#dinarides

[rationalitaet]

[littledetour]

Magic bus to Sarajevo - a little rural town action before a death defying run through the Dinaric Alps. #Bosnia #sarajevo #dinaricalps #Dinarides #bus #magicbus

[iuvencula]

Dinaric Alps

The Dinaric Alps or Dinarides form a mountain chain in Southern Europe, spanning areas of Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo and Slovenia. They extend for 645 kilometres (401 mi) along the coast of the Adriatic Sea (northwest-southeast), from the Julian Alps in the northwest down to the Šar-Korab massif, where the mountain direction changes to north-south. The highest mountain of the Dinaric Alps is Mount Prokletije, located on the border of eastern Montenegro and northern Albania, with the peak called "Lake Crest" at 2,694 metres (8,839 ft).The Dinaric Alps are the fifth most rugged and extensively mountainous area of Europe after the Caucasus Mountains, Alps, Pyrenees and Scandinavian Mountains. They are formed largely of Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary rocks of dolomite,limestone, sand and conglomerates formed by seas and lakes that had once covered the area.During the Alpine earth movements that occurred 50–100 million years ago, immense lateral pressures folded and overthrust the rocks in a great arc around the old rigid block of the northeast. The Dinaric Alps were thrown up in more or less parallel ranges, stretching like necklaces from the Julian Alps as far as the areas of northern Albania and Kosovo, where the mountainous terrain subsides to make way for the waters of Drin and the fields of Kosovo. The Šar and Korab mountains then rise and the mountainous terrain continues southwards to the Pindus of Greece and the mountains of the Peloponneseand Crete, Rhodes to the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey.

Ruins of fortresses dot the mountainous landscape, evidence of centuries of war and the refuge the Dinaric Alps have provided to various armed forces. During the Roman period, the Dinarides provided shelter to the Illyrians resisting Roman conquest of the Balkans, which began with the conquest of the eastern Adriatic coast in the 3rd century BC. Rome conquered the whole of Illyria in 168 BC, but these mountains sheltered Illyrian resistance forces for many years until the area's complete subjugation by 14 AD.  In the 20th century, too, the mountains provided favourable terrain for guerrilla warfare, with Yugoslav Partisans organising one of the most successful Allied resistance movements of World War II. The area remains underpopulated, and forestry and mining remain the chief economic activities in the Dinaric Alps. The people of the Dinaric Alps are on record as being the tallest in the world, with a male average height of 185.6 cm (6 ft 1.1 in) and a female average height of 171.0 cm (5 ft 7.3 in).

[gilsdorf-blog-blog]

light in primeval forest by mk_lynx on Flickr.