ANDES MOUNTAINS

The Southern and Central Andes and Patagonia. The Central and Northern Andes and the Amazon River basin and drainage network. The Northern Andes and the Orinoco River basin and its drainage network. also called the Andes, Spanish Cordillera de los Andes, or los Andes, mountain system of South America and one of the great natural features of the Earth. The Andes consist of a vast series of extremely high plateaus surmounted by even higher peaks that form an unbroken rampart over a distance of some 5,500 miles (8,900 kilometres)from the southern tip of South America to the continent's northernmost coast on the Caribbean. They separate a narrow western coastal area from the rest of the continent, affecting deeply the conditions of life within the ranges themselves and in surrounding areas. The Andes contain the highest peaks in the Western Hemisphere. The highest of them is Mount Aconcagua (22,831 feet [6,959 metres]) on the border of Argentina and Chile. The Andes are not a single line of formidable peaks but rather a succession of parallel and transverse mountain ranges, or cordilleras, and of intervening plateaus and depressions. Distinct eastern and western rangesrespectively named the Cordillera Oriental and the Cordillera Occidentalare characteristic of most of the system. The directional trend of both the cordilleras generally is north-south, but in several places the Cordillera Oriental bulges eastward to form either isolated peninsula-like ranges or such high intermontane plateau regions as the Altiplano (Spanish: High Plateau), occupying adjoining parts of Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. Some historians believe the name Andes comes from the Quechuan word anti (east); others suggest it is derived from the Quechuan anta (copper). It perhaps is more reasonable to ascribe it to the anta of the older Aymara language, which connotes copper colour generally. also called The Andes, Spanish Cordillera De Los Andes, or Los Andes, great mountain system of South America and one of the great natural features of the globe, stretching the length of the South American continent from Lago (Lake) de Maracaibo in the north to the Tierra del Fuego archipelago in the south. The following article summarizes information about the Andes Mountains; for full details, see South America: Andes Mountains. Occupying significant portions of seven countries, the Andes may be separated, from north to south, into six major subdivisions: the Venezuelan Cordillera, the Colombian cordilleras, the Ecuadorian Andes, the Peruvian Andes, the Central Andes, and the Patagonian Andes. The Venezuelan Cordillera separates the Orinoco Basin from Lago de Maracaibo and the Caribbean Sea as it extends southwestward to join the eastern segment of the Colombian ranges (Cordillera Oriental). The Colombian cordilleras, consisting of three or four ranges, extend finger-like northeastward from the Ecuadorian border to dominate the Colombian landscape. The Ecuadorian Andes is composed of a large plateau that runs from north to south and extends between two chains of high volcanic peaks (the Cordilleras Occidental and Central). The cordilleras of the Peruvian Andes turn generally southeastward along three distinctive ranges, dominated for the most part by the western Cordillera Occidental. The Peruvian and the Central Andes merge and widen at the Altiplano (among the world's largest interior basins, extending across the Peruvian and Bolivian frontier) which contains the 110-mi-long Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. Before narrowing again southward, the Andes enter northern Argentina, occupying its northwestern provinces. The Patagonian Andes, forming some of the most rugged terrain of the entire South American cordilleras, provide the boundary between Chile and Argentina from Bolivia south through Tierra del Fuego. The highest peak of the Andes, Mt. Aconcagua, rises to 22,831 ft (6,959 m) above sea level within these southern ranges. Additional reading Classic works on the geography and geology of the Andes include Alan G. Ogilvie, Geography of the Central Andes (1922); and Isaiah Bowman, The Andes of Southern Peru (1916). The role of plate tectonics in the formation of the Andes is discussed in R.W.R. Rutland, Andean Orogeny and Ocean Floor Spreading, Nature, 233(5317):252255 (1971); and David E. James, The Evolution of the Andes, Scientific American, 229(2):6069 (August 1973). Harold Osborne, Indians of the Andes: Aymaras and Quechuas (1952, reissued 1973), is still a useful discussion of the indigenous peoples. More recent works are Shozo Masuda, Izumi Shimada, and Craig Morris (eds.), Andean Ecology and Civilization (1985), a collection of conference papers; Lost Crops of the Incas: Little-Known Plants of the Andes with Promise for Worldwide Cultivation (1989), a report prepared by a panel of the National Research Council; Benjamin S. Orlove and Glynn Custred (eds.), Land and Power in Latin America: Agrarian Economies and Social Processes in the Andes (1980); and William P. Mitchell, Peasants on the Edge: Crop, Cult, and Crisis in the Andes (1991). The classic of Andean exploration by Edward Whymper, Travels Amongst the Great Andes of the Equator (1892), is available in later editions. Norman R. Stewart