How The Caves Are Formed?

Caves have been the abode of man. The history of man is linked with caves in many interesting ways. These were the winter dwellings of people in the Old Stone Age in the absence of any other form of shelter.

People in ancient times, after the man stopped living in caves, believed very strange things about caves. The Greeks strongly believed that the caves were the temples of their Gods, Zeus, Pan, Dionysus, and Pluto. The Romans took them for the homes of Nymphs and Sibyls. The Persians of the ancient period thought to associate the waves with the worship of Mithras, chief of the earth spirits.

The huge and beautiful, ancient caves are tourist attractions, all over the world. These are hollow places, deep inside the rock in cliffs or hills. The large caves are called “caverns”. These are made in many ways. These may have been hollowed out by the beating of sea waves constantly against the rocks. There are caves under the surface of the earth as well. These are mostly the old courses of underground streams. The continuous passage of water wears the rock layers in soft strata such as limestone. There is another category of caves formed by the volcanic shifting of surface rocks or hot lava eruption.

The rocks made by wearing away of thick limestone layers are the most common type in the United States. Water containing carbon dioxide reacts and that results in the making of rock cavities. There are great beds of limestone with an average thickness of 53 meters, in Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Such caves are numerous.

There are some caves that have openings through their roofs. These are called “sinkholes”. The holes formed due to seepage of water at spots, where it first gathered. There are caves with galleries in tiers and rows. These tiered rows are one above another. There are streams that pass through some of the caves. In some cases, the streams flowing through the cave have left the cave bed dry and adopted a course that is further lower than the bed. In caves, every drop of water that drops has some amount of lime or other mineral matter dissolved in it. Water evaporates leaving the mineral on the floor in due course of time and gradually forms a stalactite. of the shape of an icicle hanging from under the cave roof. The water drippings, on flour, build up a column and is called a stalagmite.