- published: 13 May 2014
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The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains ( /ˌhɪməˈleɪ.ə/ or /hɪˈmɑːləjə/;Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya, is a mountain range immediately to the north of the Indian subcontinent. By extension, it can also refer to the massive mountain system that additionally includes the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, and other lesser ranges that extend out from the Pamir Knot. Some of the world's major river systems arise in the Himalayas, and their combined drainage basins are home to some 3 billion people (almost half of the Earth's population) in 18 countries. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of South Asia; many Himalayan peaks are sacred in Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.
Geologically, the Himalayas originate from the northward movement of the Indian tectonic plate at 15 cm[citation needed] per year to impact the Eurasian continent, with first contact about 70 million years ago, and with movement continuing today. This caused the formation of the Himalayan arc peaks: the lighter rocks of the seabeds of that time were easily uplifted into mountains. An often-cited fact used to illustrate this process is that the summit of Mount Everest is made of marine limestone.
A natural landscape is a landscape that is unaffected by human activity. A natural landscape is intact when all living and nonliving elements are free to move and change. The nonliving elements distinguish a natural landscape from a wilderness. A wilderness includes areas within which natural processes operate without human interference, but a wilderness must contain life. As implied, a natural landscape may contain either the living or nonliving or both. In his extensive travels in South America, Alexander von Humbolt became the first to conceptualize a natural landscape. Some have described a transition of a pristine landscape state to a humanized landscape state—which includes the human-modified landscape, the primeval landscape, the ancient landscape, the undisturbed wilderness and the managed landscape. The natural landscape is a place under the current control of natural forces and free of the control of people for an extended period of time.
"For here the natural landscape is eloquent of the interplay of forces that have created it. It is spread before us like the pages of an open book...", Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, 1962.