History And Amazing Facts About Caves

By Author: Cody Watson
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History of caves

Caves, ever since coming into existence, have played an important role in the history of life on earth. During the time of the early men, the caves provided shelter and protection to man from the wild. Sometime during the Stone Age period, caves influenced the ritual believes of the people. The inhabitants of Central America firmly believed that the caves were the path to the underworld. So, they felt that any spiritual practice done in the caves would get the attention of their ancestral spirits. True to this, a lot of temples were even designed in the form of caves! And some temples were even built on caves. Their main goal was to make the priests interact with the spirits. The Native Americans of the Northern part of the country believed that caves were sanctified (sacred) places. And caves were popular for any reason too. Majority of the caves had loads of riches in the form of crystals and metals that were exploited by people for over a long period of time. Crystals like Epsomite and Gypsum were extracted from the mammoth caves by people during the primitive age. In the succeeding years, caves served ...
... a variety of purposes. They were being hideouts for early men, dance halls during the time of World War II, mining etc. The Cumberland Caverns in the state of Tennessee consists of a huge dining hall even today. A multitude of parties, receptions, camp-outs still take place in this cave.

Formation and types of caves
What is a cave? A cave is an underground place accompanied with complete darkness. The study and exploration of caves is termed as Speleology. The exploration of natural caves is termed as caving, spelunking or potholing.
Caves are formed or developed due to certain geologic processes like soil erosion, tectonic forces, pressure of the earth, digging and various atmospheric factors. There are different types of caves in the world. Some of them are solutional caves, anchialine caves, primary caves, sea or littoral caves, Glacier caves, talus caves, and fracture caves. Watching channels like Discover and Animal planet using any of the popular cable connections such as the FiOS TV will give you more insight into the physical and geological features of caves.
USA is home to three of the five longest caves in the world. They are the Mammoth cave in Kentucky, Jewel Cave and Wind cave in South Dakota.

Amazing caves in the world
Scroll down and get familiar with the names of some amazing caves in the world.
The Cueva de los Cristales cave in Mexico, that looks like a set of translucent light bars, is regarded as the largest crystal in the world. Each crystal measures as long as 11m.
The Majlis al Jinn cave in Oman with an imposing height of 120-150m is the second biggest cave in the world. The Waitomo Glowworm Cave in New Zealand is largely filled with special types of worms called Arachnocampa luminosa. The specialty of these worms is that they glow so well in the dark. They appear like the dazzling stars in the sky.

Though there are lots of ice caves in the world, none can match the beauty of the ice in the Eisriesenwelt cave present in New Zealand. So, this is considered one of the most amazing caves in the world. The Cueva del Fantasma cave in Venezuela is so dark and scary that it is called as the ‘cave of ghost’. The cave is so big that two helicopters can pass through them and reach the waterfall present besides the cave.The Fantastic Pit, Georgia cave, present in Georgia, USA is another beautiful masterpiece of the nature. The cave is reported to be 586 feet (179 m) deep which makes it one of the deepest caves in the world. People who like to visit adventurous places can visit this beautiful cave.