Hacker News Reader

Comment by Koshkin | Hacker News Reader

> most of the country is desert

Well, in the manner of speaking only. Back in the day, the "country" was where people had settlements, and that was the delta and the banks of the Nile...

View on HN

Thanks for this necessary context. Roman Egypt did not share the same borders of what we think of as modern Egypt as today.

AD 125: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Ro...

> Well, in the manner of speaking only. Back in the day, the "country" was where people had settlements, and that was the delta and the banks of the Nile...

Absolutely untrue. The country was the territory held by the king. Most of the people were in the agricultural area, yes, but the Egyptian king also operated a lot of mines and quarries. Those were in the desert.

I think you are right. They also had various outposts, and in various timeframes they were a local superpower.

In terms of what Egyptians themselves thought was Egypt, that might be clued in by the name! The name was “Kemet” , aka “Black land” , referring to the embankment of black fertile land.

If you read the rest of the paragraph, you'll see that he's talking about aridness being important for preserving papyri.

People really underestimate what it takes to preserve writing

There's a video about Florida in the early days of USA and it was mostly a swamp. The last century made it into a state per se but it's really recent.

Deswampifying Florida is one of the greatest environmental tragedies ever committed. Up there with the building of the Glen Canyon and Hoover Dam. Shortly below is attempting to control the Mississippi River Delta.

The problem is the land owners who didn't see it as a tragedy are still the ones pulling the strings. Florida is on borrowed time.

You're right, but it's a losing battle.

All the hundreds of dams out west built to irrigate high and cold interior deserts really. Each individually unjustifiable environmental destruction, all together a catastrophe. They'll outlast everything else we build and probably even the memory of the name of this country itself.

I have to agree with your sentiment.

The Soviets thinking about reversing the flow direction of some big Siberian rivers (from South to North into North to South) might have topped them all, if the project had actually been executed. [1]

Of course, the same Soviets copied the American capitalists's hydro policy, starting with Stalin and continuing with Khrushchev, with the same negative environmental effects. The Volga Hydroelectric Station project [2] was used as an accusation against Khrushchev by some and said accusation was used for its dismissal, supposedly for the project's negative effects, mainly the huge swathes of very productive agricultural lands which got submerged.

Modern-day Egypt has done the same thing with the Aswan Dam.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Hydroelectric_Station

> Hoover Dam

What is wrong with it? It definitely caused damage, but also partially displaced more polluting energy sources, partially increased available energy.

Are you sure that overall balance is so dismal?

Currently Lake Mead is at record lows,

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lake-mead-water-level-historic-...

https://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp

The Hoover Dam is at half production,

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/16/us/hoover-dam-hydropower-drou...

The system is failing.

And destroyed the Colorado river delta as a living ecosystem.

What's the relevance of your comment to its parent?

How we perceive space today is not how it was long ago.

Are you suggesting the desert part of today’s Egypt wasn’t a desert during the Roman Empire?

No, that nation/boundaries may not be what they used to be.

Are you suggesting then that Florida’s boundaries were materially different in the early days of the USA than they are now? Aside from losing part of the panhandle, I don’t believe they have changed much since 1776 or that draining the swamps had anything to do with Florida’s borders

no, just that people didn't consider florida as a state beside palm beach, and now every inch of the land has been made worthy

Palm Beach was not founded until 1909, and Florida has some of the oldest cities in America, including “the oldest,” so I’m very curious to understand where your head is at on this one

Boom!

Oldest continuously inhabited towns in US are pueblos in New Mexico and Arizona

It's not about cities but the global area.

It was mostly worthless malarial swamp. The population of Miami was like 10,000 as late as 1900.

Now it is a paradise of sorts, but the foundation is unsound.

yes, however, having a river does not make the area something other than a desert.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com