Pyreneesmountain range, Europe Spanish Pirineos, French Pyrénées, Catalan Pireneus
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![Aneto Peak in the Pyrenees.[Credits : Avh]](http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/97/114597-003-D5D0EB69.gif "Aneto Peak in the Pyrenees.[Credits : Avh]")
mountain chain of southwestern Europe that consists of flat-topped massifs and folded linear ranges. It stretches from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Bay of Biscay on the Atlantic Ocean on the west. The Pyrenees form a high wall between France and Spain that has played a significant role in the history of both countries and of Europe as a whole. The range is some 270 miles (430 kilometres) long; it is barely six miles wide at its eastern end, but at its centre it reaches some 80 miles in width. At its western end it blends imperceptibly into the Cantabrian Mountains along the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Except in a few places, where Spanish territory juts northward or French southward, the crest of the chain marks the boundary between the two countries, though the tiny, autonomous principality of Andorra lies among its peaks. The highest point is Aneto Peak, at 11,169 feet (3,404 metres), in the Maladeta (Spanish: “Accursed”) massif of the Central Pyrenees.
The Pyrenees long have been a formidable land barrier between Spain and Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe; as a consequence, these two countries traditionally have developed stronger associations with Africa than with the rest of Europe, and they have become tied to the sea. From Carlit Peak (9,584 feet) near the eastern limit of the Pyrenees to the peaks of Orhy and Anie, a succession of mountains rise nearly 9,800 feet; at only a few places, all well to the west, can the chain be crossed through passes lower than 6,500 feet. In both the lower eastern and northwestern sectors, rivers dissect the landscape into numerous small basins. The range is flanked on both sides by broad depressions—the Aquitaine and Languedoc to the north and the Ebro to the south—both receiving waters from the major rivers flowing out of the mountains, the Garonne of France and the major tributaries of the Ebro of Spain.
Physical features » Geology
The Pyrenees represent the geologic renewal of an old mountain chain rather than a more recent and vigorous mountain-building process that characterizes the Alps. Some 500 million years ago the region now occupied by the Pyrenees was covered with the folded mountains created during the Paleozoic era, called the Hercynian, of which the Massif Central in France and the Meseta Central in Spain are but two remnants. Although these other massifs have had a comparatively quiet history of internal deformation, or tectonism, since their emergence, the Pyrenean block was submerged in a relatively unstable area of the Earth’s crust that became active about 225 million years ago.
The earliest formations, which were sediments severely folded over a granitic base, were submerged and covered by secondary sediments. They later were lifted once again into two parallel chains running to the north and south of the original Hercynian massif. These became the two zones of pre-Pyrenean ridges—of which the Spanish is the more fully developed—that are now great spurs of the main chain of the Pyrenees.
Under the forces of folding, the more recent and comparatively more plastic layers folded without breaking, but the original rigid base fractured and became dislocated. In the vicinity of the breaks, hot springs appeared and some metal-containing deposits formed. This upheaval affected chiefly the central and eastern regions. During this era, erosion continued incessantly, and, in the most exposed of the raised areas, weathering wore away the softer terrain and uncovered the old Hercynian sedimentary formations, occasionally reaching the deeper granitic bedrock.
Even today the old rocks, slates, schists, limestones transformed into marble (all of which come from old sediments transformed by great pressures and enormous heat), and granites of various kinds make up the spine, or axial zone, of the chain. The geologic phases of this zone, which rises and widens from west to east and ends by sinking, with a steep drop of nearly 9,800 feet, into the depths of the Mediterranean, have determined the evolution of the massif as a whole.
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Media
- Aneto Peak in the Pyrenees.[Credits : Avh]
- Central Pyrenees.[Credits : Nathan Hamblen]
- Distribution of European ethnic culture areas.[Credits : Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]
- Countryside of the Tena Valley with the Pyrenees Mountains in the background, in Aragon, Spain.[Credits : © Spectrum Colour Library/Heritage-Images]
- Cows grazing high in the central Pyrenees, Huesca province, Spain.[Credits : age fotostock]
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