Where Asia Meets Europe

In my last post I gave you some latitude, starting with 54-40. Today I’ll go into what’s interesting about the longtitude here.

As shown in the photo of 7-year-old Sofia Timasheva, there is a line nearby showing where Asia meets Europe. It’s possible to stand with one foot in Asia, and another in Europe (Note the names written in Russian Cyrillic. They’re pronounced “A-zi-ya” and “Yev-ro-pa.”)

So, where’s the line? It goes down the Ural Mountains, which stretch from the Arctic Ocean to the steppes of Kazakhstan. Geologists say that the Ural Mountains formed when two tectonic plates crashed into each other. Wow! The event happened 250 – 300 million years ago, and I guess it took place over a few million years…I’ll have to give up the image I had of one loud crash when the continents collided…

The city of Ekaterinburg is located in the middle of the Ural Mountains. You may imagine it to be like Denver, Colorado, but please remember that the Rockies are young, less than 76 million years old. As a matter of fact, the Urals are the oldest mountain range in existence, and they’re quite worn down. In the middle, latitude-wise, there’s a wide saddle of low land, and that’s where E-burg is located. The altitude “here in the middle of the Urals,” is a mere 780 feet.

Ekaterinburg is on the Asiatic side of the Urals, on the edge of Siberia. On another day I’ll provide some pictures and describe the city.