Geology explains Sete Cidades 'library' as sediment layers, not a Phoenician city ruin

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Key facts

• In northeastern Brazil, the sandstone formations of Sete Cidades National Park include outcrops resembling towers and walls; one is nicknamed the 'library' because its layers look like piles of books.
• In 1928, Austrian writer Ludwig Schwenhagen interpreted these formations as the ruins of a Phoenician city in Brazil.
• A Brazilian geologist's analysis of the so-called library identified sediment filling an ancient channel that had cut across earlier layers of finer sediment; the 'books' are deposited sediment layers.
• Other outcrops preserve ripple patterns in sediment associated with deposition in rivers and deltas.
• Erosion along fractures in the rock separated the towers and steep faces.
• The formations nicknamed the 'cannons' are iron-rich tubes in sandstone; iron moved through spaces in the sandstone and became concentrated in the tube-shaped forms, which erosion later exposed.
• There is genuine human work at the park: paintings on the rock surfaces left by people who used the outcrops, but no city or towers were constructed.

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