At the border between Kazakhstan and China, south of the Altai Mountains, there is an ancient pass called the Dzungarian Gate. Its geographical and historical significance is such that it has long been described as the only gate of the mountain wall that extends from Manchuria to Afghanistan, along 4,800 kilometers.
Some researchers believe that this is the place described by Herodotus in his Histories when he speaks of the Hyperboreans:
Aristeas, a native of Proconnesus, son of Caistorbius, and by profession a poet, said that by the inspiration of Phoebus he had come as far as the Issedones, beyond whom, he added, live the Arimaspi, men who have but one eye, and beyond these again the Griffins that guard the gold; and further, the Hyperboreans, who extend, he said, to the sea-coast. All these nations, he said, except the Hyperboreans, are continually at strife with their neighbors.
Herodotus, “Histories” IV.13
The Hyperboreans lived beyond Boreas, the north wind, and precisely the fierce and almost constant winds are one of the main characteristics of the straight valley that penetrates the mountain range through the Dzungarian Gate.
This wind-beaten valley is 46 kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide at its narrowest point, at a minimum altitude of 460 meters, and is surrounded by peaks reaching 4,600 meters.
Its current name derives from an ancient Mongol kingdom, the Khanate of Dzungaria, which existed in the area between the 17th and 18th centuries, created by the Zuun Gar (from züün, left, and gar, hand), so named because they formed the left wing of the Mongol army.
The region occupied by that kingdom, Dzungaria, lies east of the pass that gives it access and extends about 777,000 square kilometers, extending into western Mongolia and eastern Kazakhstan.
And in the center of that vast area lies a desert, the second largest in China after the Taklamakan Desert (which lies just to the south).
It is known as the Gurbantünggüt Desert and covers an area of 50,000 square kilometers within Dzungaria.
Although it is a desert of sand and dunes, it also rains, albeit moderately, precisely thanks to the cold and humid Siberian air that slips through the Dzungarian Gate.
It has barely any population, but the Chinese trans-desert highway G216 crosses it from north to south, while the G217 runs from west to northwest.
Geographically, it has the particularity of constituting the Earth’s pole of inaccessibility, that is, it is the point on the Earth’s surface farthest from any ocean or sea.
The nearest coast (the Indian Ocean to the south) is 2,648 kilometers away, and its exact coordinates are 46°16.8’N 86°40.2’E.
However, local experts calculated the location of the pole of inaccessibility at the nearby coordinates 43°40′52″N 87°19′52″E, in the suburbs of the city of Ürümqi, where a monument was erected commemorating it as the “central point of Asia”, which attracts tourists and the curious.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on February 21, 2024. Puedes leer la versión en español en Zungaria, la región donde pudieron habitar los hiperbóreos, es el lugar de la Tierra más alejado del mar
Sources
Daniel Garcia-Castellanos & Umberto Lombardo (2007) Poles of inaccessibility: A calculation algorithm for the remotest places on earth, Scottish Geographical Journal, 123:3, 227-233, DOI: 10.1080/14702540801897809 | Chinese Academy of Sciences | Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography | Wikipedia
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