User:Colchicum/incubator/Ural Mountains


 * Riphean redirects here. For the time period, see Riphean (stage)

The Ural Mountains or Urals (Уральские горы) are a mountain range, stretching meridionally across Russia from the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River valley on the border with Kazakhstan for more than 2000 km. Situated between the East European and West Siberian plains, the Urals are usually considered a boundary between Europe and Asia. The mountain chain is shared by Russia's Komi Republic, Perm Krai, Bashkortostan, Orenburg Oblast, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Sverdlovsk Oblast, as well as Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs. It is fairly narrow and not particularly high, with its highest peak, Mount Narodnaya, rising to 1894 m a.s.l. The Pay Khoy ridge and the Mugodzhar Hills are adjacent to the Urals in the north and in the south, respectively.

Name
As attested by Sigismund von Herberstein, in the 16th century Russians called the range by a variety of names derived from the Russian words for rock (stone) and belt. The modern Russian name for the Urals (Урал, Ural) first appeared in the 17th century and gained currency during the 18th century. It may be a borrowing from either Turkic (Bashkir, where the same name is used for the range), or Ob-Ugric.

History
As Arab merchants traded with the Bashkirs and other people living on the western slopes of the Urals as far north as Great Perm, since at least the 10th century medieval Arab geographers had been aware of the existence of the mountain range in its entirety, stretching as far as to the Arctic Ocean in the north. The first Russian mention of the mountains to the east of the East European Plain is provided by the Primary Chronicle, when it describes the Novgorodian expedition to the upper reaches of the Pechora in 1096. During the next few centuries Novgorodians engaged in fur trading with the local population and collected tribute from Yugra and Great Perm, slowly expanding southwards. The rivers Chusovaya and Belaya were first mentioned in the chronicles of 1396 and 1468, respectively. In 1430 the town of Solikamsk (Kama Salt) was founded on the Kama at the foothills of the Urals, where salt was produced in open pans. Ivan III of Moscow captured Perm, Pechora and Yugra from the declining Novgorod Republic in 1472. With the excursions of 1483 and 1499-1500 across the Urals Moscow managed to subjugate Yugra completely.

Nevertheless, around that time early 16th century Polish geographer Maciej of Miechów in his influential Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis (1517) argued that there were no mountains in Eastern Europe at all, challenging the point of view of some authors of Classical antiquity, popular during the Renaissance. Only after Sigismund von Herberstein in his Notes on Muscovite Affairs (1549) had reported, following Russian sources, that there are mountains behind the Pechora and identified them with the Ripheans and Hyperboreans of ancient authors, did the existence of the Urals, or at least of its northern part, become firmly established in the Western geography. The Middle and Southern Urals were still largely unavailable and unknown to the Russian or Western European geographers.

In the 1550s, after the Tsardom of Russia had defeated the Khanate of Kazan and proceeded to gradually annex the lands of the Bashkirs, the Russians finally reached the southern part of the mountain chain. In 1574 they founded Ufa. The upper reaches of the Kama and Chusovaya in the Middle Urals, still unexplored, as well as parts of Transuralia still held by the hostile Siberian Khanate, were granted to the Stroganovs by several decrees of the tsar in 1558-1574. The Stroganovs' land provided the staging ground for Yermak's incursion into Siberia. Yermak crossed the Urals from the Chusovaya to the Tagil around 1581. In 1597 Babinov's road was built across the Urals from Solikamsk to the valley of the Tura, where the town of Verkhoturye (Upper Tura) was founded in 1598. Customs was established in Verkhoturye shortly thereafter and the road was made the only legal connection between European Russia and Siberia for a long time. In 1648 the town of Kungur was founded at the western foothills of the Middle Urals. During the 17th century the first deposits of iron and copper ores, mica, gemstones and other minerals were discovered in the Urals.

Iron and copper smelting works emerged. They multiplied particularly quickly during the reign of Peter I of Russia. In 1720-1722 he commissioned Vasily Tatishchev to oversee and develop the mining and smelting works in the Urals. Tatishchev proposed a new copper smelting factory in Yegoshikha, which would eventually become the core of the city of Perm and a new iron smelting factory on the Iset, which would become the largest in the world at the time of construction and give birth to the city of Yekaterinburg. Both factories were actually founded by Tatishchev's successor, Georg Wilhelm de Gennin, in 1723. Tatishchev returned to the Urals on the order of Empress Anna to succeed de Gennin in 1734-1737. Transportation of the output of the smelting works to the markets of European Russia necessitated the construction of the Siberian Route from Yekaterinburg across the Urals to Kungur and Yegoshikha (Perm) and further to Moscow, which was completed in 1763 and rendered Babinov's road obsolete. In 1745 gold was discovered in the Urals at Beryozovskoye and later at other deposits. It has been mined since 1747.

The first railway across the Urals had been built by 1878 and linked Perm to Yekaterinburg via Chusovoy, Kushva and Nizhny Tagil. In 1890 a railway linked Ufa and Chelyabinsk via Zlatoust. In 1896 this section became a part of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In 1909 yet another railway connecting Perm and Yekaterinburg passed through Kungur by the way of the Siberian Route. It has eventually replaced the Ufa – Chelyabinsk section as the main trunk of the Trans-Siberian railway.

The highest peak of the Urals, Mount Narodnaya, was discovered in 1927.

During the Soviet industrialization in the 1930s the city of Magnitogorsk was founded in the southeastern Urals as a huge center of iron smelting and steelmaking. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941-1942, faced with the threat of having a significant part of the Soviet territories occupied by the enemy, the gorvernment evacuated many of the industrial enterprises of European Russia and Ukraine to the eastern foothills of the Urals, considered a safe place out of reach of the German bombers and troops. Three giant tank factories were established at the Uralmash in Sverdlovsk (as Yekaterinburg used to be known), Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil, and Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant in Chelyabinsk. After the war, in 1947-1948, Chum – Labytnangi railway, built with the forced labor of Gulag inmates, crossed the Polar Urals.

Divisions

 * The Southern Urals are broad, moderately high, well-populated and visited by tourists.
 * The Middle Urals, at about the latitude of Moscow, Perm and Yekaterinburg, are fairly low. Most routes between European Russia and Siberia pass here.
 * The Northern Urals are higher, thinly populated and have few roads.
 * The Polar Urals tend somewhat to the northeast and have almost no population.

Geography
The Western slope south of the border between the Komi Republic and Perm Krai and Eastern slope south of approximately 54º30'N drain into the Caspian Sea via the Kama and Ural river basins. The rest of the Urals drains into the Arctic Ocean, mainly via the Pechora basin in the west and the Ob basin in the east.


 * (Arctic Ocean)
 * Kara River
 * Pechora River
 * Ilych River
 * Usa River
 * Kosyu River
 * (Ob River)
 * (Irtysh River)
 * (Tobol River)
 * Uy River
 * Iset River
 * Miass River
 * Tura River
 * Tagil River
 * Nitsa River
 * Pyshma River
 * (Tavda River)
 * Lyalya River
 * Lozva River
 * Sosva River
 * (Lesser Ob River)
 * Northern Sosva River
 * Nyays River
 * Lyapin River
 * Volya River
 * Synya River
 * Shchuchya River
 * (Caspian Sea)
 * (Volga River)
 * (Kama River)
 * Vishera River
 * Kolva River
 * Yayva River
 * Kosva River
 * Chusovaya River
 * Sylva River
 * Belaya River
 * Ufa River
 * Bisert River
 * Ay River
 * Yuryuzan River
 * Ural River
 * Sakmara River

The Urals extend 2,498 km (1,552 mi) from the Kazakh steppes along the northern border of Kazakhstan to the coast of the Arctic ocean. Vaygach Island and the island of Novaya Zemlya form a further continuation of the chain. Geographically this range marks the northern part of the border between the continents of Europe and Asia. Its highest peak is Mount Narodnaya (Poznurr, 1,895 m, 6,217 ft). Erosion has exposed considerable mineral wealth in the Urals, including gems such as topaz and beryl. The Virgin Komi Forests in the northern Urals are recognized as a World Heritage site. Geographers have divided the Urals into five regions: South, Middle, North, Subarctic and Arctic. The tree line drops from 1,400 meters (4,593 ft) to sea level as one progresses north. Sections of the south and middle regions are completely forested.

Geology
The Urals were formed during the Uralian orogeny due to the collision of the eastern edge of the supercontinent Laurussia with the young and rheologically weak continent of Kazakhstania, which now underlies much of Kazakhstan and West Siberia west of the Irtysh, and intervening island arcs. The collision lasted nearly 90 million years in the late Carboniferous - early Triassic. Unlike the other major orogens of the Paleozoic (Appalachians, Caledonides, Variscides), the Urals have not undergone post-orogenic extensional collapse and are unusually well preserved for their age, being underlied by a pronounced crustal root. East and south of the Urals much of the orogen is buried beneath later Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. The adjacent Pay-Khoy to the north is not a part of the Uralian orogen and formed later.