Talk:Taklamakan Desert

Oil found under the Taklamakan Desert
On October 10, 2022 a large amount of oil was discovered some 9,300 meter under the sands of the Taklamakan Desert in Western China. See Youtube video from World Million Project dated October 10, 2022 in regards to this Chinese oil discovery project. It seems very interesting as well. Have a nice day, since you cannot post web addresses on Wikipedia as reference like you were able to do in the past. Have a nice day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:7000:7841:600:D45:AD0A:85EC:6AD8 (talk) 12:11, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Etymology
"Gunnar Jarring provides a more scholarly, but less pithy, investigation into the origin of the toponym, see reference below."

Can someone indicate what conclusions Jarring reaches?

(We shouldn't have sentences like this in Wikipedia articles, in my opinion. If we can't at least sum up what a journal article says on a topic, we should just add the title to the references section at the end, it has the same informative value.) --Cam 18:23, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I removed the sentence. For a not-so-pithy justification, see comment above. --Cam 03:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Gunnar Jarring (1907-2002) had a PhD in Turkish languages, and wrote An Eastern Turki-English dialect dictionary (1964) and a book on Central Asian Turkic place-names (1997). I haven't read either, but am told he explains the name Takla Makan as "the home of ruins". I will consult these works and update this article if the explanation given is confirmed. Hexmaster (talk) 17:26, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The German-language Wikipedia page additionally presents an entirely different etymology of the word. 2A0A:A540:32B0:0:A0BC:9196:6288:8B6B (talk) 10:06, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Removed from article as unsourced and seemingly like OR
Some references fancifully state that Taklamakan means "if you go in, you won't come out"; others state that it means "Desert of Death" or "Place of No Return". "Makan" is a Turkic word meaning "place", of Arabic origin: the word may mean something different if treated as original pre-Islamic native Turkic. A more realistic derivation of the meaning should rather be as follows: "takla" has the meaning of "return" or "revolve" in Turkic; "ma" is a suffix of negation; and finally "kan" is a gerund suffix; altogether we obtain the expression that would be understood in Turkic languages as "unreturnable".

This may be returned to the article if it is properly sourced and written in an encyclopedic tone. Thanks! Sincerely, Mattisse 23:08, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Someone added this back in with a reference to travelchinaguide.com. It should be noted that travelchinaguide.com is not a reliable source on this subject. It is a travel agency that sells tours. Better sources should be used instead. I can find a reasonable source for the name "Desert of Death" but not for "Place of No Return" or "if you go in, you won't come out". If no other sources are added I will remove the unsourced material. Rincewind42 (talk) 07:46, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Removing unsourced material to talk page
The White Jade River flows into the Taklamakan, as do the Yarkand River originating in the Kunlun Mountains and the river from the Tien Shan range.
 * I have looked unsuccessfully for sources for these:

The population of the larger cities is predominantly Han Chinese. -- Mattisse 11:50, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Size matters?
Aye, counting from http://geology.com/records/largest-desert.shtml I get Taklaman as 18th, but checking from List of deserts by area it's 17th there. Seems there are contradicting estimates on desert area - what to do? Cheers, Rayshade (talk) 22:06, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Impact Crater
I removed the sentence stating the possibility of the Taklamakan being an impact crater. The reference given was just a picture of the Hellas Basin, which while similarly shaped does not provide evidence toward the origin of the Taklamakan. I searched for any references to the possiblity of the Tarim Basin (where the Taklamakan is located) being formed by an impact, and could not find anything. So I think the claim that Taklamakan / Tarim could have been formed by an meteor impact is unverifiable.

This is the sentence I removed: Terranean (talk) 19:55, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * It is possible that the Taklamakan Desert is an impact crater. It bears a striking resemblance to a very large crater on Mars named Hellas Basin.

What is missing
No mention of the huge underground irrigation system popping up at the oasis area, coming from the glaciers and transporting water without loss due to evaporation.

Genezistan (talk) 16:47, 21 November 2013 (UTC).

Haven't there been successful attempts in patches to green this desert? It is hard for the layperson to follow or discover reliable sources. It is clear that attempts have been made since the mid 1980s. It would be interesting to hear scale and methods. Somebody might like to learn? 2001:8003:AD40:8400:1C7E:B8BE:A820:654C (talk) 02:48, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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Photo of alluvial fan
I think the photo may be upside down. I just saw the same photo on page 395 of Geologica as published by Millenium House, ISBN 978-1-921209-06-2. Sportyrod (talk) 12:08, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Taklamankan desert
Is it an extreme environment and where is it licated 84.65.211.180 (talk) 10:05, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Shifting sands
Hey everyone, I read a news article that mentioned the Taklamakan Desert was the world's second-biggest shifting sands desert and I tried to find out what that meant, but I couldn't find any info on that being a kind of category for a desert. The only thing I found was this Wikipedia page, and the citation:
 * It is the world's second-largest shifting sand desert, with about 85% made up of shifting sand dunes,

which doesn't seem to mention anything, and the archived source is inaccessible. Is there such a thing as a non-shifting sand desert? Would the Gobi Desert, Karakum Desert, or Arabian Desert not all count as bigger shifting sand deserts?

I think maybe this sentence should be removed. Bananasection (talk) 20:11, 13 September 2023 (UTC)