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African Shield

african shield

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Mahmoud Bathron
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24 views6 pages

African Shield

african shield

Uploaded by

Mahmoud Bathron
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© © All Rights Reserved
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African Shield

African Shield, or Afro-Arabian Shield, or Arabian-Nubian Massif, or


Arabian-Nubian Shield, or Arabian Shield, or Ethiopian Shield (geology)

In antiquity the Greeks are said to have called the continent Libya and the
Romans to have called it Africa, perhaps from the Latin aprica (“sunny”) or the
Greek aphrike (“without cold”). The name Africa, however, was chiefly
applied to the northern coast of the continent, which was, in effect, regarded as
a southern extension of Europe. The Romans, who for a time ruled the North
African coast, are also said to have called the area south of their settlements
Afriga, or the Land of the Afrigs—the name of a Berber community south of
Carthage.

The second largest continent, after Asia, covering about one-fifth of the total
land surface of the Earth. The continent is bounded on the west by the Atlantic
Ocean, on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, on the east by the Red Sea and
the Indian Ocean, and on the south by the mingling waters of the Atlantic and
Indian oceans.
Africa's total land area is approximately 11,724,000 square miles (30,365,000
square km), and the continent measures about 5,000 miles (8,000 km) from
north to south and about 4,600 miles (7,400 km) from east to west. Its northern
extremity is Al-Ghiran Point, near Al-Abyad Point (Cape Blanc), Tunisia; its
southern extremity is Cape Agulhas, South Africa; its farthest point east is
Xaafuun (Hafun) Point, near Cape Gwardafuy (Guardafui), Somalia; and its
western extremity is Almadi Point (Pointe des Almadies), on Cape Verde (Cap
Vert), Senegal. In the northeast, Africa was joined to Asia by the Sinai
Peninsula until the construction of the Suez Canal. Paradoxically, the coastline
of Africa—18,950 miles (30,500 km) in length—is shorter than that of Europe,
because there are few inlets and few large bays or gulfs. The African Shield,
sometimes called the Ethiopian Shield, extends eastward to include western
Saudi Arabia and the eastern half of Madagascar.

Off the coasts of Africa a number of islands are associated with the continent.
Of these Madagascar, one of the largest islands in the world, is the most
significant. Other smaller islands include the Seychelles, Socotra, and other
islands to the east; the Comoros, Mauritius, Réunion, and other islands to the
southeast; Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan da Cunha to the southwest; Cape
Verde, the Bijagós Islands, Bioko, and São Tomé and Príncipe to the west; and
the Azores and the Madeira and Canary islands to the northwest.
The continent is cut almost equally in two by the Equator, so that most of
Africa lies within the tropical region, bounded on the north by the Tropic of
Cancer and on the south by the Tropic of Capricorn. Because of the bulge
formed by western Africa, the greater part of Africa's territory lies north of the
Equator. Africa is crossed from north to south by the prime meridian (0°
longitude), which passes a short distance to the east of Accra, Ghana.

The whole of Africa can be considered as a vast plateau rising steeply from
narrow coastal strips and consisting of ancient crystalline rocks. The plateau's
surface is higher in the southeast and tilts downward toward the northeast. In
general the plateau may be divided into a southeastern portion and a
northwestern portion. The northwestern part, which includes the Sahara (desert)
and that part of North Africa known as the Maghrib, has two mountainous
regions—the Atlas Mountains in northwestern Africa, which are believed to be
part of a system that extends into southern Europe, and the Ahaggar (Hoggar)
Mountains in the Sahara. The southeastern part of the plateau includes the
Ethiopian Plateau, the East African Plateau, and—in eastern South Africa,
where the plateau edge falls downward in a scarp—the Drakensberg range.

One of the most remarkable features in the geologic structure of Africa is the
East African Rift System, which lies between 30° and 40° E. The rift itself
begins northeast of the continent's limits and extends southward from the
Ethiopian Red Sea coast to the Zambezi River basin.

Africa contains an enormous wealth of mineral resources, including some of


the world's largest reserves of fossil fuels, metallic ores, and gems and precious
metals. This richness is matched by a great diversity of biological resources
that includes the intensely lush equatorial rainforests of Central Africa and the
world-famous populations of wildlife of the eastern and southern portions of
the continent. Although agriculture (primarily subsistence) still dominates the
economies of most African countries, the exploitation of these resources has
become the most significant economic activity in Africa in the 20th century.

Climatic and other factors have exerted considerable influence on the patterns
of human settlement in Africa. While some areas appear to have been inhabited
more or less continuously since the dawn of humanity, enormous regions—
notably the desert areas of northern and southwestern Africa—have been
largely unoccupied for prolonged periods of time. Thus, although Africa is the
second largest continent, it contains only about 10 percent of the world's
population and can be said to be underpopulated. The greater part of the
continent has long been inhabited by black peoples, but in historic times there
also have occurred major immigrations from both Asia and Europe. Of all
foreign settlements in Africa, that of the Arabs has made the greatest impact.
The Islamic religion, which the Arabs carried with them, spread from North
Africa into many areas south of the Sahara, so that many western African
peoples are now largely Islamized.

A unique late Precambrian evolution is recorded in the so-called Arabian-


Nubian Shield of northeastern Africa and Arabia. There, large volumes of
volcanic and granitoid rocks were generated in an island-arc, marginal-basin
setting—an environment similar to that of the present southwestern Pacific
Ocean. Rocks were accreted onto the ancient African continent, the margin of
which was then near the present Nile River, by subduction processes identical
to those observed today. (Subduction involves the descent of the edge of one
lithospheric plate beneath that of another where two such plates collide.)
The interiors of the ancient cratons were not affected by the above tectonic
events, and intracratonic sedimentary and volcanic sequences accumulated in
large basins. The most important of these are the Transvaal basin on the
Kaapvaal craton that contains economically important iron ore deposits; the
Congo basin; and the West African basin, with its thick late-Proterozoic
sediments including a prominent tillite horizon that marks a major glaciation
event at the end of the Precambrian.

After the Precambrian, Africa's geologic history is characterized by the


following events: the formation of fold belts in the Paleozoic Era (570 to 245
million years ago) in South Africa (the Cape fold belt), Morocco (the Anti-
Atlas belt), and Mauritania (the Mauritanide belt) bordering the older cratons;
voluminous basaltic volcanism some 230 to 200 million years ago in South
Africa, Namibia, and East Africa, known as the Karoo System, that was
probably related to the beginning of the breakup of the Gondwana
supercontinent; the formation of a young mountain belt in northwestern Africa
some 100 to 40 million years ago as a result of collision between the African
and European plates, together with the closure of the ancestral Mediterranean
Sea (the Tethys Sea); and the development of the East African Rift System
during and after the Tertiary Period (i.e., the last 66.4 million years), leading to
the opening of the Red Sea, the northeast drift of the Arabian Plate, and the
fracturing of the ancient crust of Africa along several long rift valleys,
accompanied by extensive volcanism

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