Conical hill
A conical hill or conical mountain is a hill or mountain with a distinctly conical shape. They are usually isolated or rise above other surrounding foothills, and are often of volcanic origin.
Conical hills or mountains occur in different shapes and are not necessarily geometrically-shaped cones; they may also be more tower-shaped or have an asymmetric curve on one side. Ideally, however, they have a circular base with smooth sides with a gradient of up to 30°. Typical conical mountains are found in all volcanically-formed areas of the world such as the Bohemian Central Uplands in Czechia, the Rhön in Germany or the Massif Central in France.
Term
The conical hill as a geomorphological term first appeared in the German language, as Kegelberg, coined by Goethe and geologists of his era. From their natural appearance they are mostly basaltic or phonolitic masses in the shape of a mathematical cone, hence why the term came to be used in the early geological literature.
The first systematic geological mapping of the Kingdom of Saxony, urged and started by Abraham Gottlob Werner, describes, in his later works, numerous mountains and hills of volcanic or subvolcanic origin as Kegel ("cone") or Kegelberg ("conical hill/mountain"). It was introduced in more concrete terms by Carl Friedrich Naumann in Notes to Section VII of the Geognostic Charter of the Kingdom of Saxony and its Adjacent Territories (Erläuterungen zu Section VII der geognostischen Charte des Königreiches Sachsen und der angränzenden Länderabtheilungen) thus: "The ordinary form of basalt and phonolithic hills is generally so wonderfully uniform that you can often recognize them even from a distance. They are cones. Of course, this typical form has many variations; the [normally] round base may be more elliptical, the peak may take the form of a rocky crest or ridge, ... but most forms can be reduced at least to a conical or a cone-segment shape. ... Flat ridges are then arranged in rows, out of which rise only a very isolated basalt or phonolite cones."[1]
In this work, which was published by Naumann and later revised by Bernhard Cotta, the most important hills are described in the relevant map sheets, for example: 33. The Mittenberg, a conical hill in the centre between Tollenstein, Schönfeld and Neuhütte; rock, coarse splinters, with grey feldspar crystals.[2]
Today the term cone or conical hill or mountain is mainly used as a morphological term in geography for a steep-sided, isolated hill or mountain, because they are not always seen or described in connexion with volcanic processes.[3]
See also
References
Literature
- Carl Friedrich Naumann (ed.), Bernhard Cotta (revisor): Erläuterungen zu Section VII der geognostischen Charte des Königreiches Sachsen und der angränzenden Länderabtheilungen oder: Geognostische Skizze der gegenden zwischen Schandau, Zittau, Kratzau, Gabel, Böhmisch-Leipe, Wernstadtel und Tetschen. Dresden und Leipzig, (Arnoldische Buchhandlung) 1840