G7-BOULDER RIDDEN HILLS-2

 

BOULDER RIDDEN HILLS-2

A LITTLE OF GEOLOGY 

There are some gigantic bald hills (not boulders but entire hills)- --Bhongir hill, Yadadri hill,Hanamkonda "Ekasila" hill (Warangal district) etc. Let us learn how the bald hills i.e. single stone dome hills of colossal size are formed. Scientists say that such hills are among the oldest hill types in the world and were created hundreds of millions of years ago. Scientists say that age of earth may be around 4500 million years i.e. 450 crore years! At that early time, the outer stone layers of earth (crust layers) were very soft like wheat flour dough but extremely hot. Scientists say that lying under this soft bending “plastic” outer stone layer --( extending for thousands of square miles in area on earth’s surface at that time)--- ,there was another extremely hard stone mass which did not soften and bend. This underlying hard stone mass pushed up the soft outer layers .This was a very slow process taking tens of millions of years or even hundreds of millions of years i.e. almost at the start of creation. The soft outer layers bent like soft dough and after many million years hardened into "dome mountains" –like the huge single stone(mono-lithic) hills we see at Bhongir fort hill,Yadadri main hill, the “Eka Sila” hill in Hananamkonda in Warangal city etc.

SMALLER DOMES BREAK AND CREATE THE THOUSANDS OF BOULDERS

 Smaller "domes" also arose in the soft outer layer like small bubbles beside big bubbles in a thick soup. After coming into contact with cooler atmosphere outside, the small "domes" broke up and created the boulders. Many “domes” hundreds of millions years ago when they were soft and very hot and bendable could not retain their shape. As they slowly solidified, cracks developed on them and deepened and the domes broke up. The domes broke vertically and horizontally into big and small boulders neatly arranged one above the other in several layers. For Nature they were small things but at our human scale they were giant size room -size boulder stones. In this way the stacks of boulders were created. Scientists say that all this happened thousands of millions of years ago and not in last few hundred or last few thousand years. In some places like the world famous “Hampi boulder park” ,at Hampi-Vijayanagar in Karnataka state, there are dozens and dozens of boulder stacks arranged neatly like stacks of books. This makes people to wonder whether some giants from another world neatly lifted the giant stones and arranged them as per their tastes! There are many “boulder parks” all over the world and recently one such “Boulder Park” was inaugurated in Hyderabad city. There the boulders are left in their original place and original positions and a park and grassy meadows, flower beds etc are developed around them .Scientists and intellectuals interested in preserving the nature’s heritage are greatly worried that boulders are being broken into tiny pieces and destroyed by big apartment builders. They urge that boulders should not be broken and stone quarries may be established at some far away hills. It may be correct to say that after hundreds of thousands of years huge boulders may slowly crumble due to exposure in nature and turn into heaps of tiny rock crystals .In stormy winds millions and billions of tiny sand particles brought by the storm winds dash against the boulders and pull out stone crystals from the boulders. In seaside areas huge waves may pound the boulders for a million years day and night every day. In riverside places fast flowing river water full of millions of rough edged stones crash against boulders. In hot sun and extreme cold there will be expansion and contraction of boulders. Thus the entire boulder in course of a hundred thousand years may lose the rock crystals layer by layer and crumble and disappear without trace. After long geologic periods of hundreds of millions of years whole mountain ranges may disappear after continuous erosion.

 HOW SOME GIGANTIC BOULDERS GET BURIED UNDER EARTH IN MILLONS OF YEARS .

 Another slow geologic phenomenon( that explains existence many vast stony ground-level surfaces at Patha Gutta temple in Yadadri town. Let us imagine an area of a group of low hills and think of the effect of strong gale force winds, rains, storms, cyclones, floods, fast flowing water carrying tons of sand and clay etc .Let us imagine that continued for tens of thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years. In course of such very long periods the sand, rock fragments, soil etc accumulate slowly all over the base of the hillock. In course of say 100,000 years a big change in landscape can be seen. In course of such a long period the sand storms, dust storms, rain storms etc. bring large quantities of sand and earth. Lot of humus (minute particles of dead and decayed animal and plant matter) accumulating every year forms a black sticky mass of organic matter in every area of earth. All this creates the soil we walk on every day. During rains water accumulates in the soil and it thickens and settles in dense layers. Thus the "level of ground" slowly rises over centuries and milleniums. It is very very slow process. After 10,000 years there may be only one or two meters rise in height of the ground. But after one hundred thousand years or even a million years a low hill may almost disappear in the surrounding soil and only a vast monolithic flat stony ground (once flat top are of a high hill) may be visible. Millions of small plants and dense grasses may grow and more humus gets formed in decades and centuries. A high long flat hill of a hundred meters height may become a flat stony land just a foot above ground at one end and two or three feet high at other end. The existence of tens of meters long ground level stone surfaces we see at “Pathagutta temple” of Lord Narasimha which is only a few kilometers from the main “Yadadri” hill temple can be explained in this way.