level skill strengthening coupon*2, muscle control strengthening coupon*1, mitochondrial strengthening coupon*1, strengthening point*5, wilderness points*5047. 】

The cheerful smile that Bi Fang showed was a great harvest.

But he temporarily suppressed the system prompt, and refocused on the big river in front of him, as if a sense of heroism rose in his chest.

Northeast Africa where Egypt is located, most of the territory is the Gobi desert, and the climate is dry and rainless. Even if the technology is advanced today, its development value is not very great.

It was the Nile River that created the civilization of ancient Egypt.

Relying on the nourishment of the Nile, the ancient Egyptians thrived and created an unparalleled ancient Egyptian civilization at that time.

The Nile River is the longest, but it can provide limited fresh water resources. The annual runoff is only 84 billion cubic meters. Compared with the 950 billion cubic meters of our Yangtze River's annual runoff, it is completely insignificant.

The amount of runoff determines the amount of fresh water resources, the basic resource available for human production and life, and the size of the watershed directly determines the living space of human civilization.

But it has a bliss in the face of flooding.

The Nile River has the characteristics of regular flooding. In northern Sudan, the water usually starts to rise in May and reaches the highest water level in August. After that, the water level gradually decreases, and the water level is low from January to May.

While flooding occurs regularly, the amount of water and the timing of high tides vary widely.

This phenomenon is caused by the Blue Nile and Atbara Rivers, which are fed by seasonally heavy rains in the Ethiopian highlands.

The audience listened patiently.

They knew that this three-month live broadcast was coming to an end.

This may be the last live broadcast.

More than 80% of the water of the Nile River is provided by the Ethiopian plateau, and the rest of the water comes from the East African plateau lake.

When the flood comes, it will submerge the farmland on both sides of the bank, and when the flood recedes, it will leave a thick layer of silt to form fertile soil.

Four to five thousand years ago, the Egyptians knew how to control the law of floods and use the fertile land on both sides of the river.

For a long time, the Nile River Valley has been filled with continuous cotton fields and fragrant rice flowers. Between the Sahara Desert and the Arabian Desert, the meandering Nile River is like a green outline, full of infinite vitality.

The river flows down with the black soil of the East African plateau, and it doesn't slow down until the middle and lower reaches, forming a moist fertile soil area.

Therefore, the ancient Egyptians only needed to sow the seeds in October every year, and God will reward them. The next spring will be a bumper harvest, and due to the hot climate, the crops can reach an astonishing three crops a year.

According to the records of Dodd in Greece, the farmers there only need to wait for the river to overflow on its own, flow to the fields to irrigate, and then return to the river bed after irrigation, and then each of them scatter the seeds on his own land, and ask the pigs to step into these fields. Seeds, and then just waiting to be harvested.

【This is too sloppy】

[It’s Dude again, the appearance rate is too high]

[Maybe give an appearance fee (dog head)]

Bi Fang blew a whistle to let Alpha, who was watching from the hillside, come down.

The huge Alpha looked at the sloping steep slope, tried many times, and finally stepped on the dirt slope carefully, sliding little by little, and came to the river bank.

Bi Fang led the camel and walked along the Nile River like this, feeling the steam blowing against his face, and every deep breath seemed to moisten the lung cavity filled with wind and sand.

This kind of farming method of relying on the sky is most suitable for the development level of early humans. The Egyptians in the Nile River Basin enjoyed the richness of agriculture in the ancient times when the production technology was extremely low.

With a sufficient material base, on a global scale, ancient Egypt also became the first country to get rid of the primitive tribal form and establish slavery.

However, there are so many rivers in the world, and the Nile is not the only one that can flood. Basically every one of the four major rivers in the world will do the same. However, the Nile River Basin has a typical tropical desert climate. Coupled with fertile soil, whenever there are seeds in the soil, the crops will naturally grow well.

Take our Yellow River as an example. Although it floods regularly in summer and autumn every year, the flood season is over and the sky is already cold. In winter, it is very cold and even freezes.

Everyone knows that the temperature is too low for crops to grow naturally.

When the temperature rises in spring and summer next year, the seedlings in the field will not grow and live, and the flood season will come again. At that time, the dry land will become a paddy field. The Loess Plateau is not a water town in the south of the Yangtze River. If you can't grow rice, you will only suffer. .”

So, people in these places only found some high-lying mountain forests to live in, and the corresponding agricultural harvest would be much reduced, and there was no sufficient material guarantee to build a relatively large and advanced national civilization.

And the tropical desert covering almost all of Egypt's territory outside the Nile River Basin has also become an important factor for Egypt to lead the world.

Perhaps many people doubt that tropical deserts are suitable for human survival. This is of course justified, but in a special historical period and in a special environment, there are exceptions.

[Is it so complicated? 】

[Human development ultimately depends on the face of the earth]

There are more complicated ones.

Bi Fang casually folded a reed-shaped papyrus.

Tropical deserts have two characteristics. One is the fluidity of the sand, which determines that it can fill up gullies, but cannot build up mountains. Therefore, desert areas must be flat. Although the sand dunes seem to be very high, they are only tens of meters high. A hundred meters is just a small slope.

The second is the extremely arid climate, which determines that in the desert environment, the evaporation of water is extremely alarming. At the same time, the water permeability of the sandy surface is better, and the ability to absorb surface water is stronger.

It seems that these two points are not important, but they are extremely important to the formation and development of early Egyptian civilization.

The terrain is flat, so when the Nile floods, it can cover a large area.

Secondly, when the desert around the river basin is washed away by the fertile soil threatened by the flood of the Nile River during the flood season, a fertile plain may form.

When the Nile River floods, due to the huge amount of evaporation and strong surface permeability, these advantages, coupled with the natural characteristics of sand cutting mountains and filling ditches, so there will be no large lakes and swamps around the Nile River after the flood season.

If you want to talk about this point, it may become a great disadvantage due to the serious lack of natural water storage function now, but five or six thousand years ago, this point happened to be very beneficial to the development of Egyptian civilization.

Lakes and marshes have the function of natural water storage, so it is more difficult to develop and utilize them.

To be used in agriculture, humans need to build embankments and dams, and open canals to guide them.

As for swamps, it is more difficult to develop them into farmland.

The Egyptians who lived for thousands of years could only rely on the sky for food, and their technology and resource reserves were extremely backward, so they could not effectively use lakes and swamps.

Don't talk about building dams, even the canals are not very good at using them.

I don't have that ability.

The special geographical environment in the lower reaches of the Nile just does not have the possibility of forming large lakes and swamps.

Around the flooded watershed, there is sufficient water and fertile soil to become the most suitable place for primary agriculture, and Egyptian farmers can also sow and harvest as much as they want.

This is not available in many other regions.

In the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, until the period of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, human beings were still desperately fighting against the flood.

It wasn't until Dayu succeeded in water control that we finally had a certain scale of farmland from which we could obtain enough resources to support ourselves in completing the evolution from a primitive tribe to a national civilization.

After Dayu's death, his son Qi established the Xia Dynasty, the first dynasty in Chinese history.

[Da Yu is awesome! ! 】

【My society, Brother Yu! 】

[It has to be us! 】

Bi Fang smiled.

Huaxia is facing more pressure to survive, so it quickly pointed out the technology of dams and canals, which can use lakes, but it is a latecomer in development.

The current tropical desert environment and the Nile River, where there is still a good life for human beings, but at this time and at that time, the ingenious combination of the two thousands of years ago gave birth to the leading civilization of ancient Egypt at that time.

When we expand, we will find that the fundamentals of advanced civilized countries in ancient times are very similar to the Nile River.

Among the four ancient civilizations, except for Egypt, the middle and lower reaches of the Mesopotamia where Babylon is located, and the middle and lower reaches of the Indus River Basin where India is located, all are a combination of large rivers and tropical desert environments, with the exception of China.

Those who would cause floods fled.

Those who don't make a big splash didn't point out higher development technology.

Only Huaxia was the only one with Scorpion Baba. Not only did he not escape, but he also cured the flood.

In short, due to the extremely low ability of early humans to transform nature, the emergence and development of civilization is extremely dependent on the innate natural environment, and the role of human subjective initiative is too small.

In this case, only if the innate environment is very suitable, and only a small amount of low-level farming skills are required for humans to have the possibility of producing enough food, can a civilized country be born first.

So everything is not static, it's always changing.

At the beginning of the development of civilization, the combination of tropical deserts and large rivers had obvious advantages, but with the progress of human civilization, its disadvantages gradually emerged.

The development potential of desertified land is limited after all. When human technology develops to the ability to fully develop and utilize more difficult land such as lakes and swamps, Egypt will be beaten to death on the beach by the waves.

Among the four ancient civilizations, although Huaxia took shape relatively late, it came from behind and became the leader in one fell swoop.

Indian civilization rose in the Indus River Valley, but its civilization center shifted with the development of the Ganges River Valley.

Although the Mesopotamia, where Babylon is located, has always maintained the status of a first-class geographical plate in the Middle East, the preservation of this status is largely due to its geographical advantages. However, the production potential of its plate itself has long been It was left far behind by China and India.

Although Egypt is the forerunner of the four ancient civilizations, it is also the one with the most complete decline.

As other sectors were successively developed, they successively surpassed Egypt's comprehensive strength, and when the geographical strength of these sectors developed to the ability to expand abroad, Egypt was reduced to the object of conquest by foreign forces.

Persia, Macedonia, Rome, Byzantium, Arabia, and the Ottoman Turkish Empire have all strongly included Egypt in their territory.

【Hey, Feng Shui turns around】

【There is no eternal empire】

【Is it going to end? 】

Bi Fang used his fingernails to peel off the outer skin of the papyrus stem that he had just folded off casually, and then cut long strips along the growth direction with a knife, and placed them horizontally and vertically.

Have you seen the 'reed' in my hand? It's actually not a reed, but papyrus. It's a reed-like plant that abounds in the Nile Delta.

I think I cut it like this and overlap it, then hit it with a mallet to make the grass juice seep out, and after drying, the strips are permanently stuck together, and finally polished with a pumice stone, it can be used as paper.

This is the most advanced writing carrier in the world at that time - papyrus, which has become an important document for later scholars to study ancient Egyptian civilization.

But because papyrus is not suitable for folding, it cannot be made into a book. Therefore, many pieces of papyrus must be glued into long strips and rolled into a roll after writing, which becomes a scroll.

So we can often see that some ancient documents in the West are scrolls. If it was in ancient times, maybe my adventures this time would be recorded on such scrolls and passed down from generation to generation?

With a little knowledge as the final ending, Bi Fang stopped procrastinating and gave a two-finger salute to the drone that was gradually rising and flying across the Nile River.

This time the story ends here, but it's not the end. I'm Bi Fang. See you next time.

Accompanied by the drone flying over the Nile, passing through the small oasis, Bi Fang finally turned into a black dot.

Disappear.