mountains

60:4.2This pe­riod also wit­nesses the end of the con­ti­nen­tal drift and the build­ing of the mod­ern moun­tains of Uran­tia. But the pres­sure of the con­ti­nen­tal masses and the thwarted mo­men­tum of their age­long drift are not the ex­clu­sive in­flu­ences in moun­tain build­ing. The chief and un­der­ly­ing fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing the lo­ca­tion of a moun­tain range is the pre-ex­is­tent low­land, or trough, which has be­come filled up with the com­par­a­tively lighter de­posits of the land ero­sion and ma­rine drifts of the pre­ced­ing ages. These lighter ar­eas of land are some­times 15,000 to 20,000 feet thick; there­fore, when the crust is sub­jected to pres­sure from any cause, these lighter ar­eas are the first to crum­ple up, fold, and rise up­ward to af­ford com­pen­satory ad­just­ment for the con­tend­ing and con­flict­ing forces and pres­sures at work in the earth’s crust or un­der­neath the crust. Some­times these up­thrusts of land oc­cur with­out fold­ing. But in con­nec­tion with the rise of the Rocky Moun­tains, great fold­ing and tilt­ing oc­curred, cou­pled with enor­mous over­thrusts of the var­i­ous lay­ers, both un­der­ground and at the sur­face.

144:2.6“But when you pray, you ex­er­cise so lit­tle faith. Gen­uine faith will re­move moun­tains of ma­te­rial dif­fi­culty which may chance to lie in the path of soul ex­pan­sion and spir­i­tual prog­ress.”

60:3.1180,000,000 years ago great dis­tur­bances oc­curred in the earth’s crust. The west­ern ad­vance of the con­ti­nen­tal drift was com­ing to a stand­still, and the enor­mous en­ergy of the slug­gish mo­men­tum of the hin­ter con­ti­nen­tal mass up­crum­pled the Pa­cific shore line of both North and South Amer­ica and ini­ti­ated pro­found reper­cus­sional changes along the Pa­cific shores of Asia. This cir­cum­pa­cific land el­e­va­tion, which cul­mi­nated in pres­ent-day moun­tain ranges, is more than twenty-five thou­sand miles long. And the up­heavals at­ten­dant upon its birth were the great­est sur­face dis­tor­tions to take place since life ap­peared on Uran­tia. The lava flows, both above and be­low ground, were ex­ten­sive and wide­spread.

60:4.3The old­est moun­tains of the world are lo­cated in Asia, Green­land, and north­ern Eu­rope among those of the older east-west sys­tems. The mid-age moun­tains are in the cir­cum­pa­cific group and in the sec­ond Eu­ro­pean east-west sys­tem, which was born at about the same time. This gi­gan­tic up­ris­ing is al­most ten thou­sand miles long, ex­tend­ing from Eu­rope over into the West In­dies land el­e­va­tions. The young­est moun­tains are in the Rocky Moun­tain sys­tem, where, for ages, land el­e­va­tions had oc­curred only to be suc­ces­sively cov­ered by the sea, though some of the higher lands re­mained as is­lands. Sub­se­quent to the for­ma­tion of the mid-age moun­tains, a real moun­tain high­land was el­e­vated which was des­tined, sub­se­quently, to be carved into the pres­ent Rocky Moun­tains by the com­bined artistry of na­ture’s el­e­ments.

60:3.3This pe­riod thus be­comes the mod­ern moun­tain-build­ing stage of ge­o­logic his­tory. Prior to this time there were few moun­tain peaks, merely el­e­vated land ridges of great width. Now the Pa­cific coast range was be­gin­ning to el­e­vate, but it was lo­cated seven hun­dred miles west of the pres­ent shore line. The Sier­ras were be­gin­ning to form, their gold-bear­ing quartz strata be­ing the prod­uct of lava flows of this epoch. In the east­ern part of North Amer­ica, At­lantic sea pres­sure was also work­ing to cause land el­e­va­tion.

43:1.1Eden­tia abounds in fas­ci­nat­ing high­lands, ex­ten­sive el­e­va­tions of phys­i­cal mat­ter crowned with mor­ontia life and over­spread with spir­i­tual glory, but there are no rugged moun­tain ranges such as ap­pear on Uran­tia. There are tens of thou­sands of sparkling lakes and thou­sands upon thou­sands of in­ter­con­nect­ing streams, but there are no great oceans nor tor­ren­tial rivers. Only the high­lands are de­void of these sur­face streams.

46:2.1On Je­ru­sem you will miss the rugged moun­tain ranges of Uran­tia and other evolved worlds since there are nei­ther earth­quakes nor rain­falls, but you will en­joy the beau­teous high­lands and other unique vari­a­tions of to­pog­ra­phy and land­scape. Enor­mous ar­eas of Je­ru­sem are pre­served in a “nat­u­ral state,” and the grandeur of such dis­tricts is quite be­yond the pow­ers of hu­man imag­i­na­tion.

57:8.14The earth’s early crust was highly un­sta­ble, but moun­tains were not in pro­cess of for­ma­tion. The planet con­tracted un­der grav­ity pres­sure as it formed. Moun­tains are not the re­sult of the col­lapse of the cool­ing crust of a con­tract­ing sphere; they ap­pear later on as a re­sult of the ac­tion of rain, grav­ity, and ero­sion.

85:1.5Hill wor­ship fol­lowed stone wor­ship, and the first hills to be ven­er­ated were large stone for­ma­tions. It pres­ently be­came the cus­tom to be­lieve that the gods in­hab­ited the moun­tains, so that high el­e­va­tions of land were wor­shiped for this ad­di­tional rea­son. As time passed, cer­tain moun­tains were as­so­ci­ated with cer­tain gods and there­fore be­came holy. The ig­no­rant and su­per­sti­tious abo­rig­ines be­lieved that caves led to the un­der­world, with its evil spir­its and demons, in con­trast with the moun­tains, which were iden­ti­fied with the later evolv­ing con­cepts of good spir­its and de­i­ties.