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Mountains are topographic features caused by erosion after vertical uplift or ‘mountain building’. Mountain building is often confused with ‘orogeny’, which today means the formation of structures in fold belts. The common assumption that folding and mountain building go together is generally untrue. Many mountains occur in unfolded rocks, granites and volcanic rocks, so there is no direct association of folding and mountain building. In those places where mountains are underlain by folded rocks the folding pre-dates planation and uplift. The age of mountains is therefore not the age of the last folding (if any) but the age of vertical uplift. Since mountains are not restricted to folded rocks, lateral compression is not required to explain the uplift.

A compilation of times of uplift of mountains around the world shows that a major phase of tectonic uplift started about 6 Ma, and much uplift occurred in the last 2 Ma. This period is known as the Neotectonic Period. It is a global phenomenon including mountains on passive continental margins, and those in deep continental interiors. Several hypotheses of mountain building have problems with this timing. Some fail by being only able to make mountains out of folded rock at continental margins. Many translate the vertical uplift into lateral compression, but vertical uplift alone can create mountains.

The Neotectonic Period has important implications for geomorphology, climate and global tectonics. In geomorphology it does not fit into conventional theories of geomorphology such as Davisian or King cycles of erosion. Neotectonic uplift might initiate several cycles of erosion, but most planation surfaces are much older than the Neotectonic Period. The increasing relief associated with Neotectonic uplift affected rates of erosion and sedimentation, and also late Cenozoic climate.

The Neotectonic Period does not fit within plate tectonics theory, in which mountains are explained as a result of compression at active margins: mountains in other locations are said to have been caused by the same process but further back in time. This is disproved by the young age of uplift of mountains in intercontinental and passive margin positions. Subduction is supposed to have been continuous for hundreds of millions of years, so fails to explain the world-wide uplifts in just a few million years.

Geomorphologists should be guided by their own findings, and refrain from theory-driven hypotheses of plate collision or landscape evolution.