00:00 Hermann Sorgl had an ambitious idea to change the map of the Earth with his proposed engineering project called Atlantropa.

01:51 Hermann Sorgl's Atlantropa project aimed to physically link Europe and Africa through mega-engineering projects, including draining the Mediterranean Sea and constructing a dam at the Strait of Gibraltar.

03:24 Building a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar would be an enormous engineering feat, as it would need to be much larger than any existing dam and there would be challenges in terms of concrete production and the issue of where the water would go.

05:13 The goal of Atlantropa is to lower the water levels in the Mediterranean Sea by 100 meters, creating more land and connecting various regions, including Sicily to Italy and the Greek islands to mainland Europe.

06:49 There were many unanswered questions and potential problems with the Atlantropa project, including the corrosive effects of saltwater on the turbines, the potential for the Mediterranean Sea to become too salty for life, the risk of a major earthquake causing the dam to break and flood the entire Atlantic Ocean into the Mediterranean basin, and the impact on global sea levels if all the water was removed from the Mediterranean.

08:22 The Atlantropa project also aimed to reshape Africa by creating dams and enormous freshwater lakes for irrigation and power generation, without consulting the people who lived there.

09:59 The Atlantropa project was ultimately a utopian plan that was politically, economically, environmentally, and engineering-wise unfeasible.