Scientists discovered the oldest human mummies in the Atacama Desert: they are four millennia older than their Egyptian counterparts. The extreme drought and lack of bacteria contributed to the excellent preservation of these specimens. In terms of numbers, the oldest mummy in Egypt dates back to 3,000 B.C., while the Atacama mummy is more than 9,000 years old.
According to NASA research, the Atacama, located in Chile, is the driest and coldest desert in the world. Some climate stations in this region have never recorded the appearance of rain. In the central sector of the desert, periods without rain are often up to four years. There was no heavy rainfall in the Atacama from 1570 to 1971.
Instead of soil, the Atacama is a dried and heat-cracked crust that is a dead zone for any vegetation. It is completely devoid of moisture and nutrients. Soil samples in the desert are very similar to soil samples taken from the surface of Mars. Therefore, it is often here to test space equipment sent to the red planet.
The driest part of the Atacama is Lunar Valley, so named because of the topography, which resembles images taken on the surface of the moon. Mars rovers were tested here and an episode of Star Wars was filmed.
In Atacama there are also picturesque regions. This area is closer to the Alps, the Antiplano Highlands. It rains often in January and February, so quite a few plants and animals grow here. There is also a geyser field El Tatio, the third largest in the world.
The Atacama is about 1,000 km long, but the borders of the desert are not clearly delineated. The main part of the desert is located between the southern bend of the Loa River and the mountains separating the Salado and Copiapo river basins. To the north, the desert rests on the Peruvian border.
If you look at the map, the desert is between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes of South America. It consists mainly of dried-up salt basins that are located at the foot of the coastal mountains in the west and bedrock deposits at the base of the Andes in the east. In places the bedrock is covered with sand dunes, but much more often with pebbles and gravel.
The height of the coastal mountain chain in some places reaches 1.5 km, some peaks – 2 km. The mountains end abruptly near the sea with coastal cliffs and boulders. The height of some of them is 0,5 km. Thus, these coastal mountains make it very difficult to connect the ports between the outside and the inside of the country.
The main part of the desert is the Tamarugal plain, located at an altitude of 900 m above sea level. Farther east, near the western edges of the Andes, are many volcanic hills, sometimes as high as 5,000 m. Along the northeastern border of Chile with Argentina and Bolivia stretches the Atacama Plateau, which reaches a height of four kilometers.