The wind could have lent a hand to sculpt the Great Sphinx of Giza

2023-10-31 18:41:01

Great Sphinx of Guiza – WIKIPEDIA

MADRID, 31 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The action of the wind against rock formations She was possibly the first to shape one of the most recognizable giant statues in the world, the Great Sphinx of Giza, near Cairo.

A team of scientists from New York University replicated the environmental conditions that prevailed in the area 4,500 years ago to reach that conclusion.

“Our findings offer a possible ‘origin story’ for how Sphinx-like formations may arise from erosion,” he explains. it’s a statement Leif Ristroph, associate professor at New York University’s Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences and senior author of the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Fluids. “Our laboratory experiments showed that strikingly sphinx-like shapes may, in fact, come from materials eroded by rapid flows.”

The work focused on replicating yardangs (unusual rock formations found in deserts as a result of windblown dust and sand) and exploring how the Great Sphinx could have originated as a yardang which humans later detailed into the shape of the widely recognized statue.

To do so, Ristroph and his colleagues at New York University’s Applied Mathematics Laboratory took mounds of soft clay with harder, less erodible material embedded inside, mimicking the terrain in northeastern Egypt, where the Great Sphinx is located. .

They then washed these formations with a stream of fast-flowing water (to replicate the wind) that sculpted and reshaped them, until finally reaching a formation similar to a Sphinx. The hardest or toughest material became the lion’s “head” and many other features were developed, such as an undercut “neck,” “paws” placed forward on the ground, and an arched “back.”

“Our results provide a simple theory of origin for how Sphinx-like formations can arise from erosion,” notes Ristroph. “In fact, Today there are yardangs that look like sitting or lying animalswhich supports our conclusions.”

“The work can also be useful for geologists, since it reveals factors that affect rock formations, that is, that they are not homogeneous or uniform in their composition,” he adds. “The unexpected ways arise from how the flows are diverted towards the hardest or least erodible parts.