{"id":89602,"date":"2026-06-23T13:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T07:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=89602"},"modified":"2026-06-23T13:57:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T08:27:41","slug":"lake-baikal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/lake-baikal\/","title":{"rendered":"Lake Baikal"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Lake Baikal Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Researchers said ancient DNA obtained from bodies interred in four burial sites in the Lake Baikal area revealed the \u200cpresence of the oldest-known strains of Yersinia pestis, the plague bacterium.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Lake Baikal<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Location:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It is located in the <\/span><b>southern part of eastern Siberia,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> south-central Russia, near the border with <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/mongolia\/\" target=\"_blank\"><b>Mongolia<\/b><\/a><\/span><b>.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the oldest existing <\/span><b>freshwater lake on Earth<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (20 million\u201325 million years old).\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the world\u2019s largest freshwater lake.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is <\/span><b>also the world\u2019s deepest lake<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, with a maximum depth of 1,642 meters below the water surface.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Below the lake\u2019s bottom lie sediments of about 7 kilometers, making it the Earth\u2019s deepest continental rift.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are 45 islands and islets in Lake Baikal, of <\/span><b>which Olkhon is the largest island.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Up to 330 rivers drain into Lake Baikal, of which <\/span><b>Barguzini, Selenga, Upper<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Angara, Sarma, and Turka are the major ones.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It has only <\/span><b>one outlet, the Angara River<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is also <\/span><b>home to the Buryat people<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, who follow the <\/span><b>Tibetan Buddhist religion<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and reside on the eastern side of the lake, rearing goats, camels, cattle, and sheep.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The lake was <\/span><b>declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/healthcare-pharmaceuticals\/oldest-known-plague-outbreak-came-5500-years-ago-siberia-2026-06-17\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Reuters<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lake Baikal is located in the southern part of eastern Siberia, south-central Russia, near the border with Mongolia. Read more about Lake Baikal, Location, Length, Depth, Significance, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":89606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5678,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-89602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-lake-baikal","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89602","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89602"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109527,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89602\/revisions\/109527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}