Talk:Congo River

Deepest?

Is this river the deepest in all of Africa? If not, which river is it?

Answer: According to a recent expedition that the National Geographic filmed, the Congo is the deepest river in the world. It was measured at 755 feet deep in one area and over 700 feet deep along much of the central section. I would think that this data would serve to greatly revise the streamflow calculations that have been used previously. I'm not a hydrologist, but I have to believe after watching the Nat Geo special, that it may be in contention for the greatest volume in the world, based on this new data.

Length Differences?

Why is the length of the river listed on the right hand side in the table different from that in the article?

Size of rain forest

How can the Congo river pass through the fifth largest rain forest in the world, if only the Amazon rain forest is larger? Doesn't that make it the second largest?

I was just investigating this myself - the text read "The river and its tributaries flow through the second largest rain forest area in the world, second only to the Amazon Rainforest in South America." until an anonymous edit on 12 July 2006; I don't know which way to correct it, either to change it back to "second largest" or remove the dependent clause. Anyone with a decent atlas want to help...? Simple web searches did not turn up anything definitive. Pawl 20:20, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Just did a google on the phrase "second largest rainforest". Various pages list the Congo rainforest as second-largest. 28 October 2006.

Formatting issue

The table of contents/first heading ("Congo River in Africa" -- which also by the way I corrected from "RIver" to "River") were inside the Infobox, in the middle of the caption/photo credit. I moved it to just after the infobox. --Jefs 16:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Separate Congo Basin from Congo River

Congo Basin is a region but Congo River is a river, therefore should be in separate articles —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Guitarhamster (talk • contribs) 15:50, 12 February 2007 (UTC).

True! JosiahHenderson (talk) 22:05, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Constant flow

This article states that the flow of the Congo is constant throughout the year due to the fact that the drainage basin lies on both sides of the Equator. However according to [this] the average discharge at Inga on the lower Congo has a minimum of 30 000 m³/s in July-August and a maximum of almost 60 000 m³/s in November-December. Now I know that this is constant compared to many rivers which have a peak discharge of many times the minimum, but I still think the 'constant' should be qualified as this is a maximum discharge of almost twice the minimum. Booshank 19:13, 5 July 2007 (UTC) hello my name is some one you dont want to know haha —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.138.156.194 (talk) 03:21, August 26, 2007 (UTC)

Wildlife

How about adding a section on flora and fauna of the river? The Zambezi River article has a section on the wildlife of its river. Dogru144 (talk) 07:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Today there is a juicy New York Times article about the bathymetry, biodiversity, convergent evolution, etc. See here. Mgnbar (talk) 12:55, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

"Congo River" or "River Congo"?

The title of this article is "Congo River", but the article consistently refers to the "River Congo" (the change was made by 81.152.43.194 in this edit). Both of the references in this article refer to the "Congo River", not the "River Congo". It seems that unless there is some good reason (and associated references) for referring to this river as the "River Congo", we should go back to "Congo River". —Bkell (talk) 19:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I changed everything back to "Congo River". —Bkell (talk) 11:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Well - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3243552.stm, and http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/6461 for one. I think "Congo River" is typically North American and "River Congo" is typically rest-of-the-world. If the article began with all references being to "River Congo", shouldn't it be changed back? Or, alternatively, the title changed to "Congo (River)" and all references in the text being made simply to "the Congo"? I realise that would be ambiguous though, with two countries called the Congo in addition to the river. 195.171.114.69 (talk) 15:59, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposed edits

The French (and Dutch) language wikipedia page offers information not shown on the English page. The French language page follows the more or less stand model used for French watercourses, might it be usefully adopted here? The economic importance section is extremely light. The major towns on the river can be listed. There are at least two seaports on the Congo: Boma and Matadi. No information about the fisheries in the river. No information about water quality. The Congo river forms the border between Congo - Brazzaville and the People's Republic. So plenty to do Everybody got to be somewhere! (talk) 15:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Wholesale copyright violations of other people's work and writing by 50.68.6.12, who is user Sfsorrow2, removed from this talk page. 131.231.60.203 (talk) 10:06, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Date of origin

I'm wondering about the statement that the Congo R. started 1.5 -- 2 million years ago. I wonder:

1. Whether the reference really does say this;
2. Whether it is true.

It seems a surprisingly recent date. What is the evidence for it? Africa had much more rainfall for most of the Miocene, so would not the river be even more prominent then? Or are we really talking about a shift in the position of the river's mouth? I mean, the Congo is a geological basin, right? In the middle of a rainforest... Don't tell me it wasn't full of water in the Miocene!! Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:09, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

The article List of rivers by age has a note that the Amazon river, which is known to be of old age, likely Mesozoic, is speculated to have been the lower flow of the Congo - this would have been at a time when Africa and South America were still together, and when neither river was as long (and as powerful in terms of water charge) as it is today, since the East African mountains where the Congo rises are much younger and the Andes didn't yet exist. And it's quite likely that there were rainforests in the areas we know as the Congo and Amazon basin in the Mesozoic too, even if they looked very different from the later and current jungles there. This should be looked into, though if the hypothesis belongs only to the time before modern plate tectonics (before about 1970) it is of limited value. 83.254.150.36 (talk) 04:40, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

I googled and found this. Clearly, there were earlier rivers, and presumably the lower Congo has a much longer history, but the connection to the interior Congo basin apparently happened more recently. --dab (𒁳) 15:01, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

According to a 1986 paper I browsed through recently by a certain B. Steenstra and presented at a symposium on the Zaïre River in 1986 in Brussels, the present lower Congo probably originated as the result of tectonic events that led to a postulated large inland sea being catastrophically drained to the west. Prior to this event the hypothetical inland sea had been contained in the wet by a range of mountains in hard crystalline rock, and was drained only northwards in the direction of Chad. Part of the evidence for this comes from the gorge that the Congo has cut between Inga and Matadi, the numerous rapids in this section of the river and of course the Livingstone Falls. ~This would account for the relatively young age, where we may note that the Bas Congo is younger than the upper reaches of the river. Everybody got to be somewhere! (talk) 23:41, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

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deleted and reinserted above Everybody got to be somewhere! (talk) 23:42, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

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