2,000 years ago the world was largely
unexplored the people who lived during
this time the planet would have seemed
infinite as little could be known about
the world that they could not see for
themselves in turn has led to the
creation of many false theories to
describe the world that laid beyond
their sites
the ancient Greeks for example believe
that to the east of their homeland in a
country called hurricane iya there was a
tremendous ocean which they aptly called
the hurricane II and Ocean at its shores
only endless miles of waving and rolling
water could be seen and because of its
size it was thought that this body of
water was the end of land and the
beginning of the Titan Oceanus who
wrapped his watery body around all the
land of Earth and as time went on many
others noticed this unyielding body of
water as well and made the same
conclusions because of it
the Persians who lived just to the south
of it called it the MS and ER and see
while the Arabs who lived to the
southwest gave it the name the Gillen
see or the Casman see the Turk people
who found themselves on the eastern side
called this body the Khazar see after
the Khazar nomads who migrated along the
coastline and the Russians who lived to
the north even the name Valen or the
Kavala sea and all of them together
believed that this water was from the
ocean even as we advanced explored and
drew maps very little was known about
this vast body of water
explorers during the Renaissance gave it
names such as the Habakkuk sea and the
sea of Baku and famous cartographers
like for now Vaz Dorado kept its coast
vague and unending to avoid being proven
wrong later but it was Strabo a Greek
geographer born in 64 BC who tributed
the sea its final name in his travels he
learned of the Caspi people a small
tribe who lived to the west of the water
in a region called the Caspian he named
the sea after these people and today we
still call this the Caspian Sea but
something still isn't right to these
ancient people the Caspian Sea was
Grandby
their vision and without being able to
find land on the other side it was
thought to be part of the ocean but
today with satellites and planes we know
that it is surrounded on all sides by
land and typically we call bodies of
water surrounded on all sides by land
lakes so what gives is the Caspian a sea
or a lake first let's look at why
exactly it's thought to be a sea as I
mentioned before the Caspian Sea is
massive in terms of surface area the
Caspian is 371 thousand square
kilometers in comparison that's almost
the same size as the state of California
and four and a half times the size as
Lake Superior the next largest enclosed
body of water by volume the Caspian Sea
holds 78 thousand cubic kilometers of
water compared to the Great Lakes that's
three and a half times the amount of
water in all of them combined and unlike
those Lakes the water here is salty too
instead of fresh like the ocean so it's
no surprise that early people figured
the Caspian was connected to the ocean
furthermore in the past and I'm talking
like 33 million years ago in the past
during the oligo scene epoch the Caspian
was enveloped in what's called the
parrot at the sea and was in fact
connected to the world ocean but around
five and a half million years ago due to
the movement of plate tectonics the
Caspian Basin became isolated and
landlocked and now the only influx of
water comes from the freshwater rivers
surrounding it such as the Volga and the
uro rivers and the only drainage of the
lake is through evaporation this is what
causes the sea to be salty the Volga Don
Canal technically connects the Volga
River to the Don River
therefore connecting the Caspian to the
Black Sea and eventually the ocean but
canals don't really count so we're just
going to ignore that for now and with
the salinity of only 1.2 percent the
Caspian waters are just over one-third
the salinity of true ocean water and the
northern half of the sea is almost
entirely fresh water furthermore the sea
level of the Caspian is completely
independent of oceanic sea levels
averaging around 28 metres below true
sea level and mostly depends on the
outflow of the Volga River
so despite its name by definition the
Caspian is in fact a lake a gargantuan
lake but still just a lake the only
reason we still call it the sea is
because of those ancient people who live
a world too large to know better so the
next question people might be asking is
does any of this actually you know
matter and the surprising answer is yes
in recent times the status of the
Caspian Sea has become a heated
geopolitical dispute you see the Caspian
Sea besides being a massive water
resource is rich in both oil and natural
gas and as technology advances and
greater amounts of these energy
resources become available for
extraction many countries in the region
big and small are looking towards the
Caspian to propel their economies but
who exactly has access to these
resources is still up in the air because
of this debate if the Caspian is to be
considered a sea then the waters are
considered international waters
regulated by the United Nations
conventions of the law of the Seas this
would lead to the creation of fairly
equal borders based on each country's
coastline and would look something like
this with Russia getting this area
Azerbaijan right below there Iran
getting the southern end Turkmenistan
getting the eastern side and Kazakhstan
having the most coastline out of any of
the countries gets the largest portion
of the Caspian but if the Caspian is to
be considered a lake then international
law does not apply to its waters in the
same way instead each country gets 15
miles offshore for mineral extraction
like oil drilling and another 10 miles
for fishing and then the remaining
waters would technically be shared among
all of them many of the smaller nations
which border the Caspian fear this
because one neighbor of theirs in
particular has a bit of a history with
claiming land that's not theirs and then
defending it with their huge military so
if the Caspian was relegated to the
status of a lake countries like Russia
and Iran could bully countries like
Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan out of the
lake so despite being a lake perhaps
it's best to keep calling the Caspian an
ocean if only to help prevent further
conflict in the region and to help out
the smaller nations thanks for watching
I hope you guys enjoyed this one please
tell me what you think the Caspian
should be considered in the comments and
make sure to subscribe if you haven't
already I'll be back next week with
another video thanks
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