Ural mountains features. Origin of the Ural Mountains. The structure of the mountain system

The Ural Mountains are located on the territory of Kazakhstan and Russia, and are considered one of the oldest mountains in the world. This mountain system is a natural feature between Europe and Asia, conditionally divided into several parts:

• Polar Ural;
• Subpolar Urals;
• Northern Urals;
• Middle Ural;
• Southern Urals.

The highest mountain peak, Mt. Narodnaya, reached 1895 meters, earlier the mountain system was much higher, but eventually collapsed. The Ural Mountains cover a length of 2,500 kilometers. They are rich in various minerals and rocks, mined gems, platinum, gold and other minerals.

Climatic conditions

The Ural Mountains are located in the zone of continental and temperate continental climate zone. The peculiarity of the mountain range is that the change of seasons occurs differently in the foothills and at an altitude of 900 meters, where winter comes earlier. The first snow falls here in September, and the cover lies almost all year round. Snow can cover Mountain peaks even in the hottest month of summer - in July. The wind, walking in the open area, makes it even more severe. The temperature minimum in winter reaches -57 degrees Celsius, and the maximum in summer rises to +33 degrees.

Nature of the Ural Mountains

In the foothills there is a zone of taiga forests, but the forest-tundra begins higher. The highest elevations pass into the tundra. Here locals walk their deer. The nature here is amazing, grow different kinds flora and open magnificent scenery. There are turbulent rivers and clear lakes, as well as mysterious caves. The most famous of them is Kungura, on the territory of which there are about 60 lakes and 50 grottoes.

Within the Ural Mountains is the Bazhovskie Mesto park. Here you can spend time in different ways: walking or cycling, riding a horse or kayaking down the river.

In the mountains there is a reserve "Rezhevskoy". Here are deposits of gems and ornamental stones. Flows through the area mountain river, on the shore of which mystical stone Satan, and the indigenous people revere him. In one of the parks there is an ice fountain from which underground waters gush.

The Ural Mountains are unique phenomenon nature. They are quite low in height, but they contain many interesting natural areas. In order to preserve the ecosystem of the mountains, several parks and a reserve have been organized here, which is a significant contribution to the conservation of the nature of our planet.

Ural is a unique mountain system, one of the most ancient and picturesque in the world. They are old, very old, from the Devonian period (about 40 million years ago). This massif looks like a complex mosaic in which hundreds of types of rocks are mixed. From the time of Soviet Union more than 50 types of minerals and hundreds of minerals, precious and semi-precious stones were mined here.

But ancient mountains are rarely high. Years erase their peaks, grind rocks, build up a layer of soil. Therefore, the highest point of the Ural Mountains cannot compete with the Alpine and Tibetan peaks. But still, for the sake of interest, we will make this list.

The Ural Mountains stretched almost across the entire border of Eurasia, separating two parts of the world from each other. The Ural belt is more than 2500 kilometers long, and it is conditionally divided into 5 zones:

1. Southern Urals.
2. Middle Ural.
3. Northern Ural.
4. Subpolar Urals.
5. Polar Ural.

Some researchers believe that Mugodzhary on the south side and Pai-Khoi on the north side should also be added to the system, but nevertheless, officially the five zones listed are considered the Ural Mountains. And each of them has their own highest point.

This mountain, in fact, can hardly be called high: only 1640 meters in height. Nevertheless, all the other peaks of the Southern Urals do not even reach this value. It is worth noting that 1640 meters is the height of the Big Yamantau. The second peak, Small Yamantau, is even lower - only 1510 meters.

It is a low sloping mountain, covered with a thick layer of soil, sufficient to grow a real forest on it. But the top of the mountain is covered with snow and ice suitable for skiers.

Yamantau is an amazingly beautiful and picturesque mountain that attracts thousands of tourists from all over Russia and even other countries. To travel on it, basic training and equipment is enough. True, the pleasure is spoiled by the fact that the locals have long considered Yamantau a bad mountain, which is even reflected in its name. Rumors add fuel to the fire of doubts that Vladimir Putin's secret bunker has been built here. No one knows how true they are, but before you go here, it’s better to think carefully: “Is it worth it?” Moreover, it is not the only big mountain Southern Urals, deserving your attention.

A mountain with such a dissonant name is the highest point of the Middle Urals. True, the numbers are not too impressive: 1119 meters. Earlier we talked about the peaks of the Alps and Tibet, high, sharp, rocky, covered with glaciers. Oslyanka is completely different from them: low, sloping, softly rounded ... From a distance. Close up, it turns out that the slopes are quite steep, there are places where a rocky base comes to the surface. Most of the mountain is covered with meadows and forests, in the cold season it is tightly wrapped in snow.

It is perfect for travel and hiking trails in the warm season, in winter there is expanse for skiers and snowboarders. In summer you can add tourist routes river rafting.

By the way, this mountain has nothing to do with donkeys. The origin of its name is not known for certain. Most likely, the word “donkey, donkey” is the basis, that is, a stone on which knives are sharpened. The second version - "donkey" - a log. There is a third one, which claims that the name of the mountain is associated with the nearby Oslyanka River, but here the connection can be reversed.

It is always extremely interesting to understand where the names come from. geographical objects Because there are stories behind them. Sometimes the connection can be traced immediately, often you have to figure it out. But in the case of Mount Telposis, it is not even immediately clear where it came from and what it means. The truth lies quite deep. Its original name is Tel-Poz-Iz, which in the Komi language means “mountain of the nest of winds”.

According to legend, it is on this mountain that the local god of the winds lives, so it’s better not to meddle there once again. True, this does not at all prevent tourists from all over Russia from climbing Telposis in pursuit of beautiful scenery And thrills. Its height is 1617 meters. Enough to become the first in the Northern Urals.

This peak is the highest point not only of the Subpolar part of the Urals, but of the entire mountain range. Of course, in the same Alps, a peak of 1895 meters would never have made it to such a list, but for the Ural Mountains this is more than enough.

It officially received its name in 1927 during the study of this part of the Urals. The subtlety is that the geologist Aleshkov did not specify in his notes where exactly the emphasis should be placed: NATIONAL or NATIONAL. Both versions are found in the literature. The second looks quite logical, because at that time many objects received similar names. The first one also has the right to life, because the river NAROD flows next to it. And this word from the Komi language has nothing to do with the people.

The first peak of the northernmost, polar part of the Urals is Payer. This rock formation stands out sharply against the background of the surrounding landscape. There are several more peaks nearby - Western and Eastern Payer, 1330 and 1217 meters, respectively.

The total length of the Ural belt is more than 2500 kilometers. Just imagine: 2500 kilometers of picturesque mountains, which have everything: rocks, glaciers, snowfields, caves, forests, meadows, rivers ... These are incredibly picturesque and rich mountains, you can spend your whole life here and not even see a small part of their wonders. But that doesn't mean it's not worth trying.

The length of the Ural Mountains from south to north is 2 thousand kilometers, and from west to east from 50 to 150 kilometers. In ancient times, the mountains of the Urals were called Riphean, and until the 18th century they were called “belt” (translated from Turkic, “Ural” means belt). The Urals has long been considered natural boundary, dividing the two parts of the world - and . The Ural Mountains are relatively low: only a few peaks reach a height of 1.5 thousand meters above sea level, and the highest of them (Mount Narodnaya) is 1895 meters.

The area occupied by the Urals is close to 400,000 km2, and if we count all the foothills, then to 1,100,000 km2. The main ridge is lower than the parallel ridges accompanying it. The western slope of its canopy, and the eastern steep. Most of the parallel ranges are located on the western side, with more high peaks south than main ridge. In many places, the Ural does not give the impression of a significant mountain range due to its gradual rise, especially if it is approached from the west. All along there is not a single peak with permanent snow, even in the far north. In relation to the Urals, it can be divided into several parts: Polar, Subpolar, Northern, Middle and Southern.

Slope Peoples. One of the highest points of the Ural Mountains

Polar Ural

The most Northern part The Urals consists of stony placers (rocks and remnants). vegetable and animal world are scarce enough. Even mosses and lichens do not create a continuous cover. The most significant peaks are the mountains: Payer (1472 meters) and Konstantinov Kamen (492 meters).

Subpolar Urals

This part of the Urals is characterized greatest heights ridges. Here, traces of glaciation are visible quite clearly. Even the names of the mountains speak eloquently of their pointed peaks (Blade Peak, Saber Mountain). The highest point of the Ural Mountains (Mount Narodnaya) is also located here. Stone peaks and the mountain in the lower part of the slope are replaced here. The southern border of this part of the Urals is located at 64° north latitude.

Northern Ural

The mountains here take on the character of a real range, quite high, rocky and completely treeless. Then the ridge takes a southwestern direction. Further to the southwest, the ridge narrows, and the slopes cover it. To the south is a mountain junction with one of the highest points of the entire Urals - Mount Telposiz (1617 meters). Further south, the heights of individual peaks drop to 1000 meters, and then even lower. In general, the average height of the Northern Urals is about 900 meters. On its slopes originate numerous rivers, forming in the west the tributaries of the Pechora and Kama, and in the east - the Ob.

Ural mountains

Middle Ural

The Middle Urals starts from Mount Yurma, located at the source of the Ufa River. It, too, for the most part consists of two parallel ranges, the western one being lower, but forming a dividing line between Europe and Asia, and the eastern one being higher. Its most elevated peaks are as follows: Denezhkin stone (1492 meters), Konzhakovsky stone (1569 meters). Further south, the heights decrease, and the width of the ridge also becomes smaller. In the Ural region, in its northern part, it is low (nowhere does it exceed 700 meters), while its slopes here are very gentle. Further south, the ridge gradually rises (up to 850 meters). Numerous spurs (branches of the ridge) separate from the west, reaching as far as the Kama and the Volga River, while the eastern spurs quickly drop and merge with the West Siberian lowland.

Southern Urals

The southern part of the Urals consists of the main, but lower ridge and the parallel ridges accompanying it. The western slope of its canopy, and the eastern steep and precipitous. To the west of the main ridge there is a series of meridional ridges with a general direction from northeast to southwest. The highest point is Mount Yamantau (1640 meters). In general, the farther from the central part of the Ural ridge to the west, the lower the heights and the transition to the slightly undulating terrain of the Urals takes place very gradually. On the contrary, on the eastern side of the Urals, already at a short distance from it, the terrain almost completely loses its mountainous character and presents a completely flat surface. The rivers of this part of the Urals are different in nature, depending on which slope they originate from.

The Ural Mountains are located between various tectonic structures (the Russian Platform and the West Siberian Plate), which explains their formation. From the Russian Urals separates the Cis-Ural foredeep, consisting of sedimentary and continental climates of Western Siberia. reach the western slope of the Urals, trying to overcome it, rise higher and cool. As a result, in the western part of the Urals, large quantity precipitation than in the eastern (about 1.5-2 times). Temperature regime also has its own characteristics. In the western part of the Urals, winters are more snowy and, accordingly, milder. In the east, snow falls less, and frosts reach 45-50°C.

Pretty in the Urals a large number of rivers, the largest of which flow from east to west. There are also about 6 thousand in this area.

How the Ural Mountains were born

The Urals on Earth is a unique phenomenon.

And in its role as a planetary seam that once held two great continents together.

And in abundance here natural landscapes scattered generously throughout its space.

And climatic diversity.

In fact, where else can you find such a region, at which the head would be cooled by centuries of ice northern ocean, and the foot was burned by the calcined sands of the desert? A land where, on the same June day, the never-setting sun shines over the blooming polar tundra and the forbs of alpine meadows spread luxuriously. Where you can hunt to your heart’s content in cedar forests or, after admiring the slender choirs of elegant birch pegs, stop at the Bashkir nomad camp, drink plenty of chilled koumiss, while watching how everything around vibrates in the sultry haze of the steppe ...

And now from these poetic pictures Ural region will have to move on to more prosaic, but quite for our story necessary things. It is interesting, I think, to understand for oneself how such an unusual natural creation appeared on the body of the planet, what forces erected it. Therefore, a small digression into the science that studies the Earth is inevitable - into geology.

What modern science defines the concept of "Ural"?

Strictly speaking, the Urals are Mountain country with areas of two great plains adjacent to it from the west and east. Why geologists think so, we will discuss later. As mentioned earlier, the Ural mountainous country lies on the planet in a rather narrow strip, the width of which rarely exceeds one hundred and fifty kilometers, but it stretches from the Aral deserts to the Arctic Ocean for more than two and a half thousand kilometers. In this way, she is similar to many famous people on Earth. mountain ranges- Andes, for example. Only the mountains in the Urals, although often rocky, are much lower, less steep, more ordinary, or something, than their illustrious counterparts somewhere in the Alps or the Himalayas.

But if the Ural Mountains outwardly do not strike anything, then the content of their bowels is completely unique.

The Urals is world famous for the richness and diversity of its geological structure. This is an irrefutable truth. But it is necessary to realize the significance of this fact to the most subtle shade - the Urals may be the only place on Earth where specialists have found rocks formed in almost all periods of the planet's existence. And minerals, the appearance of which could be due to the existence here (of course, in different time) of all conceivable physical and chemical regimes both in the bowels of the Earth and on its surface. Some kind of utter mess of uneven-aged and diverse geological formations!

But that's not all.

The abundant list of geological formations of the Urals naturally included a uniquely extensive range of the richest deposits of almost all minerals known on our planet. Oil and diamonds. Iron and jasper with marble. Gas and malachite. bauxite and corundum. And ... and ... and ... The list is endless - after all, not everything is still open, and we still do not know all types of minerals.

All this - and the diversity that strikes the imagination of even sophisticated professionals, and the abundance of subsoil treasures, and their unprecedented uneven age - all this made the Urals a geological Mecca of the world community. It began from the time of Peter the Great, and has not ended to this day. “Everyone flashed before us, everyone was here…” Historians claim that the Russian Geological Committee, created by the tsar’s order more than a hundred years ago, was and was established mainly so that pundits could finally decide on this natural turmoil, called the Urals…

Only ... only a huge number of studies did not simplify the solution of the problem, for the sake of which academic luminaries came to the Urals. The tasks of understanding - how did all this come together here ?!

To list all the created hypotheses for the formation of the Urals is not a task for a brief essay. An extensive monograph is needed here. After all, the contradictory nature of a thousand times certified and rechecked observations has formed an incredible kaleidoscope of facts. The researchers had to logically link the obvious reality of finding the most heterogeneous deposits literally next to each other. And the siliceous platy fragments of the formations of the bottom of the ocean, which raged here three hundred to four hundred million years ago, now crushing underfoot. And boulder ridges brought deep into the ancient continent by glacial massifs hundreds of thousands of years ago. And outcrops of rocks of the granite or gabbro series, now being destroyed by winds and the sun, but which could form only at many kilometers deep on the earth, in the gloomy crucible of thousand-degree temperatures and thousands of atmospheric pressures prevailing there. AND sandbars deposits of rivers that washed here more than one million tons of sand and pebbles from collapsing mountains ...

So to this day, all this allows dozens of the most diverse assumptions to exist simultaneously on an equal footing about how the Earth lived within the Urals throughout its entire billion-year history. To this day, deciphering its true history is an urgent and most difficult problem for geologists.

True, today scientists have decided at least on the criterion by which they share the hypotheses of the formation of the Ural mountainous country.

This criterion is cosmogonic.

He finally made it possible to group all points of view according to their relation to the original substance of the planet Earth.

Proponents of one approach agree that all celestial bodies visible from the Earth - including planets - were formed as a result of convergence, compaction of the previously scattered cosmic proto-substance. It was either the same as the meteorites that are now falling on our planet, or it was a lump of fiery liquid melt. The creators of the hypotheses created on this basis include the philosopher Kant, the famous mathematician and astronomer Laplace, and the outstanding Soviet researcher Otto Yulievich Schmidt. By the way, in Soviet schools, hypotheses from this series were studied mainly. And they are not so easy to dispute - meteorites continue to regularly pierce the Earth to this day, increasing its mass. And that even today the earth's core is liquid, probably not a single geologist doubts. Yes and the law gravity hitherto regularly determines the course of the stars and planets.

Proponents of a different approach argue that all planets (the Earth, of course, is no exception for them) are fragments of protomatter formed as a result of its explosive expansion, that is, in their opinion, there is a process of decompacting the matter of the Universe. The great Lomonosov did not deny such a view; many leading geologists and cosmologists of the world and our country now adhere to it ...

And their conviction is understandable. Astronomers have found that going to the Earth, the light from all visible stars is shifted to the red part of the spectrum. And there is only one satisfactory explanation for this - all the stars scatter from a certain center. This is a consequence of the decompression of the matter of the cosmos.

According to the latest estimates, our planet has existed as a separate celestial body for about four and a half billion years. So: in the Urals, rocks were found whose age is defined as at least three billion years old. And the whole “tragedy” for supporters of hypotheses is that this established fact can be easily explained from the positions of both points of view ...

How did the Urals live from the birth of the planet to the present day? Naturally, two different pictures are also offered here. Supporters of the “shrinking” Earth believe that all this time the Urals behaved like an oscillating string (of course, slowly oscillating and, of course, a huge string), - it either rose to the heavens, grinning at the rocky peaks of the mountains, then descended, bending towards the earth’s center, and then - over the entire space of the depression - it was flooded with oceanic swells. Naturally, these oscillations were not so simple, consistent and unidirectional. During them, there were also chips, and breaks in the earth's firmament, and the crushing of its individual sections in the corrugation of folds, and the formation of cracks of different depths. Water rushed from above and below into the gaping cracks, streams of red-hot lava burst out of the bowels of the earth, and clouds of volcanic ash covered the sky and the sun, belching from the vents of fire-breathing volcanoes. There are many deposits of this type in the Urals.

Globe of Martin Beheim (1492)

During the rise of sections of the Urals, ruins of crushed stone, pebbles, and sand usually form on them. During subsidence, the rivers carried the destroyed material into the oceans and seas, filling them up. coastal zones clay, silt, sand. Dying microorganisms created kilometers of limestone and other typically oceanic geological formations in the seas...

And all these breeds are in abundance in the Urals, which, according to the supporters of the first approach, is quite enough to recognize it as true.

Supporters of the "separating" universe believe that the Earth expanded in leaps and bounds. The picture of the formation of the Urals is drawn by him like this. At the next significant expansion of the body of our planet, it shuddered, cracked, and huge continental blocks, broken by the expanding substance of the earth's interior, bursting them, slowly, as if in an ice drift, crawled across the face of the planet. (By the way, it has been established that all the continents are still doing this, each moving in its own direction at a speed of up to several centimeters per year.) The space between the continents began to quickly fill up with puffing gases, the molten substance of the deep bowels. From there, huge masses of salty waters of the future oceans and seas, formed during the same process of decompression, also splashed onto the earth's surface. So it was in the places of modern oceans.

The Ural was formed in this way. The fragments of the ancient continents, moving away from each other along the roundness of our planet, on the other hand, inevitably had to approach some other fragment, also from the previously intact piece of land. This is how Europe, which had broken away from something, and Asia, which had broken off from somewhere, began to draw closer. When colliding, the edges of the approaching fragments began to crumble, crumple, and prick. Some pieces of the approaching continents were squeezed out onto the surface of the Earth, some were crushed inward, crumpled into folds. From gigantic pressure, something melted, something delami- nated , something completely changed its original appearance. A monstrous hodgepodge of the most heterogeneous formations was formed, which geologists inclined to humor dubbed the "broken plate." The squeezed blocks of rocks formed along the line of contact of the materials of the chain of the Ural ridges.

The described, according to the authors of this idea, happened quite a long time ago, more than one hundred million years ago. But one should not think that this was the last act of expansion of our planet. Geologists believe that the faults of the earth's crust within the Urals have occurred more than once since then. One of the latest events of this kind, they consider the formation of a split into Southern Urals, stretching in a line from Bredy through Troitsk to Kopeisk. Here, according to enthusiasts of the idea, there is the birth of such a fissure of the earth's firmament, which can grow to the size of Atlantic Ocean. She is just at the very beginning of this glorious journey. The next stage they see is the formation of a giant basin like Baikal - somewhere in a hundred thousand years, then the sprawling shores of the emerging sea (like the Red Sea) - in another two or three hundred thousand years, and then a direct path to the new Great Ocean. It would be interesting to see...

The places of collisions of the continents are also riddled with numerous cracks, becoming easily permeable to ore-bearing solutions.

From the standpoint of these approaches, the abundance and richness of minerals in the Urals is easily explained...

No matter how they appear on the body of the planet, but the Ural Mountains for the last few tens of millions of years have invariably risen on the border of two continents, open in winter and summer to all winds, rains, snows, calcined by the sun, frozen by frosty winters. All natural elements contributed to the destruction of the once majestic ranges. The tops of the mountains gradually collapsed, crumbled into countless fragments of small and large boulders, became lower, rounder. So they gradually turned into what we are seeing today - into a community of several closely attached to each other, not too high and not too rocky chains of mountain ranges, elongated for the most part almost strictly from south to north (or vice versa). It should be noted that in the south and north of the Ural mountainous country, its mountains are both higher and more rocky. In the central part of it, they are significantly lowered, in some places they are just high, portly hills.

And one more feature in the structure of the Ural Mountains can be noticed by a traveler crossing them from west to east. In the latitudinal direction, the mountainous country is asymmetric. It passes into the Russian Plain as if smoothly, as a series of gradually lowering western foothills. Its transition to the West Siberian lowland is more abrupt. In a significant part of the Urals, it looks like this: mountains, mountains, mountains, a cliff - and immediately a low, swampy Trans-Urals.

Modern climatic zones The Urals were formed relatively recently, in the last couple of hundred thousand years, almost immediately before the settlement of the Urals by humans. At that time, the most distinct traces of cooling appeared on the planet. They are quite fully traced throughout the Ural Mountains, and manifested themselves in the change of vegetation and species composition of the animal world. The cooling of the planet led to its glaciation. But an amusing detail: if in the European part of our country the tongues of glaciers penetrated to the latitude of modern Dnepropetrovsk, then in the Urals, even at the time of the deepest glaciation, they did not penetrate south of the upper reaches of the Pechora.

Judging by fossil vegetation, until the last ice age The climate in the Urals was quite favorable. Here - almost along the entire length - then hop horns grew (a tree mediterranean climate, found in the Pechora river basin), oaks, lindens, hornbeams, hazels. Shrubs were plentiful, and many spores and grass pollen were found. But during the period of glaciation, there was no trace left of the free forest-steppe woodland with extensive open spaces. It was replaced by taiga coniferous forests, and the luxurious herbs in large areas were replaced by quinoa and wormwood.

In pre-glacial times, the level of the World Ocean was one hundred and fifty to two hundred meters lower than today. On the shelves of modern northern seas in our time, many kilometers of once-deep valleys have been discovered, dug then in the earth's firmament by the Pechora and Ob. And Kama's bed lay one hundred and fifty meters below its current level. The peaks of the Ural Mountains were on average 200-500 meters higher than the current level. And since the mountains were higher, then the rivers that originated in them flowed faster. In general, mighty streams flowed down from the Urals then. Evidence of their power is now the placers of boulders, which they carried from the mountains far to the plain. Such boulders - up to one and a half meters in diameter - can often be found walking around Khanty-Mansiysk.

And the Ural rivers were much more watery.

Today, near the Cherry Mountains, the small river Khmelevka flows. Such a nondescript, meek Cinderella. And it is established for sure that once it was very, very major river, it flowed through western slopes Potanin and Cherry mountains, absorbing the valley of the current Gorka river, and flowed into current lakes Big and Small Kochan and Ara-Kul. Then these lakes were one huge whole - the sea, and now only on the most deep places of the ancient pool, mirrors of its waters have been preserved.

Apparently, it is not for nothing that the time of melting of the glaciers of the era of the largest glaciation of the Urals was called by specialists “the time of great waters”.

In general, periods of glaciation seriously affected the formation modern look Ural. And not only the Urals. Let me introduce you to one hydrographic incident that happened at that time.

We have already mentioned above that the ice sheets on the Russian Plain reached the bend of the Dnieper near modern Dnepropetrovsk and to the latitude of the city of Ivdel in the Urals. The glaciers completely blocked and redrawn the hitherto familiar structure of river flows. So, the rivers of the Pechora basin began to flow into the Kama - through Vyatka. Glacier with an insurmountable wall under the pond and the waters of the ancient big river, which once flowed in the area between the present-day cities of Yuryevets and Vasilsursk. It flowed to the north and flowed into the Pra-Unzha, which then belonged to the Don basin. The dammed waters, constantly replenished by the melting glacier, overflowed the bowl of the reservoir that had arisen and, pouring out through the height of the watershed near present-day Kazan, poured into the streams of the Kama. Gradually, they completely cut through this watershed, forming a completely worthy river bed. So there was great river Volga.

Considering the further process of the formation of the Volga basin, the geologist G. F. Mirchink came to the conclusion that he “... is, in essence, the history of the strengthening of the power of the Kama. The tributaries of the Kama, gradually growing in power and number, created the modern Volga. Historically, in the geological sense of the word, it would be more correct to consider the Volga a tributary of the Kama ... "

Isn't it deeply symbolic that the jets Ural river Kamy modestly and inconspicuously turned into the great Russian river Volga?

Is it not from such a hydrogeological fact that the tradition began, according to which all the abundant power of the Urals unobtrusively, quietly, but weightily began to be personified by the power of Russia ...

Since the time of the first great glaciation of the Urals, all of its main climatic and landscape zones have appeared to this day - tundra (bald), mountain-taiga, taiga-plain, forest-steppe and steppe.

This is how everything in the Urals had developed by the time a person appeared here.