Congo River
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 2019-03-19

Congo River, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44361 / CC BY SA 3.0

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Congo River

The great Congo River (; ; ), formerly known as the Zaire River under the Mobutu regime, is the second longest river in Africa, shorter only than the Nile, as well as the second largest river in the world by discharge volume, following only the Amazon. It is also the world's deepest recorded river, with measured depths in excess of .
The Congo-Lualaba-Chambeshi River system has an overall length of , which makes it the world's ninth-longest river. The Chambeshi is a tributary of the Lualaba River, and "Lualaba" is the name of the Congo River upstream of Boyoma Falls, extending for .

Measured along with the Lualaba, the main tributary, the Congo River has a total length of . It is the only river to cross the equator twice. The Congo Basin has a total area of about , or 13% of the entire African landmass.

The name Congo/Kongo river originates from the Kingdom of Kongo once located on the southern bank of the river. The kingdom in turn was named for the indigenous Bantu Kongo people, known in the 17th century as "Esikongo". South of the Kingdom of Kongo proper lay the similarly named Kakongo kingdom, mentioned in 1535. Abraham Ortelius in his world map of 1564 labeled as "Manicongo" the city at the mouth of the river.

The tribal names in "Kongo" possibly derive from a word for a public gathering or tribal assembly. The modern name of the Kongo people or "Bakongo" was introduced in the early 20th century.

The name "Zaire" is from a Portuguese adaptation of a Kikongo word, ("river"), a truncation of ("river swallowing rivers"). The river was known as "Zaire" during the 16th and 17th cen...