Fun Facts

Objects Found In Desert Country 4...

Sand Art..........:..:.............
Some Aboriginal peoples from the Australian deserts drew of the Australian deserts drew traditional images  in the sand as part of their religion. Today some of the designs are made by permanent by using acrylic ppaints. Some of these dot paintinv are sold to the art market but sacred symbols are never included. These artifacts were painted bu the Napaljarri people.

Glorious Sand........
The Namib Desert is one of the oldest in the world, dating back severalor countless years ago are ancient dunes some thousand years old.  Both ancient and modern dunes are formed and carried by sands carried from the nearby coast by strong winds. The sand originally came from highlands far away and then washed ashore. Some dunes in the Namib reach 800 ft (244 m) in height.

Ridge Dunes
Where there is plenty of sand, and winds blowing in the one direction, parallel ridges are at right angles to the wind, they are called transverse dunes.

Star Dunes....
Star-shaped dunes form where the direction of the wind shifts so that it comes from several directions,. In some deserts, star dunes reach 260 ft (80 m) high. There are many star dunes in the sand seas of the Sahara.

Crescent Dunes................................
Crescent-shaped dunes, known as narchans, form where there is of a desert and where the wind blows mostly in one direction. The wind blows  over the outer curve of the dune toward the pointed ends. The sand is shifted more rapidly over the points than in the center of the dune.

Seas of Sand.....................................

Nowhere captures the romance of the desert more than the great sand seas with their endless stretches of beautiful dunes. The largest continuous expanse of sand is the Empty Quarter, part of the Arabian Deserts,  were originally eroded from mountains and highlands. The  sand was carried by rivers or floods  to the lowlands where it was picked up by the winds and dropped in the desert. Some desert sand also comes from the shores of lakes and seas. Winds nblow dunes into a variety of shapes; some shapes, such as the star dune, are quite stable, while others, such as the barchab (crescent-shaped) dune, shift as much as 66 ft (20 m)?2 year.

Empty Quarter is 250,000 sq mi (647, 500 sq km)

Natural Mummy
Burying a dead body in the dry desert sand is enough to preserve it. Such simple burials took place in Egypt about 5,000 ish years ago. The body was placed in a shallow grave with a few posessions and covered with  sand. As the body dried out it turned into a mummy. Later, when burials became more complex, the internal organs had to be removed and the body wrapped in bandages, because it did not dry out as well as in a sand grave.