Qilian Mountains

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Nan Shan (南山) is a 6346 m high mountain chain up in the People's Republic of China ( Asia) and extends to the border of the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu. He thus represents the transition from the northern edge of the Tibetan plateau in the desert border regions of the Gobi dar.

The name Nan Shan means " Southern Mountains ", " South Mountains " and explained by the fact that it looked from the old oases of the Silk Road, which was celebrated as the most important trade route to West Asia a lot, south on these mountains. Curiously, go to the easternmost chains of these " South Mountains " in the south in the Bei Shan, the " Northern Mountains" over who have received their name from the view of still further south settlement centers of the province of Qinghai.

Geography

The high mountains, the (also: Altyn Tagh ) mainly from the western Altun Shan and Qilian Shan is the eastern, located in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu. In the West, it branches off from its southern neighbor actually Kunlun Shan and runs in an elongated arc west through China until about the high mountain Qinghai. In the west and north, the northern foothills of the Nan Shan encountered in the course of the Altun in the Tarim Basin and thus to the desert Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert to the east. These come as part of the Qilian Shan to the Gobi Desert, while the local southern slopes bordering the Qaidam Basin.

The highest peak of the mountain range Nan Shan is located at 6346 m above sea level in the eastern Qilian Shan.

History

The mountains of the highlands and its framing - such as the Himalayas, Kunlun Shan and Nan Shan - emerged in the context of the collision of the plates of the Indian subcontinent with the Eurasian Plate in the Late Triassic, which joined the primordial ocean called the Tethys. Not only does the continental block was raised and thickened, but also already " caked " between the two floes smaller continental blocks welded on Gebirgssäume with dan adjacent panels. Due to the tectonic forces more cracks and stress fields have emerged, to fractures and depressions ( faulting ) have led: where the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang and the south of the Nan Shan extending Qaidam Basin, and with them the edge mountains for example, are formed.