The Geographical Oddity of the Dead Sea

Asia is a continent of extremes. Not only does it have the highest mountain but the lowest surface point. That point of 1,316 feet below sea level is the Dead Sea. The sea is well known for its saltiness and its medical benefits. As part of Geography Awareness Week 2007: Asia, let us take a quick look at this geographical marvel.

What is now the Dead Sea was once connected to the Red Sea starting around three million years ago. Around two million years ago the land arose significantly enough to cut off the interior body of water from the Red Sea. The Dead Sea's predecessor, Lake Gomorrah, was larger than the sea today but as the climate changed the lake became smaller and smaller. The salt had no where to go and the lake became saltier.

Today the Dead Sea about thirty-five percent salt (about nine times more than the ocean). Salt is so prevenlant that no complex life can live in the sea and the nearby landforms are formed from halite. The sheer amount of salinity allows for people to float on the surface.

The sea air, mineral water, and low ultraviolet radiation among other factors allows the Dead Sea to be a health retreat. King Herod the Older made a health spa along the shores for his benefit.

History has many sites along the coast. David hid from Saul here, Cleopatra had cosmetic factories nearby, Egyptians obtained embalming chemicals for their mummies from the sea, Masada and the cell of John the Baptist are close as well. And who can forget the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The Dead Sea has been shrinking lately. In the past few decades the sea has dropped more than seventy feet. The reason is because the only feeder, the Jordan River, is being irrigated for drinking, economical, and agricultural purposes. The Dead Sea Canal project has been proposed to stem the drop and hopefully refill the Dead Sea. However, geopolitics, economics, and chemistry are obstacles in the projects way.

The Dead Sea has survived millions of years of geological and climate change. Simple chemistry will prevent it from completely evaporating even if more water is pumped from the Jordan. However, environmental planning should be done to save this historical and geographical marvel.

Where is Asia? A look at the physical and cultural boundaries

A part of a series on Geography Awareness Week 2007: Asia

Asia? Asia proper in red. Mixing zones in blue.

Asia is a construction of man. One must understand this if they seek to know where Asia begins/ends. The continent Asia is the greater half of the "super continent" Eurasia which in turn is part of the "omega continent" (Catholicgauze's own term) whose name no one can quite seem to agree one. The geological boundaries of Asia do not match what we consider to be Asia. The Eurasian Tectonic Plate includes most of Asia and Europe but not the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula, half of Japan, nor Far East Russia.

So why have an Asian continent? The idea of Asia was created in the classical world to differentiate Greece from the various other cultures to their east. As Europe became cultural closer with Greek, Roman, and Christian ideals being united concepts, the lands east seemed more and more exotic. The concept of Asia being "the other" was also reinforced by the Crusades with relevant Africa being ruled by the cultural Asian Muslims. Finally, general stubbornness to change and pride led early-modern geographers to keep Europe and Asia separate. When thinking of Asia we must always remember it is a human realm and not a physical one.

So where is Asia? One positive definition (Asia is...) will not do because there are too many unique, radically different subrealms of Asia: Arabia, the Stans, the Far East, Southeast, and Indonesia just to name a few. So I propose for this blog post a mixed definition: Asia is on the Eurasia-Africa omega continent and is not cultural Europe nor is it culturally Pacific.

A big hurrdle for mapping Asia is telling where Europe begins/ends. Most defintions use the Ural and Caucasus Mountains as the boundary. However, this is a physical rule-of-thumb and therefore improper when dealing with a cultural zone. Culturally European Russians are found as far as Vladivostok, the Caucsasus are populated by both culturally European and Asians, and Turkey is... well.. Turkey. So for the sake of coming to a quick decision here is Catholicgauze's line in the sand:

• Georgia and Armenia are European due to their ties to Greece and Russia through religion, customs, and law.
• Azerbaijan and the other Muslim Caucasus areas are Asia due to their cultural and demographic ties to Iran and the Muslim world.
• Turkey is a mixing area but the further southwest one goes the further they enter Asia.
  
• The isle of Cyprus is divided between European Greeks and Mixed Turks.
  
• Russia is European but the southeastern parts along China and Mongolia are and increasingly mixing zones with Asia. Siberia's natives are unique and there presence creates a European/Asian mixing zone.
  

Asia's eastern borders are a little easier to determine. Japan, Korea, and China always have had a bound which makes them their own branch of Asian culture. An interesting side note: Taiwan was once more culturally Pacific with native Taiwanese being an Austronesian people.

Finding the southeastern boundary is an ugly affair. Austronesian people dominate places like Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. However, other branches of this people are found in culturally Pacific Polynesia. So cultural ties must be used when drying a human line on a human concept (clearly a "soft" science).

• Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei long have had ties to western Asia through trade and Islam (the hajj kept the slightly above average person personally tied with Arabian Asia). Today economics has these countries in closer contact with China and the other Asian markets. This makes them Asian.
  
• East Timor is a Catholic country with historic ties to Portugal. It rebelled against its Indonesian overlords and today has a geopolitical relationship with Australia. Asian it is not.
• Papua New Guinea is a Pacific culture country, period. "They eat people there!" - A geographer
  
• The Philippines should not be considered Asian. Spanish rule made it Hispano and American rule kept it isolated from developments in Asia. The Japanese could not culturally understand it during World War II. The Philippines create its own subregion in the Pacific cultural realm.

The last thing to determine is the western border. While many people seem to stop at Israel, what we consider Africa must be debated. Many people think of the Pyramids as purely Africa but that can be contested. Egypt has always looked not at its African neighbors but elsewhere. The Ancient Egyptians contested the Greeks and Romans and the last few rulers laid claim to the Pharoship via their heritage to Alexander the Great. Coptic Egypt rivaled Rome and Constantinople for dogmatic control of the Christian Church. Under Islam Egypt fought for control of the Middle East. Egypt then tried to be the united of all Arabs, an Asian people, with Nasser and his United Arab Republic. Today Egypt is a religious-political and sometimes violent battle ground between the Arab dictatorship and those who favor either the Muslim Brotherhood or the Saudi Wahhabis.

Catholicgauze's idea of Egypt not being African is not his alone. The new United States military command, AFRICOM, does not include Egypt. Egypt is left to CENTCOM which also has the Middle East, Iran, and various Stans.

Egypt appears to be the end point for Asia. Sudan has always been much more influenced by other African events than Arab ones, Libya sees now sees itself as the leader of a future united Africa, and the former French North Africa is its own subregion of Africa though there is an effort to revive Islamic radicalism in this more moderate area.

Side note: A another debate is Israel. Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people who originally came from Mesopotamia. Diaspora however dispersed the Jewish people for two thousand years. However, the founding of Israel allowed for the mixture of culturally European (Ashkenazi), European but heavily Moorish influenced (Sephardi), and Middle Eastern (Mizrahi) Jews. Other groups such as Palestinian Arabs and Druze have made impacts on modern Israeli culture. Israel thus can be considered an Asian mixing area.

Well if you are done here you read probably Catholicgauze's longest post. Congratulations! Thoughts, comments on your idea of Asia?

Geography Awareness Week 2007: Asia Introduction

November 11 through 17 is Geography Awareness Week with this year's theme being Asia.

Asia plays a massive role in the world due to its size and population. Here are just some facts about physical nature of Asia:

• Even though Asia expands less than nine percent of surface, that is slightly under thirty percent of Earth's dry land.
• The world's largest country, Russia with 6,592,812 square miles (17,075,400 km sq), is mostly in Asia.
• The world's two most populous countries are China and India.
• The Tokyo metropolitan area is the world's largest urban agglomeration with 30,724,000 people.
• Mount Everest is the highest sea level elevation in the world at 29,035 feet (8,850 m).
• The Dead Sea is the lowest surface elevation in the world at 1,316 feet (401 m) below sea level.
• The Caspian Sea is the largest lake, surface area of 142,000 square miles (367,000 km sq) in the world and currently at geopolitical hot spot due to its oil and natural gas wealth.
• Lake Baykal is the deepest lake in the world at 5,135 feet (1,620 m).

And on the human side:

• There are four billion people in Asia which is approximately sixty percent of the world's population.
• Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, and many other faiths all have their origin in Asia.
• About 7.5 million Asians have AIDS with more than 4.5 million infected living in India.
• The Gross Domestic Product of Asia is $18.077 trillion and per capita is $4,518 (the United States is $13.675 trillion/$43,444 and the European Union $13.08 trillion/$29,900)

Asia will play an increasingly daily role in people's lives with markets being globalized, jobs being outsourced and insourced, the rise of China, wars against extremism, and the spreading of new diseases.

To celebrate Geography Awareness Week 2007 Asia GTWC! will have a series of special posts.

• Tuesday: Where is Asia? A look at the physical and cultural boundaries
• Wednesday: The Geographical Oddity of the Dead Sea
• Thursday: Stalin's Zion - Jewish National District
• Friday: The Ancient Asian Faiths - A look at Orthodox/Catholic Rites of Asia

Veteran's Day 2007

Thank you to those who were members of the armed services of the United States of America.


Thank you to those who were members of armed services of any country which has dedicated itself to freedom.


Thank you to those who have suffered through the horrors of war to protect us. May your sacrifice not be in vain. May no one else suffer what you have.

Los Angeles Police to Map Muslims

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has announced plans to map Los Angeles' Muslim community. In this age of fear and terrorism, the police want to spatially keep track of the second largest Muslim concentration in the United States.

The move is highly controversial. Some fear the map would serve as a database and could be quickly transformed into a tool for isolating areas or even population relocation (ala President Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 which interned over 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent as well as thousands of Americans of German and Italian descent into concentration camps).

Geographical mapping of groups is a very touchy issue. While doing college reports on ethnic groups of Europe, I discovered countries like France and Germany explicitly forbid the government from classifying and mapping people by race or religion. Though racial geospatial data has been available for a while in the United States, it has been used mostly in economic studies. Expect the judicial system to become involved with warfare becoming a domestic demographic geospatial matter.

Giant Wave on its Way to England

From the Daily Mail

While my English readers are probably asleep by now, any of them who live along the mouth of the Thames River probably want to leave. A tidal wave (not a tsunami) is headed straight towards England.

A storm in the North Sea is predicted to cause a sea surge of about ten feet (3.05 meters) which will threaten the coastline along the Thames. The tidal surge is being caused by fifty mile per hour winds, an unusually high tide, and a low pressure off the eastern coast of England.

London and areas further down stream are supposedly protected by the Thames Barrier which has been put into place to prevent major flooding damage.

Flooding is predicted to be along the lines of the 1953 flood, also caused by a tidal wave/storm surge. That flood killed well over two thousand people.

The surge is expected to range from the Thames area down to Belgium. This includes low lying Holland. Hopefully Dutch engineering of dams, dikes, and other structures will hold better than they did in 1953, otherwise the possibility of a Katrina on a Dutch scale exists.

Stay safe, high and dry Europe.

Review of Oxford Atlas of the World: 14th Edition

Full Discloser: Oxford Press has decided this blog is important enough to send a free copy of their new atlas in exchange for a review of their new atlas. I agreed but promised them I would write an honest review with pluses and minuses. Here is the said objective review delivered to my readers.

First off, Catholicgauze has always enjoyed Oxford's products. The 14th Edition of the Oxford Atlas of the World continues the well known and respected line of atlases from the company.

Three Pluses

• The Cartography: No one can deny Oxford's atlas is pretty. The shadding of elevations, environments, and bodies of waters creates a beautiful piece of art. Just look at one of the medium-low scale (closer up) maps of the European Alps or Japan to see what I am talking about.
• Detail: While not the highest detail atlas of the world, Oxford does a good job showing maps on a national level. Detail is expressed in all the new features on the maps with new islands because of glacier melt being shown and the addition of new finished railroads and parks also seen on the maps.
  
• The Extras: A deal breaker on atlases. Oxford has plenty of informative maps (economics, environmental quality, life expectancy, etc.). The gazetteer also stood up to Catholicgauze's rigorous test comparing locations to official American government data.

Three Minuses

• The Price: At eighty dollars it is certainly not the most expensive atlas but it is up there. Many of Catholicgauze's original readers (students) will not be able to afford the eight pound giant. Maybe if Oxford could offer a condensed student edition it could attract a new market.
• Place Names: For some reason geographers and cartographers like to sound cosmopolitan at certain times. Some atlas' call the Ivory Coast "Cote d'Ivoire" and East Timor "Timor Leste" while calling Germany "Germany" and not "Deutschland" or Italy "Italy" and not "Repubblica Italiana." Oxford uses English for country names but will use the local language for city names (though English place names will appear in parentheses). We speak English so why do we not use English in our atlases?
• Size: With detail and all the extras, the atlas is a big boy. I have welded RPGs and MANDPADs which are more travel friendly. So one better have a large enough book shelf to store this beast.

If one can afford and properly store the 14th Edition of Oxford's Atlas of the World, then they will be set with a great atlas. All in all, Oxford has created a great medium-high level atlas.