{"id":24411,"date":"2024-06-23T11:58:42","date_gmt":"2024-06-23T06:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=24411"},"modified":"2025-04-07T09:21:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T03:51:05","slug":"namaqualand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/namaqualand\/","title":{"rendered":"Namaqualand"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Namaqualand:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is a <strong>desert region<\/strong> of <strong>southwestern Africa<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>From north to south, it <strong>stretches from<\/strong> the <strong>Karas region of Namibia to<\/strong> the <strong>Northern Cape province of South Africa.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>From west to east, it <strong>stretches from the Namib Desert to the Kalahari<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It covers an area of 400,000 square kilometres.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>Namibian section<\/strong>, <strong>north of<\/strong> the <strong>Orange River<\/strong>, is sometimes called <strong>Great Namaqualand.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The <strong>South African section<\/strong>, <strong>south of<\/strong> the <strong>Orange River<\/strong>, is sometimes called<strong> Little Namaqualand.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It is <strong>very dry<\/strong>. For a <strong>large part of the year succulents<\/strong> are almost the <strong>only plants<\/strong> that can be seen on the vast plains.\n<ul>\n<li>Succulents can hold water for long periods and can survive in droughts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rain falls mostly in<\/strong> the <strong>winter<\/strong>. If there is enough rain, wildflowers cover Namaqualand for a few weeks during springtime.<\/li>\n<li>The area was traditionally <strong>inhabited by the Nama people<\/strong> before the <strong>German occupation <\/strong>of the region in the <strong>19th century<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>There are large <strong>deposits of copper<\/strong> in Namaqualand. The Nama mined them for hundreds of years.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>In the early <strong>1900s diamonds were discovered<\/strong> in several places in Namaqualand, including <strong>Sperrgebiet in Namibia<\/strong> and the <strong>Richtersveld in South Africa<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>What are Termites?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Termites are <strong>insects that eat wood<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>They can <strong>damage buildings, furniture,<\/strong> and other <strong>wooden item<\/strong>s.<\/li>\n<li>Termites are found all around the world, and there are more than 2,000 species. However, they are <strong>most common in tropical rainforests<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Termites build damp<strong> nests in wood or underground<\/strong>.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Some underground nests rise<\/strong> partly <strong>above the ground as mounds<\/strong> or towers.<\/li>\n<li>The nests are <strong>made of dirt, clay,<\/strong> and <strong>chewed wood.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Termites live in organized groups called <strong>colonies<\/strong>. Mature termite colonies can contain 60,000 to 1 million termites, depending on the type of termite colony.\n<ul>\n<li>Each colony has <strong>three kinds of termites<\/strong>: <strong>royalty, soldiers, and workers<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Each kind of termite has a certain job within the colony.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Termites also help nature by<strong> breaking down dead wood into nutrients<\/strong>. The nutrients can then be recycled and used by bacteria and plants.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><strong>Q1<\/strong>: Where is the Kalahari Desert?<\/h2>\n<p>The Kalahari Desert is a vast interior plateau, covering a large portion of southern Africa, encompassing almost all of Botswana, approximately one third of neighboring Namibia and a large portion of the Northern Cape province of South Africa to the south. Receiving less than 250 mm of rainfall per year, the Kalahari region is a desert, characterized by a landscape of gently undulating topography at approximately 900 meters above sea level.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/scitechdaily.com\/astonishing-discovery-34000-year-old-inhabited-termite-mounds-discovered-in-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>\u201cAstonishing\u201d Discovery \u2013 34,000-Year-Old Inhabited Termite Mounds Discovered in South Africa<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Namaqualand is a desert region of southwestern Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":24412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}