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Ruwenzori Mountains, Uganda, Great Rift Valley. The mountains formed about three million years ago in the late Pliocene, pushed up by tremendous forces originating deep within the earth’s crust.

A landscape means an area of land as one can see it. This includes landforms, flora, fauna and human elements, for instance human activity or the built environment.

As it means a view such as lighting and weather conditions are part of landscape as well. It may also mean the objects around one in a building.


The landscape is determined mainly by the underlying geology. This can be seen clearly in the East African Great Rift Valley. There almost everything in the landscape is caused by or connected with the pulling apart of Africa which is happening there. Even in Great Britain, a geologically quiet place, the whole landscape can be understood by understanding its geological past.[1]


The word was borrowed as a painters' term from Dutch[2] during the 16th century, when Dutch artists began to become masters of the landscape genre. The Dutch word landschap had earlier meant simply “region, tract of land” but now meant “a picture depicting scenery on land".[3]


  1. Fortey, Richard 1993. The hidden landscape: a journey into the geological past. Pimlico, London. ISBN 0-7126-6040-2
  2. The word landschap, came from land (patch or area that comes from the Basquish word landa meaning labored earth) and the suffix -schap, corresponding to the English suffix "-ship".
  3. The English word landscape was first recorded in 1598. 34 years passed before the word is used of a view or vista of natural scenery. This delay suggests that people were first introduced to landscapes in paintings and then landscapes in real life.