The Paratethys Sea Was the Largest Lake in Earth’s History | Hacker News Reader

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

atlasobscura.com

72 pointsdiodorus39 comments

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

The great flood.

There are about as many of those as there are Atlantii.

I find the geological history of California's central valley pretty fascinating, in particular, Lake Corcoran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Corcoran

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

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.

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

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.

> "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/

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.

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.

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.

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!

The surface area of Lake Bakal isn’t even that large. It’s just really deep.

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

English doesn't do that badly here. German and some other European languages use the same word for a 100 metre wide lake as for a sea stretching a thousand kilometers, like the North Sea.

In German it's a bit complicated:

- die See (fem.), alt. das Meer (neutr.) - the sea (a saltwater ocean)

- der See (masc.) - the lake (an inland freshwater lake)

But then again, "das Meer" is sometimes used for freshwater lakes when connotated with some context, e.g. "das Schwäbische Meer" as an alternative name for "Lake Constance".

freshsea or superlake?

I traveled to Russia in 2019 and visited Lake Baikal. Was hard to wrap my mind around the fact that it contained nearly a fifth of all fresh surface water in the world.

Yeah, it's not only big but also extremely deep.

And it’s getting bigger

Don't forget that Michigan and Huron are actually a single lake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Michigan%E2%80%93Huron

Mind TRIPLE 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.

Come visit Lake Ontario sometime.

we have an area with almost 2,000 islands all grouped together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Islands

Some are small, others a pretty decent size with multiple homes on them (Wolfe island).

I've lived on the coast of lake Ontario most my life.. I enjoyed reading your post as it put things in perspective. Normally Lake Ontario is just sort of there, i ride my bike 80KM along its shores every other day..

I guess some lakes do not have 1,146 km or shoreline?

> I guess some lakes do not have 1,146 km or shoreline?

Fun aside -- that depends on how precisely you measure. Shorelines resemble fractals, and the higher resolution you measure them at, the longer they will get.

Completely agree with you. I just googled "lake ontario shoreline" and i'm sure if you spent a few mins you would find multiple answers for the reason you specified.

I think shoreline also includes islands, so in lake Ontario's case.. there are a lot of islands and so my point is sort of washed.

Wow, sounds amazing, i will do!

I've only been to Western Canada (Alberta mostly) and would love to see more of your great country and I believe I have relatives in Toronto so would love to travel more there.

I lived out in Alberta long ago.. if you like "nature".. Ontario doesnt have much to offer.. it isnt like you can see a snow-covered mountain range from your backyard in Ontario (this was my view in Calgary).

But we do have Lake Ontario, Niagara falls, etc. Walk down the bridge, pay the 25 or 50 cents and walk to the US side... Niagara falls Canada is a tourist trap, the US side is a state park.

The GTA (Greater Toronto area) will be an interesting experience for you.

Despite the massive size of the country, a lot of the population lives in a thin strip along the US/CAN border.

Population of Alberta 4.371 million

Population of the GTA 5.928 million

Population of Canada 38.25 million

I made a koi pond during covid lockdown. Something like 1500 gallons or so. A visiting friend referred to it once as a lake, which I suppose is probably the best compliment you can give to a pond builder.

> a few KMs wide.

The kilometre (SI symbol: km; /ˈkɪləmiːtər/ or /kɪˈlɒmətər/), spelt kilometer in American English and Philippine English, is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), equal to one thousand metres (kilo- being the SI prefix for 1000).

Not KM.

Go outside and get some excersize bro.

Don’t you worry about my exercise, dude

As a Canadian born using the metric system... I struggle to understand the point you are attempting to make.

KMs is used all the time..

some people might write "just a few clicks" or "just a few KMs".

www.google.com/search?q="just+a+few+kms+away"

are you annoyed because they made it plural?

No, the unit for a kilometre is lowercase „km“, not KM.

What a great map for a Hyborean style fantasy campaign.

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

The map is of a particular point in time, but the sea/lake grew, shrank and shifted considerably over millions of years.

map has largest and smallest extent lines and the Aral Sea is outside the largest extent line

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.

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