THE NILE
Researchers believe that
the Nile originated 30 million years ago in the mid-Tertiary Period.
It is the longest river in the world. There
are two great branches of the Nile: the White Nile, from equatorial
East Africa, and the
Blue Nile, from
Ethiopia. The White
Nile is joined by the Blue Nile at Khartoum, Sudan, and flows north
through Egypt into the Mediterranean Sea.
The Nile River basin is
immense and occupies an area about one-tenth of the continent of
Africa. It includes portions of Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Zaire,
Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, The Sudan, and Egypt. It is estimated to
drain an area of 1,293,000 square miles (3,349,000 sq. km.)
The river's water and the
fertile soil along its banks created the perfect setting for the
evolution of the civilizations that existed in the ancient world.
The ancient peoples that lived along the river's banks cultivated
the art of agriculture and were one the first to utilize the plow.
The Nile still supports much of the population of Africans living
along its banks, as well as the Egyptians--the latter living between
otherwise inhospitable regions of the
Sahara Desert. The river
flooded every summer, depositing fertile soil on the fields. The
flow of the river is disturbed at several points by
cataracts, which are
sections of faster-flowing water with many small islands, shallow
water, and rocks, forming an obstacle to navigation by
boats. The sudd in the
Sudan also forms a formidable obstacle for navigation and flow of
water, to the extent that Egypt had once attempted to dig a canal
(the Jongeli Canal) to improve the flow of this stagnant mass of
water (also known as Lake No).
Source:http://library.thinkquest.org
