For centuries humans have built canals to facilitate the transportation of people and goods.

Usually they're built to dramatically save time, like how the Panama and Siouxas can help avoid a trip around an entire continent.

However, there's currently a canal being

built that's designed to replicate a natural feature that already exists, and it

might actually make sense. Learn more about the Istanbul Canal and why it's being built on this episode of

Everything Everywhere Daily. As I noted in the introduction, canals have been built for centuries and they are almost

always built to reduce time or simplify transportation. Unless you need locks to raise or

lower boats, they're pretty simple if sometimes large projects.

The Panama Canal allows ships to avoid sailing around South America.

The Suez Canal allows ships to avoid sailing around Africa.

There are canals that connect the Danube and Rhine rivers. Some canals like the Erie

Canal connected the Great Lakes and the Hudson River. What all these canals have in common is

that they allowed for routes that didn't exist before.

Turkey is home to the Bosphorus Strait.

It's a very narrow waterway that connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

It's the narrowest international waterway in the world,

and the only way for ships to

travel from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Technically it connects the Black Sea

and the Sea of Marmara which is a small body of water between the Bosphorus and the Dardnells. This means that every country on the Black Sea,

Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia all have to sail through Turkish territorial waters to get anywhere in the world.

A sizable amount of trade from every country in the region

sails through the Bosphorus and a not insignificant amount of the world's oil.

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