Lake Chad, located at the junction of Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, is an endorheic freshwater lake of immense historical and ecological significance. Its story is not just about a shrinking body of water, but also about climate shifts, ancient civilizations, and even the source of myths and legends. From its meme-worthy past as "Lake Mega-Chad" to its crucial role in fertilizing the Amazon rainforest, Lake Chad's history is as deep and complex as its waters were once vast.
Lake Chad in 2018
The Rise and Fall of Lake Mega-Chad
The Sahara was once green and filled with life. What mysteries lie buried under its sands? The same region we call the Sahara desert was once lush and alive-and this may have been the norm for most of human history, not the exception. The sands of today bury the secrets of the dead…Up to around 3000 BC, Lake Mega-Chad measured over 150,000 square miles wide-just bigger than the Caspian Sea, the world’s current biggest lake. Humans thrived here, creating arguably the world’s largest outdoor art museum in the form of hundreds of thousands of rock art paintings of animals who flourished in this vanished ecosystem.
Lake Mega-Chad flexed its physique on a North Africa that would be unrecognizable today: a vast, verdant, and highly populated grassland nourished by rich rivers and mammoth lakes. The Cave of the Swimmers, located in the Libyan Desert region of the Sahara, has 9,000-year-old paintings of water-dwelling hippopotamuses, giraffes, and humans who appear to be swimming.
At one point, Lake Mega-Chad began to recede. The pace at which it did so is a matter of debate; we do know that its decline started roughly 5,000 years ago, but that that it was still a huge “lake of hippopotamus and rhinoceros” when a Roman expedition reached it in the first century AD, returning with a two-horned rhinoceros that actually fought and killed in the Coliseum. The lake’s disappearance over the last fifty years, however, has been precipitous. Since the 60s, Lake Chad has shrunk by over 90% in both surface area and volume-a decline, coincidentally, corresponding to the drop in men’s testosterone levels and the quality of manufactured goods. It now measures barely 500 square miles across, around .003% of its prehistoric size.
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Lake Mega-Chad’s meme-worthy name alludes to its power-only a Lake Giga-Chad could rival its name physiognomy-but this lake, and the forces behind it, may have played a bigger role in human history than previously understood. Investigating its mysteries could help explain everything from the watery anomalies on early maps of Africa, to the source of power for both an ancient desert civilization and the Amazon rainforest, to the locations of the City of Atlantis and the birthplace of Biblical Noah.
Visualization of the Sahara during the African humid period
The African Humid Period
The last time the Sahara was green is named the African humid period, which is believed to have started around 15,000 years ago and ended around 5,000 years ago. That was just the latest of hundreds of similar cycles dating back millions of years. 10,000, 50,000, 120,000 years ago and beyond, wetter conditions in the Sahara allowed humans to cross Africa and migrate into other continents.
Lake Chad didn’t transition because of human-induced climate change or glacial cycles, but due to esoteric Milankovitch cycles, which describe how Earth’s movements through space affect its climate. 10,000 years ago, a slight wobble in Earth’s rotational axis (imagine the invisible circle drawn by the tip of a spinning top) meant that Northern Africa received 7% more solar radiation. This triggered a domino effect which led to at least 50% more annual precipitation over North Africa. Water was abundant. Forests and grasslands bloomed. The Sahara became a savanna.
This may seem counter-intuitive: hotter temperatures equal a greener Sahara? Yet in North Africa, high temperatures on land will trigger a massive air exchange with the Atlantic, and for a season, the normal “trade winds”-which carry dust out Africa and across the Atlantic-will reverse. This event is called the West African Monsoon, where water from the Atlantic rushes in and rains over the Sahara.
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When the Sahara Was Green
Influence on Human History and Ancient Civilizations
This tightening of Africa’s belt-cleaving with an inhospitable desert the north and south of the continent-is connected to monumental events in human history, including the the sapiens-Neanderthal split and the legendary “trek out of Africa.” It is also associated with the rise of Ancient Egypt, as populations clustered around the Nile as the savannah withered.
Speculated changes in the Sahara over the last 5,000 years ago
Yet rumors of Mega-Chad’s death may have been greatly exaggerated; a greener Sahara may have endured longer than we thought. Researchers from the University of London recently found that Lake Chad has exhibited a “nonlinear response” even to Milankovitch cycles over the last 5,000 years, with its Bodélé Basin drying out only 1,000 years ago. A moist era in North Africa re-occurred between 500 BC and 300 AD which directly corresponds with the rise and reign of Garamantian civilization. While we still don’t know much about these sand-people, they were described by Herodotus as a “very great nation” who rode chariots and lived among “many fruit-bearing palms.” Analysis of Garamantian skeletons suggests their males lacked exceptional upper body strength, indicating that even up to the Classical period, “life in the Sahara did not require particularly strenuous daily activities.”
The idea of the desert Sahara as a fixed, unchanging environment in human history must be demolished. In fact, the Sahara has had a continuous record of human inhabitation interrupted by dry spells: from the giantlike Kiffians who lived in the area from around 10000 to 6000 BC, whose skeletons measure 6 feet 6 inches tall; to the shorter Tenerians who spread out over the region from around 5000 BC to 2500 BC, whose hardened musculature suggests a fishing-based culture; and more recently, the Kanem-Bornu Empire, who controlled the area around Lake Chad and lasted from 700-1900 AD, and which was considered by 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun to be on par with the “Romans, Turks, Chinese, and other great civilizations.”
Myths, Legends, and Lake Mega-Chad
All sorts of interesting things happen when we consider the Sahara as a place of history and the possible origin of myth. Jimmy Corsetti appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast to explain the increasingly popular theory that the Richat Structure, located in modern-day Mauritania, is the lost city of Atlantis. Its geological features eerily mirror Plato’s description of Atlantis: an island surrounded by three rings of water and two of land, almost exactly 23 kilometers across, with mountains to the north and an ancient ocean to the south. Dissident academics have also claimed Noah was born in the Lake Chad region between 4000-3200 BC, this being “the only place on Earth that the natives call Noah’s homeland-Bornu meaning ‘land of Noah.’” British anthropologist Sir Walter Keith argued the Sahara itself was the mythical Garden of Eden, with man driven away not by a flaming sword but by “a flaming sun.”
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The Lake's Influence Today
Even its diminished state, Lake Mega-Chad has exerted enormous influence over world affairs. Its northern Bodélé basin has become the single greatest dust source on the planet. Transatlantic winds lash the Amazon with Mega-Chad’s remains; this dust is one of the primary fertilizers for the world’s biggest rainforest.
Mapping the Past
Knowing this, it’s not so crazy to attribute the apparent anomalies on old world maps to folk memories of Lake Mega-Chad, other ancient lakes and rivers in Africa, and a greener Sahara. Maps from antiquity match up remarkably well to outlines of the ancient paleo-lakes and rivers that flowed across the Sahara in times immemorial-and, now we know, in times more recent. If Australian Aboriginals can preserve memories of coastlines from 10,000 years ago through oral tradition, it’s unsurprising that a Lake Mega-Chad that began shrinking in 3000 BC would show up in a medieval Korean world map, or that forests would be drawn onto Africa well until the Age of Exploration.
A Future for Lake Mega-Chad?
Those with a linear view of history are doomed to repeat the past. The Sahara is merely a liminal space: in-between habitation; resting, not dead. In our time, there is an unlikely force working to restore the Sahara and revitalize Lake Chad: human-induced climate change. Yes, higher temperatures on land will invite more rainfall to the continent. In fact, human-induced climate change is predicted to lead to vegetation covering at least 45% of the Sahara in the future. And more recent analyses of Lake Chad have found that in the last decade, it has in fact stopped shrinking and is currently experiencing increased rainfall. Aided by ambitious geo-engineering projects such as the Great Green Wall Initiative as well as the noxious fumes of our civilization, Lake Mega-Chad plots a return to the course of human history. It is not a question of “if,” it is a question of “when.” Given the abrupt nature of its previous comings and goings, Lake Mega-Chad may return sooner than you think.
Lake Chad Today
Lake Chad (Arabic: بحيرة تشاد, Kanuri: Sádǝ, French: Lac Tchad) is an endorheic freshwater lake located at the junction of four countries: Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, in western and central Africa respectively, with a catchment area in excess of 1,000,000 km2 (390,000 sq mi). It is an important wetland ecosystem in West-Central Africa. The lakeside is rich in reeds and swamps, and the plain along the lake is fertile, making it an important irrigated agricultural area. Lake Chad is divided into deeper southern parts and shallower northern parts. The water source of the lake mainly comes from rivers such as the Chari River that enter the lake. The water level varies greatly seasonally, and the area of the lake also changes dramatically.
The Chad Basin covers an area of about 1×106 km2 (390,000 sq mi), and is injected by the Chari, Logone, and Yobe Rivers. The water supply of the lake is seasonal. Most of the precipitation comes from the Adamawa Plateau in the south of the basin, which is transported to the lake basin through the Chari River and the Logone River. The two contribute 95% of the total inflow of Lake Chad, while the Yobe River only contributes less than 2.5%. The lake seeps through the underground to the lowest point of the Chad Basin, the Bodélé Depression, approximately 480 km (300 mi) northeast of Lake Chad, with the deepest point reaching an elevation of only 155 m (509 ft) above sea level. This takes away most of the salinity and maintains the low salinity of Lake Chad.
The climate of the Lake Chad region is strongly influenced by continental and maritime air masses. The maritime air mass moves northward during the summer, producing seasonal precipitation. In late summer, continental air mass dominate again. The average annual precipitation in the Lake Chad area is 330 mm (13 in), with an average annual precipitation of 560 mm (22.0 in) on the south bank and about 250 mm (9.8 in) on the north bank. The highest temperature in the rainy season is 30 °C (86 °F), and the highest temperature rises to more than 32 °C (90 °F) when October and November enter the dry season. The temperature difference between day and night is almost twice that of the rainy season, and the lowest nighttime temperature sometimes drops to 8 °C (46 °F) in December and January.
Shrinkage of Lake Chad
Dry climate due to vegetation loss from overgrazing and deforestation and large-scale irrigation projects that diverted water from the rivers that feed the lake are the main reasons for the shrinkage of Lake Chad. The Atlantic multidecadal oscillation and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation have affected precipitation in the Sahel region.
In 1870, the area of Lake Chad was about 28,000 km2 (11,000 sq mi). The lake was able to flow out of the Bahr el-Ghazal during the rainy season. At the turn of the 20th century the area of Lake Chad shrank briefly, and reached a new high in the middle of the 20th century and overflowed from the Bahr el-Ghazal again. A major drought started in the Sahel region in the late 1960s and caused severe damage in 1972 and 1984. From June 1966 to January 1973, the area of Lake Chad shrank from 22,772 to 15,400 km2 (8,792 to 5,946 sq mi), further shrunk to 4,398 km2 (1,698 sq mi) in 1975, and only 1,756 km2 (678 sq mi) in February 1994. Since then, the area of Lake Chad has entered a relatively stable stage with a slight increase. From 1995 to 1998, it fluctuated within the range of 1,200 to 4,500 km2 (460 to 1,740 sq mi).
The once common large mammals include red-fronted gazelle, dama gazelle, patas monkey, striped hyena, cheetah and caracal, while African elephant, otter, hippopotamus, sitatunga and kob are distributed in the wetlands. The entire Chad Basin has 179 species of fish, of which 127 are the same as the Niger River Basin, 85 are the same as the Nile River Basin, 47 are the same as the Congo River Basin, and 84 fish species are distributed in the lake. This makes it a rich fishing ground for communities across Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.
There are more than 30 million residents in the Chad Lake Basin. There are more than 70 ethnic groups around the lake, most of whom are distributed on the south bank, where the population density exceeds 100/km2 (260/sq mi). They rely on the water source of Chad Lake for irrigation, breeding, animal husbandry and drinking. Local self-sufficient crops include sorghum, maize, finger millet, beans, and vegetables. Gourd is widely planted for making utensils. The collection of forest products such as gum arabic, honey, beeswax, and firewood is of great significance in the region. However, the reduction in forest area has had a negative impact on the production of these products, and the explosive growth of cattle herds has exacerbated this impact. Cattle are the most important livestock raised, as well as poultry, goats, sheep, camels, horses, and donkeys. Fishing has traditionally been the most important economic activity for the people of the lake area, which almost ceased during drought periods and only resumed in the mid-1990s. Most fishing products are dried, pickled, or smoked. The natron produced in the depression on the northeast bank of the lake has long been of significant economic significance. Traditionally, it has been excavated in blocks and transported across the lake to enter the Nigerian market.
Farmers have shifted from planting mainly dry crops, such as wheat, to rice with high water demand, resulting in more serious soil salinization and water eutrophication. The adverse effects of reduced water sources on fishing, farming, and herding outweigh the benefits of new land from the receding waters.
Since 1970, five countries in the southern part of the basin have constructed numerous water conservancy projects in the upper reaches of the Chari River, Logone River, and Yobe River to intercept river water, resulting in a sharp decrease in the amount of water entering the lake. The average annual inflow of the Chari River and the Logone River from 1970 to 1990 was only 55% of that from 1950 to 1970. Since the 1980s, one-third of the water in the Chari River and the Logone River has been diverted and intercepted by the Central African Republic located upstream for agricultural irrigation and hydroelectric power generation.
The dams built on the upper reaches of the rivers entering the lake changed the time and scope of seasonal floods and disrupted the migration of fish, resulting in a sharp reduction in the populations of Alestes baremoze and Nile perch, the main catches of Lake Chad, and a significant reduction in the catch. At the same time, the conflicts between countries and ethnic groups competing for water and land are also escalating.
Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Chad established the Lake Chad Basin Commission on 22 May 1964. The Central African Republic joined in 1996, and Libya joined in 2008. The headquarters of the committee is located in N'Djamena, Chad.
| Year | Area (km²) |
|---|---|
| 1870 | 28,000 |
| 1966 | 22,772 |
| 1973 | 15,400 |
| 1975 | 4,398 |
| 1994 | 1,756 |
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