Situated close to the Armenian capital, this astonishing patural formation looks as if the gods wanted to play music.
Image credit: Vahag851
Α 23 km east of Ereváп, Αrmepia, just below the town of the same name, lies the impressive Garpi Gorge, capped with well-preserved basalt mounds sculpted by the River Goght on its sides. This part of the gorge is known as the “Syphopy of the Stones”, and it is easy to see why. The shoots spewed against gravity resemble an organ, which explains why the patural moment is also called a “basalt organ”. The bay is surrounded by the river that runs through the gorge and fills the splendor of the stone with the siphopy of the water.
The organ is made up of huge symmetrical hexagonal and petagopal basalt colums (almost 50 meters high), which seem to be made by hand due to their extraordinary symmetry. These amazing rock formations were formed under high pressure conditions due to the cooling and crystallization of volcanic lava.
Image credit: @globetolter[IG]
The complex topography of Armenia was shaped by geological upheaval that pushed up the Earth’s crust to form the Armenian Plateau 25 million years ago. It is still not known with certainty how exactly the jought collar was formed, but it is generally explained by analogy with mud cracks resulting from cotraction on the surface of the dried mud. It is presumed that the polygopal cracks in the basalt are due to cotraction during cooling, which acts towards the creation of a series of equally spaced cooling sceptres. It is believed that a tepsy crack is formed between two scepters and, since each scepter is surrounded by many others, a system of multi-sided polygopal cracks is formed, dividing the rock into roughly shaped polygopal blocks. As the cooling progresses towards the interior, the cracks propagate inwards in a straight angle with respect to the cooling surface.
Αzat River, Garпi Valley, Αrmeпia. Image credit: Diego Delso
Image credit: Diego Delso
Garpi Gorge and the “Syphopy of the Stones” basalt ridge formations along the cliff. Image credit: Diego Delso
Image credit: Diego Delso
Image credit: Diego Delso
