Nuevo Mundo also known as Jatun Mundo Quri Warani (Hispanicized spellings ''Jatun Mundo Khori Huarani, Jatun Mundo Khorihuarani''), is a

stratovolcano A stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, is a typically conical volcano built up by many alternating layers (strata) of hardened lava and tephra. Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes are characterized by a steep profile with ...

lava dome In volcanology, a lava dome is a circular, mound-shaped protrusion resulting from the slow extrusion of viscous lava from a volcano. Dome-building eruptions are common, particularly in convergent plate boundary settings. Around 6% of eruptions ...

and a

lava flow Lava is molten or partially molten rock (magma) that has been expelled from the interior of a terrestrial planet (such as Earth) or a Natural satellite, moon onto its surface. Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a Fissure vent, fractu ...

complex between

Potosí Potosí, known as Villa Imperial de Potosí in the colonial period, is the capital city and a municipality of the Potosí Department, Department of Potosí in Bolivia. It is one of the list of highest cities in the world, highest cities in the wo ...

and

Uyuni Uyuni ( Aymara, ''uyu'' pen (enclosure), yard, cemetery, ''-ni'' a suffix to indicate ownership, "the one that has got a pen", "the one with a pen") is a city in the southwest of Bolivia. Uyuni primarily serves as a gateway for tourists visiting ...

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

, in the

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

rising to a peak at . It is located in the

Potosí Department Potosí (; Southern Quechua, Quechua: ''P'utuqsi''; Aymara language, Aymara: ''Putusi'') is a Departments of Bolivia, department in southwestern Bolivia. Its area is 118,218 km2 and its population is 856,419 (2024 census). The capital is the ...

Antonio Quijarro Province Antonio Quijarro is a province in the central parts of the Bolivian Potosí Department situated at the Salar de Uyuni. Its seat is Uyuni. Location Antonio Quijarro province is one of sixteen provinces in the Potosí Department. It is located bet ...

Tomave Municipality Tomave Municipality is the second municipal section of the Antonio Quijarro Province in the Potosí Department in Bolivia. Its seat is Uyuni. Geography Some of the highest mountains of the municipality are listed below: Subdivision The mu ...

. It lies northeast of the peaks of

, Kuntur Chukuña and Chuqi Warani and south of Sirk'i.

Name

The term "Jatun Mundo Quri Warani" contains

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several Indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, an Indigenous South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language ...

and/or

Aymara Aymara may refer to: Languages and people * Aymaran languages, the second most widespread Andean language ** Aymara language, the main language within that family ** Central Aymara, the other surviving branch of the Aymara(n) family, which today ...

words (''jatun'' "big", ''quri'' "gold", ''warani'' "the one with a scepter" or "

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellati ...

"). ''Mundo'' (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

for "world") is possibly a Hispanicized or a broken word of native origin. As it is an unusually long name it may erroneously be composed of two alternate names, either Jatun Mundo or Quri Warani, as occurred with Pacha Qullu (or Kimsa Misa) which is also sometimes regarded as ''Pacha Kkollu Quimsa Misa''. In 1995, the Bolivian government used the term "Jatun Mundo Quri Warani" to denominate this mountain and not "Nuevo Mundo". Formerly the maps of the Bolivian ''Instituto Geográfico Militar'' (IGM) identified another peak as Nuevo Mundo at southwest of the Lípez volcano () which reaches a height of approximately . This was based on an earlier identification of Nuevo Mundo as one of the twin peaks of Cerro Lipez.

History

The first mountaineering in the area was before 1903, by a Frenchman, Georges Courty, whose notes on a mountain he called "Nuevo Mundo" led to the mysterious entry in the 1987 book ''Mountaineering in the Andes'' by Jill Neate, "Nuevo Mundo, 6020 m, location uncertain." The German geologist Frederic Ahlfeld, an avid mountaineer, moved to Bolivia in 1924. He began exploring the mountains in Potosí Department after World War II, climbing a number of the peaks. In a letter to the historian and mountaineer Evelio Echevarría in 1962, Ahlfeld stated that because of the supposed height of Nuevo Mundo one of the two Lípez peaks might be a possible candidate for Monsieur Courty's mysterious mountain.Brain, Y. (1999) "Climbs and Expeditions: Bolivia" ''American Alpine Journal'' p.323
However, in 1969, in Ahlfeld's book ''Geografia Fisica de Bolivia'', Ahlfeld presented a drawing of a Nuevo Mundo (5438 m.) with its description, and at a location southwest of

and just north of the small village of ''Potoco'', far away from Cerro Lípez – as he previously had supposed. There had been doubts that Ahlfeld's Nuevo Mundo lay in the Lípez area because it did not seem to be congruent to his descriptions according to which the mountain that he had visited was southwest of Potosí and immediately north of a village named ''Potoco''. At the end of the 1990s, Toto Aramayo, Yossi Brain and Dakin Cook undertook the search for Ahlfeld's Nuevo Mundo, and they confirmed it at Latitude:19°47'0"S, Longitude: 66°29'0"W, ''i.e.'' Jatun Mundo Quri Warani. The Bolivian government and the USGS now recognize this as the correct identification of Nuevo Mundo. Some maps still as of 2013 labeled the Lípez volcano ( Cerro Lípez) as Nuevo Mundo.

Geology

The Nuevo Mundo volcanic field is a complex eruption center on the edge of the Los Frailes Plateau with a

which is capped by

cinder cones A cinder cone or scoria cone is a steep, conical landform of loose pyroclastic fragments, such as volcanic ash, clinkers, or scoria that has been built around a volcanic vent. The pyroclastic fragments are formed by explosive eruptions or lav ...

(mostly of ash and pumice). At the base level there are two lava flows (of a viscous dacite) that erupted along a north–south fault. Apparently at the same time there were block-and-ash flows to the east. Later a highly explosive

Plinian eruption Plinian eruptions or Vesuvian eruptions are volcanic eruptions characterized by their similarity to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, which destroyed the ancient Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The eruption was described in a le ...

produced an ash fall that extended over 200 km to the east, as far as

. This eruption was quite recent, the most recent on the plateau, but it predated the arrival of the Spanish in 1533. While earlier eruption centers, such as the Khari Khari caldera, Wila Qullu, Kuntur Nasa, Villacolo, Cerro Wanapa Pampa created the Los Frailes Plateau, Nuevo Mundo overlaid those Los Frailes plateau deposits in the

Holocene The Holocene () is the current geologic time scale, geological epoch, beginning approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene to ...

with huge

ignimbrite Ignimbrite is a type of volcanic rock, consisting of hardened tuff. Ignimbrites form from the deposits of pyroclastic flows, which are a hot suspension of particles and gases flowing rapidly from a volcano, driven by being denser than the surrou ...

deposits, which are mostly

pyroclastic Pyroclast, Pyroclastic or Pyroclastics may refer to: Geology * Pyroclast, or airborne volcanic tephra fragments * Pyroclastic rock, rock fragments produced and ejected by explosive volcanic eruptions * Pyroclastic cone, landform of ejecta fro ...

dacite Dacite () is a volcanic rock formed by rapid solidification of lava that is high in silica and low in alkali metal oxides. It has a fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic texture and is intermediate in composition between andesite and rhyolite. ...

and

andesite Andesite () is a volcanic rock of intermediate composition. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between silica-poor basalt and silica-rich rhyolite. It is fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic in texture, and is composed predomina ...

Surface exposure dating Surface exposure dating is a collection of geochronological techniques for estimating the length of time that a rock has been exposed at or near Earth's surface. Surface exposure dating is used to date glacial advances and retreats, erosion hist ...

has yielded ages of 11,700 years for the northern dome. This took place about 3,000 years after the disappearance of a local

ice cap In glaciology, an ice cap is a mass of ice that covers less than of land area (usually covering a highland area). Larger ice masses covering more than are termed ice sheets. Description By definition, ice caps are not constrained by topogra ...

, and it is possible that the demise of the ice cap unloaded an underlying

magma chamber A magma chamber is a large pool of liquid rock beneath the surface of the Earth. The molten rock, or magma, in such a chamber is less dense than the surrounding country rock, which produces buoyant forces on the magma that tend to drive it u ...

and thus triggered eruptive activity. Lava coulees erupted from Nuevo Mundo lay above

moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris (regolith and Rock (geology), rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a gla ...

s. The last eruption of Nuevo Mundo may have been observed by inhabitants of the

Gran Chaco The Gran Chaco or simply Chaco is a sparsely populated, hot and semiarid lowland tropical dry broadleaf forest natural region of the Río de la Plata basin, divided among eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina, and a portion o ...

, leading to myths about a great darkness and the sky falling.

Notes

External links

* {{Andean volcanoes Volcanoes of Potosí Department Andean Volcanic Belt Stratovolcanoes of Bolivia Lava domes Polygenetic volcanoes Pleistocene stratovolcanoes Pleistocene Bolivia Five-thousanders of the Andes

Name

History

Geology

See also

Notes

External links