The Mountains of the Moon at the Center
Firstly, the African continent is much larger than most people realize. In fact, with a surface area of around 30,365,000 km², Africa is 78% larger than Russia, China, India, the contiguous USA and most of Europe combined. Furthermore, the Congo Basin is also exceptionally rich in natural resources. Its soil is rich in world-class mineral deposits, including cobalt, gold, copper, timber, potash, lead, zinc, phosphate, manganese, uranium, niobium and tantalum derivatives, and iron ores. It produces 30% of the world's diamond reserves and 80% of the world's coltan reserves, and holds the second-largest reserves of gas and crude oil in Central and Southern Africa. It's the world's second-largest rainforest, with an abundant and very rich biodiversity, housing a huge array of rare animals.
However if you look closely at ancient maps of Central Africa prior to the 19th century, you'll notice several mountain ranges located in what was formerly known as Aegypto (Ethiopia sub Aegypto), and which mainly encompassed the Congo Basin, but also Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi.
In 1665, the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher published the story of Paez in his Mundus Subterraneus, a work that focused in part on the idea that a network of underground waterways maintains the circulation of water throughout the earth. Kircher illustrated Paez's story with the fascinating map below, depicting the source of the waters in the core beneath the Mountains of the Moon.
These legendary mountains range correspond to the region known as Aegypto (Ethiopia sub Aegypto) and they were known to cartographers as Jibbel El Kumri or Mountains of the Moon, and claimed by the Greek scholar Ptolemy to be the source of the White Nile, which supplied lakes Zaire to the north, Zembere to the south and Zaflan to the east. However, towards the end of the 19th century these mountain ranges were removed from maps on the grounds that such theory could not be proven. In the 1870s, explorer Henry Morton Stanley was the first European to report seeing the Mountains of the Moon or the Ruwenzori range, and he later affirmed that the source of the White Nile was Lake Victoria, rather than the lakes Zaire, Zembere and Zaflan previously mentioned by Ptolemy.
The Ruwenzori, also spelled Rwenjura, or Rwenzururu, known to the natives as the Mountains of the Moon due to the whiteness of the snow-capped mountains, are a high range of mountains located in the heart of equatorial Africa, mainly in the Congo Basin, and bordering Uganda. These mountain ranges feature many vast, elevated forest peaks, permanently covered by ice and snow.
The numerous rivers and stream-fed lakes of these mountain ranges flow into Lake Victoria, the world's largest tropical lake and second largest freshwater lake. Its gigantic basin crosses the borders of Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, and extends into Rwanda and Burundi, forming the main reservoir of the White Nile.
💡The Nile, the longest river in the world, flows from the south to the north of Africa. It rises in the rivers that flow into Lake Victoria (located in present-day Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda) and flows northwards for over 6,800 kilometers. The river's three main tributaries are the Atbara, the Blue Nile and the White Nile. The White Nile appears slightly cooler than the Blue Nile. Most of its water supply comes from rainfall. The White Nile and Blue Nile meet in Sudan. From there, they form a single river that eventually flows into the Mediterranean Sea on the Egyptian coast. The entire Nile basin - made up of interconnected streams, lakes and rivers - flows through 11 African countries: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. |
You be the judge, and we encourage you to do your own research.