Welcome to You Ask Andy

Steven Roberts, age 12, of Charleston, WesT Virginia, for his question:

How old are the Himalayas?

The lofty Himalayas are the world's tallest mountains and among the youngest of the great mountain ranges. They are high enough to look down upon their elders, the Rockies, the Andes and the Appalachians, What’s more, we have evidence that the lofty Himalayas have not yet reached their full height. They are still in the growing stage.

All mountains are at constant war with the wind and weather. Erosion, wear and tear on their peaks and crests, begins as soon as a new range humps up its spine. Young mountains grow faster than the weather can wear them down. But the tide of battle turns when a range reaches its full height and grows no more. The conflict between a growing range and the final wearing down by the weather takes many millions of years,

The older ranges are way past the growing state and countless years of weather have worn down their peaks. We cannot be certain how high the Appalachians, the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies were in their prime. But it may well be that our present Himalayas are the tallest peaks that ever existed on earth .‑ and still growing.

A human life is but a wink in the long history of the earth, The geologists divide earth's past into long periods lasting tens of millions of years. The Himalayas, we are told, began to rise in the Tertiary Period, which opened some 60 million years ago. It closed but a million years ago when everything was made ready at long last for the human family to live on this luxury planet.

The Tertiary was a period of great upheavel, just as though Mother Nature attended to a lot of last minute housekeeping detai39. She was, after all, expecting intelligent guests for the first time, The human family could admire, appreciate and, perhaps, criticize her work. The last of the clumsy dinosaurs were evicted. Modern mammals were given every chance to prepare themselves. The horse grew from a tiltia, spaniel sized fellow to the great noble animal who was to become marts good friend.

In all the hustle bustle a few last minute changes were made on the face of the earth. Europe and Asia were given a new series of lofty peaks and rolling mountain slopes. The steep Alps poked up their sharp noses.

The Pyrenees, the Appennines and the Caucasus humped up their sloping shoulders. And the great Himalayas grew tall enough to look down on these and all other mountains in the world,

Seas flushed over the land, creating oil in Texas and California. Etna and Vesuvius erupted time: and. again to build their lofty peaks, Floods of lava built the Columbia Plateau in the northwest United States. Grand Canyon and Yellowstone were added as breath taking spectacles, As mountains, the Himalayas are but babies, merely 60 million years old. They most likely, as did the other great ranges, grew from a hole in the ground ‑ a long, shallow sea called a geosyncline.

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