Geology is a young science that is gradually growing up. According to geologists the Himalayas were formed fairly recently, compared to older mountain ranges like Aravallis in
Rajasthan.
The accepted ‘Theory of Continental Drift” by German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener (1912) was that the earth was composed of several giant plates called tectonic plates. On these plates lie the continents and the oceans of the earth. The continents were a single mass. Today’s continents have “drifted” apart from each other over a period of million years.
About 220 million years ago India was an island, situated off the Australian coast and separated from the Asian continent by a vast ocean called Tethys Sea. About 70 million years ago the northward moving Indo-Australian plate with India firmly embedded, moving about 15cm per year collided headon with the Eurasian Plate in the “Tethys Sea” (it eventually became the Mediterranean Sea) forming the Himalayas. Geologists like Suess found fossils of ocean creatures in rocks in the Himalayas, indicating that Himalayas were once underwater. Marine limestone is found near the peaks of Everest.
The Indo-Australian Plate is still moving 67mm per year, and Himalayas are rising by 5mm a year
The Himalayas known as youngfold mountains run 2,250 km west to east from the Indus valley to Northeast. The Himalayan range that sweeps round the southern side of the Assam valley, throws off in latitude 26º longitude 94º a southern branch. Manipur lies in the northern temperate zone between 23º 58’ to 94º 45’ E longitudes and between 23º 50’ to 25º 42’ N latitudes and thus was once under the sea.
Palaeontologists also find Tethys Ocean (after Greek Sea Goddesss Tethys) important because of world’s sea shelves were found around its margins for such an extensive length.
Incidentally, cuttlefish is not extinct. It is very much alive and kicking. It is now native to at least the Mediterranean Sea, North Sea and the Baltic Sea. It lives on sand and mud seabeds. They spawn in shallow waters. Cuttlefish are not fish. They belong to the group of squid and octopus. They are closely related to garden snails and slugs than they are to fish.
These animals are unique in that they have a gas-filled bone within their bodies, which allow them to be buoyant. The bone is a body part of the animal called the mantle, and attached to the mantle is a head with eight arms and two feeding tentacles.
Some people in the UK and Europe keep cuttlefish as pets in fish tanks. The crushed bone is fed to budgies and other pet birds for its high calcium content. The Chinese eat them as a delicacy. My wife and I went to a Chinese restaurant to taste them- babies about 10cm long. They taste like squid ie bland.
Imphal valley is oval and flat, 60 km long, north to south and about 30 km wide, east to west, enclosed with long even mountain ridges, which is some 100 miles. It lies between 96º 42’ to 94º 11’ E and 24º 41’ to 25º 06’. The name Imphal valley comes from River Imphal that runs through the heart of Imphal City.
General scholastic emphasise that the Imphal valley was once under water. There is even a Hindu mythological story of its being under water until Mahadev drained it with its trident through Chingninghoot, to play Ras lila – but an utterly rubbish poppycock.
Imphal valley slopes from north to south. All the rivers such as Imphal, Iril, Kongba, Nambul
and Thoubal run from north to south, depositing their alluvium in the valley instead of being carried off.
