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Satellite image of the Alps, March 2007 Folded rock layers exposed in the Swiss Alps. The Alps form part of a Cenozoic orogenic belt of mountain chains, called the Alpide belt, that stretches through southern Europe and Asia from the Atlantic all the way to the Himalayas. This belt of mountain chains was formed during the Alpine orogeny.
The Alps (/ æ l p s /) [a] are one of ... The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided.
In the Bronze Age, the Alps formed the boundary of the Urnfield and Terramare cultures. The mummy found on the Ötztal Alps, known as "Ötzi the Iceman", lived c. 3200 BC. At that stage the population in its majority had already changed from an economy based on hunting and gathering to one based on agriculture and animal husbandry.
While smaller groups within the Alps may be easily defined by the passes on either side, defining larger units can be problematic. A traditional divide exists between the Western Alps and the Eastern Alps, which uses the Splügen Pass (Italian: Passo dello Spluga) on the Swiss-Italian border, together with the Rhine to the north and Lake Como in the south as the defining features.
The Alpine orogeny is caused by the continents Africa, Arabia and India and the small Cimmerian Plate colliding (from the south) with Eurasia in the north. Convergent movements between the tectonic plates (the African Plate, the Arabian Plate and the Indian Plate from the south, the Eurasian Plate and the Anatolian Sub-Plate from the north, and many smaller plates and microplates) had already ...
Image of the Swiss Alps, covered in snow during the daytime. The Alpine region of Switzerland, conventionally referred to as the Swiss Alps, [1] represents a major natural feature of the country and is, along with the Swiss Plateau and the Swiss portion of the Jura Mountains, one of its three main physiographic regions.
Beneath the snowy slopes lay a prehistoric surprise: an ecosystem that predates the dinosaurs, revealed by melting snow before being stumbled upon by a hiker in the Italian Alps.
These were destined to form the base of the Alps range, and this period of upheaval ended 300 million years ago. Granite intrusions and associated metamorphic rocks formed the base of the mountains we now call the Mont Blanc massif as well as the nearby Aiguilles Rouges.