Unlike the pyramids, the Great Sphinx of Giza has mostly avoided debates about its creation. Though researchers have argued who had the statue built or what it was meant to represent, there’s been general consensus on how it was conceived: carved from a single piece of limestone. But what if this isn’t the full story? “Our findings offer a possible ‘origin story’ for how sphinx-like formations can come about from erosion,” Leif Ristroph, an associate professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, said in a statement.
In a recently completed paper, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Fluids, Ristroph and his colleagues propose that the Great Sphinx could have started as a yardang, a specific type of rock formation. As Smithsonian Magazine points out, the name may sound a bit like maritime jargon, but the concept has nothing to do with the sea. In fact, it’s the near opposite. Yardangs form in desert areas when consistent wind slowly erodes what typically starts as a flat surface. The steady air “chips away” softer material, leaving behind harder rock in an elongated, often fluted shape. This phenomenon happens as far away as Mars, but is also seen much closer to home in places like the Mohave Desert, the Namibian Desert, and—of course—the Sahara Desert, where the Sphinx is located.