A hillock is a small hill. Other words include knoll and (in Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England) its variant, knowe.
Artificial hills may be referred to by a variety of technical names, including mound and tumulus.
.]] Hills may form through a number of geomorphic phenomena: faulting, erosion of larger landforms, such as mountains and movement and deposition of sediment by glaciers (e.g. moraines and drumlins, or by erosion exposing solid rock which then weathers down into a hill. The rounded peaks of hills results from the diffusive movement of soil and regolith covering the hill, a process known as downhill creep.
Areas that would otherwise have hills do not because of glacier cover during the Ice Age. The hills that existed before the ice age were worn down by the ice (and the rocks they carry) and/or the surrounding valleys and hollows were filled in with glacial drift, therefore leaving a level topography. The contrast between the flat plains of northern Indiana, once covered by ice, and the rugged hills of southern Indiana, where the ice never reached, is a result of this. Another example is the Driftless Zone, an island of hilly country that the ice sheets missed, surrounded by glacial plains, also in the American Midwest.
There are various specific names used to describe particular types of hill, based on appearance and method of formation. Many such names originated in one geographical region to describe a type of hill formation peculiar to that region, though the names are often adopted by geologists and used in a wider geographical context. These include:
Many settlements were originally built on hills, either to avoid or curb floods, particularly if they were near a large body of water, or for defence, since they offer a good view of the surrounding land and require would-be attackers to fight uphill. For example, Ancient Rome was built on seven hills, protecting it from invaders.
In northern Europe, many ancient monuments are sited in heaps. Some of these are defensive structures (such as the hill-forts of the Iron Age), but others appear to have hardly any significance. In Britain, many churches at the tops of hills are thought to have been built on the sites of earlier pagan holy places. The National Cathedral in Washington, DC has followed this tradition and was built on the highest hill in that city.
As a result, conventional military strategies often demand possession of high ground. Hills have become sites for many noted battles, such as the first recorded military conflict in Scotland known as the battle of Mons Graupius. Modern conflicts include the Battle of Bunker Hill (which was actually fought on Breed's Hill) in the American War for Independence and Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill in the Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point of the American Civil War. The Battle of San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War won Americans control of Santiago. The Battle of Alesia was also fought from a hilltop fort. Fighting on Mamayev Kurgan during the Battle of Stalingrad and the Umurbrogol Pocket in the Battle of Peleliu were also examples of bloody fighting for high ground. Another recent example is the Kargil War between India and Pakistan.
In golf, the terrain on golf courses is often made more rugged and hilly to make the holes harder to play. For example, the hole may be located at the top of a hill, and the course is designed specifically to make it almost impossible to allow the golf ball to rest near the top; it would roll down, and the player would have to try again.
Cheese rolling is an annual event in the West Country of England which involves rolling a wheel of cheese down a hill. Contestants stand at the top and chase the wheel of cheese to the bottom. The winner, the one who catches the cheese, gets to keep the wheel of cheese as a prize.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.