Science & Technology

1920s plan sought to drain the Mediterranean

By T.K. Randall
September 18, 2016 ·  9 comments

Europe and Africa would have been joined together. Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 Andre Engels The brainchild of Herman Sorgel, the ambitious and somewhat ludicrous idea would have involved placing huge dams at strategic locations to create 254,900 square miles of new land.

One of the dams would have been built across the Straights of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco while another would have blocked the Dardanelles and shut off the Black Sea.The largest dam of all would have stretched between Sicily and Tunisia - cutting the entire Mediterranean in to two sections with different water levels on either side.

Sorgel argued that the endeavour would not only join up Africa and Europe to create a brand new super-continent he called 'Atlantropa', it would also create huge swathes of new land prime for cultivation while also bringing the peoples of Europe together following the events of WWI.

Unsurprisingly however his idea was universally rejected and the project never got off the ground.

Source: Science Alert | Comments (9)

Tags: Mediterranean