Mountain

A mountain range is a landscape with several mountains, valleys and plateaus. You can often see the difference between the mountains and the flat land around them. Sometimes, however, there are smaller hills around the mountain range, in which case you can't see the difference so well.

There are different types of mountains. A ridge mountain, for example, is called such because several mountain peaks stand in a row like a ridge. In a table mountain range, sometimes there are no real peaks at all, just a high lying plain, like a big table.

The altitude is also important. From about 500 to 1500 metres, one speaks of a low mountain range. Such mountains can be found, for example, in the middle and south of Germany. The Jura mountains in France and Switzerland are also low mountain ranges. High mountain ranges start at 1500 metres. There is also one in Europe, namely the Alps. They stretch across Italy, France, Switzerland and Austria all the way to Hungary.

Scientists distinguish between mountains primarily according to how they were formed. Some mountains, for example, are extinct volcanoes, like the Vogelsberg in Hesse or part of the Eifel. In the case of fracture clod mountains, pieces of the earth's crust were lifted by enormous forces inside the earth, while the surrounding area subsided. Many German low mountain ranges were formed in this way. Still other mountains were formed as huge folds in the earth's crust because continents collided with great force over a long period of time. Most of the world's high mountains are such fold mountains, such as the Himalayas in Asia, the Andes in South America or the Alps in Europe.