No doubt, there are many places on Earth, which make us think whether this can surprisingly happen? Our Mother Earth is blessed with some magnificent natural spectacles and stunning man-made wonders, which is truly a mystery in itself. There is a plethora of mysterious places on Earth that are engaging, and their undefined aspects give cold creeps.
Many places in the world are known as the most mysterious places in the world. Human beings have not even been able to know about all such places till today, but there are many places where humans have reached and one such mysterious place is the Danakil Depression.
Located in North Africa, a part of this place, bordering Eritrea, this place is considered mysterious. This place is different from any place on Earth. After reaching here, it seems as if you have reached another planet. Along with being the hottest place in the world, it is also considered the driest and the lowest place on Earth. The average temperature here remains around 35 °C throughout the year.
It is also called as a land of death. The hot springs, acid pools, salt mountains and steaming fissures make it appear like another planet, and that explains why the scientists use this place for carrying out research about other planets in the solar system.
Danakil forms a part of the Afar Triangle, a geological depression in the faraway north-eastern part of Ethiopia, where three tectonic plates are slowing diverging. The area used to be a part of the Red Sea. With the passage of time, the volcanic eruptions released lava to finally seal off an inland sea which evaporated in the arid climate.
The temperature is blistering hot and rainfall is scanty. The presence of yellow, orange, green, red, blue and green colours is due to the sea and rain water from the neighbouring coasts that get absorbed through into the sulfuric lakes and heat up due to the magma. When the salt from the sea reacts with the minerals in the magma, it gives birth to these beautiful colours. As the heat evaporates the water, colorful crust-like deposits develop across the land, which mix mystically with the cooler turquoise lakes in the depression.
The Danakil Depression is a plain approximately 200 by 50 km, lying in the North of the Afar Region of Ethiopia, near the border with Eritrea. It is about 125 m below sea level and is bordered to the west by the Ethiopian Plateau and to the east by the Danakil Alps, beyond which is the Red Sea.
The area is often referred to as the cradle of humanity. in 1974 Donald Johanson and his colleagues found the famous Australopithecus afarensis fossil Lucy, which has been dated 3.2 million years old and many other fossils of ancient hominins have been uncovered here, prompting many palaeontologists to propose that this area is where the human species first evolved.