31/08/2023
Nearly a century and a half ago, specifically on December 24, 1873, the German explorer Gerhard Rohlfs arrived in an isolated area located between the New Valley in the Western Desert and Assiut. He moved a lot with his animal until he finally reached the Eocene Plateau region, only to be surprised by a strange gate in The interior of that plateau began from the first glance as the entrance to one of the horror movie houses in the ground, where rocky deposits dangle like fangs, rising and falling.
Home Nature Al-Jara Cave.. A mystery at a depth of 50 meters that baffled scientists
It was settled by nomadic Egyptians 10 thousand years ago
Al-Jara Cave...a mystery at a depth of 50 meters that baffled scientists
Written by: Al-Zahraa Sami, July 31, Photographed by: Aya Abdel Rahman
Nearly a century and a half ago, specifically on December 24, 1873, the German explorer Gerhard Rohlfs arrived in an isolated area located between the New Valley in the Western Desert and Assiut. He moved a lot with his animal until he finally reached the Eocene Plateau region, only to be surprised by a strange gate in The interior of that plateau began from the first glance as the entrance to one of the horror movie houses in the ground, where rocky deposits dangle like fangs, rising and falling.
The German explorer, Gerhard Rolfs, dared to enter Al-Jara Cave. He then wrote in his books about the Western Desert that he saw dozens of human inscriptions. It appears that this cave was home to some of the first humans who inhabited that region, or they may have passed through it as he did. So he decided to settle for a while next to the neighbor’s cave to learn about its magical nature, which is unknown to this day, and is still a puzzling mystery to geologists. Then any mention of that cave disappeared for more than another 115 years, until the scientist “Carlo Bergman” found it in 1989. .
Home Nature Al-Jara Cave.. A mystery at a depth of 50 meters that baffled scientists
It was settled by nomadic Egyptians 10 thousand years ago
Al-Jara Cave...a mystery at a depth of 50 meters that baffled scientists
Written by: Al-Zahraa Sami, July 31, Photographed by: Aya Abdel Rahman
Nearly a century and a half ago, specifically on December 24, 1873, the German explorer Gerhard Rohlfs arrived in an isolated area located between the New Valley in the Western Desert and Assiut. He moved a lot with his animal until he finally reached the Eocene Plateau region, only to be surprised by a strange gate in The interior of that plateau began from the first glance as the entrance to one of the horror movie houses in the ground, where rocky deposits dangle like fangs, rising and falling.
The German explorer, Gerhard Rolfs, dared to enter Al-Jara Cave. He then wrote in his books about the Western Desert that he saw dozens of human inscriptions. It appears that this cave was home to some of the first humans who inhabited that region, or they may have passed through it as he did. So he decided to settle for a while next to the neighbor’s cave to learn about its magical nature, which is unknown to this day, and is still a puzzling mystery to geologists. Then any mention of that cave disappeared for more than another 115 years, until the scientist “Carlo Bergman” found it in 1989. .
Al-Jara Cave is a group of caves, located at a depth of more than 50 meters down into the ground in the heart of the Western Desert between the Bahariya Oasis and Assiut Governorate, specifically in the middle of the Farafra Desert, and near Wadi Muharraq after the White Desert Reserve, about 7 kilometers east towards Assiut, for three days. The last decades have witnessed many scientific visits to Egyptian and Western universities, starting with the Egyptian University of Ain Shams, the Finnish University of Helsinki, and the American University of Georgia, certainly due to the geological and archaeological importance of this rare plateau.
Al-Jara Cave has two main entrances, overlooking a steep edge. The first entrance overlooks the rubble and fragments of an old wall of the cave being demolished, and piles of sand appearing in a pyramidal shape on the left side of the left entrance, and the right side of the right entrance. Those entrances were opened from the roof. The cave occurs naturally as a result of weakness or fracture, before it collapses. The cave extends for about 70 meters, its width reaches 35 meters, and its height reaches six meters, although this size is not specified and clear, especially since the floor of the cave is covered with sand of unknown origin or thickness. The ceiling of the cave itself approaches the floor as we head towards the west and south, reaching less than two meters only.
Once the visitor sets foot inside the cave, which he will have to enter with his head bowed because he is in the ground, he will find a large room of about 1300 square meters, connected to a smaller room through a narrow corridor, decorated with some inscriptions of the Neolithic man, in addition to the inscriptions of some animals such as ostriches and deer And ibex with its large, medium, and small horns, and chickens, and 133 drawings of animals and creatures that lived in that lifeless region have been identified at the present time.
Scientists have explained this phenomenon by the climatic cycles that Egypt was exposed to and the increase in rainfall that led to the growth of grasses, which led to the presence and influx of herbivorous animals. Accordingly, meat-eating animals and humans appeared who lived in caves, or travelers who passed through them and settled in them for periods of time. This happened in the Neolithic era, approximately 7700 years BC, that is, about 10 thousand years ago. Al-Jara Cave existed and sheltered fleeing humans and predatory animals.
But when did the carving of the Jarrah Cave itself begin? This is a question that geologists tried to answer. More than 250 million years ago, this cave began to appear, then it continued for a few more million years until it reached this shape, and what indicates the existence of a large and huge water system. , whether it was on the surface or under the surface of the earth, resulting in these sands and other phenomena such as stalagmites and stalactites inside the cave, and the columns that occurred as a result of their coalescence with calcium carbonate that was dissolved in the water before the water confined and left its sediments in this way