Caves
A cave is any cavity in
the ground that is large enough that some portion of it will not receive direct
sunlight. There are many types of caves.
A cavern is a specific
type of cave, naturally formed in soluble rock with the ability to grow mineral
deposits. Cave formation had its beginnings some 60 million years ago, long
before two-legged creatures walked on Earth. As the rain poured down on the bed
of limestone and rivers flowed over it, the soft rock was chewed away by the
acid rainwater until hair-thin cracks began to appear. More acid rain fell. The
water trickled down, enlarging the cracks. It found new paths between the
layers of stone. The paths widened into tunnels. The tunnels crisscrossed and
grew into rooms. Over millions of years, the rooms grew bigger and bigger.
Almost
every cave is occupied, resided in, and inhabited. But most caves are not
suitable places for humans to make their homes. Caves are usually too dark,
cold, and wet to live in. In the past, some people, such as Cro-Magnons and
Neanderthals, did live in caves. The traces they have left indicate when they
lived in caves. They stayed close to the entrances. If they ventured to the
inner parts of caves, it was for special ceremonies. It is possible that in
some remote areas of the world, there are people who still live in caves much
as the earliest cave dwellers did. However, most caves are populated by animals
and plants.
Some
animals found in caves do not live there permanently. Birds build nests near
the entrance. Skunks use caves as nurseries in which to rear babies. During the
winter, caves get new residents as bears, snakes, and many insects settle down
to sleep. But these creatures are not true cave dwellers. They take shelter in
the cave only when they cannot find any better place.
The cave cricket has adapted to life
in the dark. It has no colour and uses its extra-long feelers to find food.
Many cave animals are blind, for there is nothing to see in the darkness of the
cave.
Fig. Cave cricket
The
real cave dwellers live deep inside the cave. Some, like rats and bats, leave
the cave to find food. But there are insects, fishes, and salamanders that
spend their whole lives in black cave rooms. A long line of their ancestors
lived in the same place. During centuries of darkness, these creatures have
lost their colouring, becoming white or pale pink or transparent. Many are now
blind, making up for eyesight with better hearing or a sharper sense of touch
or smell.
True cave dwellers live deep inside
the cave. The salamander may venture out into the daylight. The blind and
wingless cave beetle is covered with fine hairs. The ghostly blindfish that swims
in underground streams is unusually sensitive to vibrations. Blind cave
salamanders are rarer than blindfish. Some kinds can see when they are born,
although their eyelids grow together later.
While
these animals can adapt to cave life, few plants can. Moulds and mushrooms
flourish in the damp, dark underground rooms, but green plants cannot live
without light. Only in caves that have been wired for electricity will you see
green moss and feathery ferns on the rocky ledges.
Amarnath
cave
As Lord Shiva danced
around with the burnt corpse of Mata Sati and Lord Vishnu used his Sudarshan
Chakra on the body, Devi Adi Shakti’s throat is said to have fallen atop
Amarnath Cave, located in Jammu and Kashmir. A natural shrine was established
to preserve and worship this part of the mother, which later came to be known
as the Amarnath Temple.
The Amarnath Temple is a Hindu
shrine located in the Pahalgam tehsil of the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, India. A cave situated
at an altitude of 3,888 m (12,756 ft), about 168 km from Anantnag city,
the district headquarters, and 141 km (88 mi) from Srinagar.
The Amarnath cave can be reached through either Sonamarg
or Pahalgam.
It is an important shrine in Hinduism. The cave, located in Sind Valley,
is surrounded by glaciers, and snowy mountains and is
covered with snow most of the year, except for a short period in the summer,
when it is open to pilgrims. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims reach the peak
every year. The annual pilgrimage varies between 20 and 60 days.
The
most spectacular system of caverns is found in North America Carlsbad
Caverns.
It
is hard to imagine just how big a cave can be. Some of the rooms in this
natural wonder are about 1,000 feet (300 meters) under the ground. The cave's
largest room could hold ten football fields. In one place, its ceiling is as
high as a 30-story building. In 1930, this underground wonderland in the
foothills of the Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico, was established as Carlsbad
Caverns National Park.
Cave
formation is a continuous process with nothing to stop the flow of acid rain-
water through the tunnels and rock-walled rooms. In the process huge areas of
limestone are devoured, destroyed, and consumed. But then the work of the acid
rainwater was brought to a halt. The earth's crust wrinkled and folded. The bed
of limestone tilted up and became part of a mountain range. The water that
etched its way through the limestone rock slowly drained away.
As
raindrops trickled down to the empty cave rooms over the centuries, something
new began to happen. Water started to decorate the cave.
About
1 million years ago a single drop of rainwater clung to the ceiling of
Carlsbad's Big Room. As the water dripped, a tiny ring of lime crystallized on
the ceiling. A second drop-and a third, a fourth, a fifth-left lime in the same
place. As time passed, the rings of lime formed a little stone "icicle”.
Another
drop of water dripped to the floor of the cave. Again, the lime was left
behind. As time passed, thousands of drops fell on the same spot. The specks of
lime formed what looked like a thick stone candle.
The
icicle of stone on the ceiling is called a stalactite. The stubby candle
on the floor is a stalagmite. (Think of the c in stalactite as standing
for ceiling and the g in stalagmite as standing for ground. This will help you
to remember which is which.) Sometimes the icicle-like stalactites and the
stubby stalag- mites meet in the middle to form columns.
Stalactites,
stalagmites, and columns are not the only cave formations. Lime-laden water
covers cave walls with rippling flow- stone. It forms curtains of dripstone
when it oozes from cracks in the ceiling. It builds a border of rimstone when
it evaporates from a pool on the floor. It coats sand grains with layer after
layer of lime until each grain is transformed into a cave pearl.
The
ceilings of some caves are covered with short, hollow stalactites that look
like soda straws. Others have glittering stone needles on their walls or stone
bristling from the floor. There are delicate cave feathers, graceful cave
flowers, and a strange stalactite (called a helictite) that grows sideways and
up as well as down. The color of cave formation varies also. They can be white,
red, brown, or a combination of colours, depending on the minerals that form
them.
In
Carlsbad, these weird and beautiful stone shapes stopped growing when the
climate changed. Rain falls less often. Rivers grew shallow. Water seldom
reached the rooms deep under the ground. Today scientists speak of the great
caves as "dead."
Although
no two caves look alike, all of the really big caves in the world were formed
the same way. They were hollowed out of limestone (or related rocks like gypsum
and marble) by acid water. They are called solution caves. A more
familiar word for them is caverns.
Caverns
are not the only kind of cave. For example, sea caves are formed by the
steady pounding of waves on the rocky cliffs along the shore. The waves do not
dissolve the rock. They dig it out, grinding away at it year after year with
pebbles and fine sand. The best-known sea caves are the Blue Grotto in Italy's island
of Capri (grotto is still another word for cave).
North
America's largest sea cave is Sea Lion Cave in Oregon. Herds of sea lions raise
their families in the cave's big room. Other sea caves are scattered along the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as the shores of the Great Lakes and the
Bay of Fundy.
In
the western part of the United States and on the volcanic islands of Hawaii,
there are hundreds of lava caves. These formed after hot, melted rock
welled up from deep inside the earth. Rivers of the liquid rock, called lava,
flowed above ground. Even when the surfaces of the lava rivers cooled, forming
a hard crust, their fiery interiors traveled on. The hollow, hardened tubes
they left behind are lava caves. Lava caves are usually tunnelling only a yard
or so under the ground. Lava stalactites hang from their ceilings, and their
floors are covered with ripple marks made by the fiery rivers that formed them.
Some
lava caves contain huge beds of ice. Ages ago cold air from the surface entered
the cave. The tube-shaped cave became a trap for the cold air. When rain or
snow carried water to the cave, the water froze, making the porous lava rock
still colder. The thicker the ice became, the less likelihood there was of its
melting. Even in the desert, there are caves with perpetual ice.
In
Canada and the northwestern United States there are also glacial ice caves.
Hollowing out of glaciers, these caves have roofs and walls of ice. They grow
bigger when warm air reaches them and smaller when it is cold. As they grow,
blocks of ice often tumble from ceilings and walls. Glacial caves are usually
too dangerous to explore.
Ref:
1.
Amarnath Temple – Wikipedia
2.
The
new Book of Knowledge
3.
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