- Project Runeberg -  Armenia and the Near East /
128

(1928) [MARC] Author: Fridtjof Nansen - Tema: Russia
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128 ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
These and other signs indicate that, far from being higher
at an earlier historical epoch, the water in these lakes appears,
if anything, to have risen in recent times.
The cause of this rise might be, as Lynch suggests, the
continual deposit of mud on the bottom of these lakes, which
should have the effect of slowly raising the surface ; but the
fact that, during the past century, the water-level has varied,
falling as well as rising, simultaneously in the Van and Urmia
Lakes, shows that other factors have been at work which are
more important for these changes in level than the deposit
of sediment ; and it seems most likely that they have some
thing to do with the relation between rainfall and evaporation.
I have not tåken into account here the possibility that the
water might percolate through the rock below the lakes,
with possible variations in the rate at which it escaped. But
it is an improbable hypothesis. For if the rock below the
lakes was originally porous, the pores would very quickly
be almost closed by the mud from the water ; and the same
thing would doubtless happen if any cracks formed. It may
therefore be assumed that the loss of water by underground
drainage is fairly constant. Moreover, the circumstance that
the changes in the water-level take place simultaneously in
both lakes seems to show that they are not due to any such
cause.
All the evidence seems to indicate, therefore, that the
average water-level of these lakes has not been higher within
historical times than it is now, and consequently that the
climate has not become generally drier in recent times. But
that does not mean that there may not have been variations
in the height of the water, both upwards and downwards,
dependent, in turn, upon periodic or unperiodic oscillations
in the rainfall. Such oscillations, presumably occurring over
a large area, would probably affect the level of the Caspian
Sea, which is fed, inter alia, by the waters of the Arax and the
Kura. Facts have been adduced which make it probable
that there have been considerable fluctuations in the level of
this sea, with a difference of 16 metres between the highest
point (in 1306-13 07) and the lowest point (in the twelfth
century a.d.) ; and these fluctuations would doubtless be due

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