Once part of a great mountain arch that united Africa and Europe, these bones of earth are all that remains of that great Betic uprising.
From here to the Alps, the immense orogeny of collision has buckled plate and risen adamant crust.
To the north, the remnants of this mighty earth event still stand in their ancientness.
But here the cordillera has long been erased from the local geography.
Some tens of millions of years ago the mighty Atlantic breached these low mountains in a cataclysmic flood.
Breaking rock and hill it poured into the fertile basin of land that we now call the Mediterranean.
This geologic flotsam recalls that moment of immense alluvion as it reaches its weary limbs into the birthing ocean of a different era.
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Photo courtesy of the author.