Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
These natives were teachers and educated men called pandits . The British pronounced it “pundit,” giving
the English language a new word for “learned man,” a connotation which a number of modern political
pundits seem to be doing their best to diminish.
For the most part, the British avoided giving European names to the peaks they surveyed, identifying
them either by number or by their local names. For Peak XV, as the surveyors initially numbered Everest,
an exception was made when its full height was appreciated and it was christened in George Everest's hon-
or. But Tibetans who lived under its massive heights long ago anointed the great peak with the far more
poetic name of Chomolungma (“Sacred Mother of the Waters”).
The peak of Everest was not reached until 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing
Norkey, a Sherpa guide from Nepal, reached the summit on May 28. (This introduced a second Himalayan-
inspired word into the American political lexicon. Sherpas are now the advance people who prepare the
way for international summit talks between world leaders.) Everest is claimed by the People's Republic of
China, which controls Tibet (“Roof of the Sky”) and has officially renamed it the autonomous region of
Xizang.
Besides Everest, eight more of the world's ten tallest peaks are in the Himalayas. The second-tallest
mountain, K-2 or Mount Godwin-Austen, stands at 29,064 feet (8,858 meters) in the nearby Karakoram
Range in northeastern Pakistan. Together the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges hold nearly all of the
world's fifty tallest peaks and a large percentage of the world's hundred tallest peaks.
Compared with these, most mountains in the western hemisphere are fairly small potatoes. The tallest
mountain in the west is Cerro Aconcagua (22,831 feet; 6,959 meters), located in the Andes Range, strad-
dling the border between Argentina and Chile. The United States doesn't have a mountain among the
world's hundred tallest mountains. In the United States, the tallest peak is Alaska's Mount McKinley
(20,320 feet; 6,194 meters), which is also known by its Indian name Denali (an Athabasca Indian word
for “the Great One”). The sixteen tallest peaks in the United States are all in Alaska. The tallest mountain
in the lower forty-eight states is California's Mount Whitney, which at 14,494 feet is about half the size
of Mount Everest. In Europe, the highest point is Mont Blanc (15,771 feet; 4,807 meters) near the Italian-
Swiss border in the French Alps. Like the Himalayas, the Alps are the result of a continental head-on col-
lision. In this case, it was the African plate converging with the European plate.
Highest Mountain Peaks
Name
Height (in feet)
Range
Everest
29,028
Himalayas
K-2
28,251
Karakoram
Kanchenjunga
28,169
Himalayas
Lhotse
27,940
Himalayas
Makalu
27,790
Himalayas
Dhaulagiri I
26,810
Himalayas
Manaslu
26,760
Himalayas
Cho Oyu
26,750
Himalayas
Nanga Parbat
26,660
Himalayas
Annapurna I
26,504
Himalayas
S OURCE : Time Almanac 2012.
 
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