Birth of the Himalayas

The Himalayas, a great mountain system of Asia forming a barrier between the Plateau of Tibet to the north and the alluvial plains of the Indian subcontinent to the south. The Himalayas include the highest mountains in the world, with more than 110 peaks rising to elevations of 24,000 feet (7,300 meters) or more above sea level. One of those peaks is Mount Everest the world’s highest, with an elevation of 29,032 feet (8,849 meters).

But have you ever wondered HOW DID THEY COME TO FORM IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Before we talk about the Himalayas let me tell you about the Gondwana Continent, it was almost a supercontinent, but as it the North American and Australian regions were completely not a part of it hence it is not considered a supercontinent. In easy words the whole world was one gigantic continent, there were no different continents as it is today.

Then around ~ 150Ma (150 Million years) ago, Gondwana started breaking and the pieces of land started moving, the 1st to move from its ace was Eurasia (Europe + Asia) [mind you India was not part of it yet], then India broke from the Gondwana region (around 75-70 Ma ago) which earlier was adjoining to the present-day African subcontinent.

And started its journey towards the Eurasian continent and it was moving very fast, at an avg. speed of 20cm per year, which is 4 times that of the speed of movement of any other continent, and then it collided with the Eurasian subcontinent with extreme force and this collision gave birth to the Indian tectonic plate below the sea and above the land, a new system was born which we call as Himalaya’s.

Collison of the Indian subcontinent with the Eurasian continent not only gave birth to the Himalayas but it carried different species of life over this 70-75Ma, which were now facing different climatic conditions altogether and then happened the biggest climate change ever, due to the birth of Himalayas, clouds were not able to travel from the Indian Ocean region to the Eurasian due to the sheer height of the Himalayan mountains like a pressure barrier was formed because of which even today india has a more of a regular seasonal climate wherein the rains and the summers are quite predictable. Due to the formation of Himalayas a huge of CO2 was absorbed by it which resulted in the drop of global temperature by approx. 20-25 Degree Celsius and that brought the last ice age and formation of ice on Antarctica.

And not just that this also is the reason behind the frequent earth quakes in the central Asia region and primarily Nepal.

So this is the Himalayas came to be in existence, In short, and simple words: It was born because of the collision of India with the Eurasian continent and this changed the geography of the world entirely.

And even today the Indian tectonic plate moves with a speed of 2-5cm per year, there by increasing the height of the Himalayas even further.

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[Reference]

[1] Tectonics of the northern Himalaya since the India–Asia collision- Jinjiang Zhang , M. Santosh, Xiaoxian Wang, Lei Guo , Xiongying Yang, Bo Zhang.

[2] Voyage of the Indian subcontinent - Masaki Yoshida, M. Santosh

[3] Himalayas on the move - Tiasa Adhya