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The Indian Peninsula is a collage of many terranes, where ancient rocks, denudational surfaces and rivers predominate. The peninsula displays amazing diversity of landscape features, from tiny koppies to the ~1,500-km long Great Escarpment of India (the Western Ghat/Sahyadri). By and large, bedrock landforms and partially to deeply weathered rocks dominate the landscape. Following the Gondwanaland breakup, the landscape of the Indian peninsula has been chiefly fashioned by divergent weathering and differential erosion. Two types of terrains are conspicuous—the granite-gneissic landscape characterized by undulating plains dotted with koppies, boulder inselbergs and bornhardts in the south, and the Deccan Trappean landscape dominated by flat-topped, stepped hills separated by wide, open valleys in the north and west. Laterite-capped plateaux and mesas are prominent features in some parts. The peninsular rivers are rainfed and are active only during the monsoon season. Only the east-flowing larger rivers have developed deltas and deltaic plains. Although the human history of the Peninsula covers a span of nearly 4,000 years, human presence within it is known for a greater part of the Quaternary. |
