As some one who was and still is keenly interested in geography, maps have always interested me. Features, landscapes, lakes, mountains ect. on the maps were something I was very good in my school days. This was one exam I used to love giving. I think I am still good at it. Questions like "Mark Satpura Ranges" or "Highlight Strait of Malacca" on a maps exam gave me a high rush, besides a high score.
These and so many of the geographical features are thought to be eternal, at least in our sense of the word 'eternal'. I know that over countless eons they will change or maybe no longer be there, but mostly in timescales that we think of, we just assume that nothing is going to happen to take them away and that they are there always. So I was in a bit of surprise when the other day during one of my geo-political fantasy study over Crimea, I in the map could not locate a rather roundish and big lake (so big they call it a sea) called 'Aral Sea'. I remember (from my school days geography exams) this to be a round big water body near the Caspian Sea in what used to Soviet Steppes. Now instead of a big lake, the Google maps shows this sea as a set of smaller lakes that nowhere look like my faint remembrances of the famed Aral Sea. In fact there is no big lake left, its feature has been taken over by much smaller 3-4 lakes that hardly merit attention as the giant Aral sea used to get in a map. In our lifetimes, the big sea has become much smaller unknowns and who knows may soon become an endless dry sea bed. So much for the 'eternal' earth. The sea is now 10% of its original size. A 70,000 km2 (sources:wikipedia) sea has been reduced to a mere salt plains by unplanned and unthoughtful human exploitation. I wonder if features on maps are eternal after all. Some to think about!
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