Ecosystems

The gold of the desert

The economic importance of the desert is also related to the exploitation of its mining resources, an activity which dates back to the antiquity. In Egypt, for instance, during the Roman rule, red porphyry was quarried to decorate great public buildings and the emperor's houses. The importance of red porphyry was probably not only related to its beauty, but also to the fact that the colour purple was chosen as the royal or imperial colour: its name, “porphyrites", actually comes from “porphyra”, purple. Purple quarries were located in the Eastern Egyptian desert, on a mountain 1,660 metres asl, named after the colour of the rocks: “Mons Porphyrites” or “Mons Igneus”, i.e. mountain of fire, and were completely deserted by the first half of the 5th century. In some deserts, there are gold and granite fields, also exploited from time immemorial. The main economic resource of the deserts is in any case oil, with the richest fields being located in the Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iran). This rather small area contains 65% of the world's oil resources; Saudi Arabia alone contains 25% and is therefore the country possessing the largest amounts of crude oil.