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Underground river found

 
 
noinipo
 
Reply Sun 4 Mar, 2007 06:59 am
Since water will be scarce in the near future, this discovery should be applauded by Mexico.
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Longest underground river found
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Cave divers in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula have discovered what may be the world's longest underground river, connecting two cave systems with a waterway at least 95 miles long.
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A group of foreign divers exploring the area near the Caribbean beach resort of Playa del Carmen have yet to name the stretch, but believe it could be connected to two other major systems, adding more than 125 miles to its length.
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"It's a bit of the Star Trek syndrome: the thrill of exploration, to go where no one has gone before," said diver Steve Bogaerts, who helped find the underground river.
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Prior to the discovery, the Palawan underground river in the Philippines and Vietnam's Son Trach River vied for the record as the world's longest. The area in southeast Mexico is home to tourist resorts Cancun and Cozumel, as well as Mayan ruins Chichen Itza and Tulum. It sits on a Swiss-cheese subsoil of limestone dotted with deep wells that are entrances to tunnels that have fascinated divers for decades. The local tourism board said 24,000 visitors went diving in the caves last year. reuters
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http://tinyurl.com/39vru4
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2024764,00.html
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Merry Andrew
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Mar, 2007 09:12 am
Interesting discovery.

The fact that there is a large aquifer underneath Yucatan, of course, was never a secret. The whole peninsula consists of very porous limestone, covered by a comparatively thin layer of topsoil. This thin topsoil doesn't readily retain the moisture from the generous rainfall the region experiences and droughts are frequent and severe. What happens is that the rainwater filters right through the topsoil and collects in the porous subsoil (limestone) in natural cisterns.

One of the great mysteries of Maya agriculture, which no archaeologist, anthropologist or historian has been able to explain is why the Maya never figured out how to use this rich supply of fresh water for their agriculture. Their maize crop would consistently fail when there was a drought. One woul think that a culture so technologically advanced as to be able to construct thjose great stone cities, temples and pyramids, to vuild roads through the rain forest, etc. etc. would quickly come up with a viable solution to the drought. But, apparently, the Maya never figured out how to set up an irrigation system.

It's not beyond the real mof possibility that they may even have known about the existence of this underground river.
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noinipo
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Mar, 2007 10:45 am
Looks to me like they could use a sprinkler system and a crop that would grow on that difficult soil.
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The water is there, it has to be pumped to the top.
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littlek
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Mar, 2007 12:48 pm
Ah, excellent. Another ecosystem to destroy.
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noinipo
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Mar, 2007 05:08 pm
littlek, not to worry, they won't do it.
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Merry Andrew
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Mar, 2007 09:13 pm
noinipo wrote:
Looks to me like they could use a sprinkler system and a crop that would grow on that difficult soil.
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The water is there, it has to be pumped to the top.


Yeah, they built roads and pyramids. There's no reason they couldn't have figured out how to construct an aqueduct and put the water -- which isn't really that far from the surface -- to good use. They messed around with man-made cisterns to collect rainwater when all they needed to do was dig some wells.
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Mar, 2007 09:17 pm
littlek wrote:
Ah, excellent. Another ecosystem to destroy.

Yeah, the part of the story that worried me was the warning that the explorers accompanied their announcement with. They pointed out that the discovery that all this underground water was one interconnected 95-mile long system also highlighted just how vulnerable it is: it means that any contamination in one place would spread throughout.
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