Шотландия таулары: Грампиан жотасы

Mountain range in Scotland
the mountains in Scotland

The Grampian Mountains (Am Monadh) is one of the three major mountain ranges in Scotland, that together occupy about half of Scotland. The other two ranges are the Northwest Highlands and the Southern Uplands. The Grampian range extends southwest to northeast between the Highland Boundary Fault and the Great Glen. The range includes many of the highest mountains in the British Isles, including Ben Nevis (whose peak contains the highest point in the British Isles at above sea level) and Ben Macdui (whose peak contains second highest at ). A number of rivers and streams rise in the Grampians, including the Tay, Spey, Cowie Water, Burn of Muchalls, Burn of Pheppie, Burn of Elsick, Cairnie Burn, Don, Dee and Esk. The area is generally sparsely populated. There is some ambiguity about the extent of the range, and until the nineteenth century, they were generally considered to be more than one range, which all formed part of the wider Scottish Highlands. This view is still held by many today, and they have no single name in the Scottish Gaelic language or the Doric dialect of Lowland Scots. In both languages, a number of names are used. The name "Grampian" has been used in the titles of organisations covering parts of Scotland north of the Central Belt, including the former local government area of Grampian Region (translated into Scots Gaelic as Roinn a' Mhonaidh), NHS Grampian, and Grampian Television.

The Roman historian Tacitus recorded Mons Graupius as the site of the defeat of the native Caledonians by Gnaeus Julius Agricola c. 83 AD. The actual location of Mons Graupius, literally 'Mount Graupius' (the element 'Graupius' is of unknown meaning), is a matter of dispute among historians, though most favour a location within the Grampian massif, possibly at Raedykes, Megray Hill or Kempstone Hill. The spelling Graupius comes from the Codex Aesinas, a mediaeval copy of Tacitus's Germania believed to be from the mid 9th century. In the Middle Ages, this locale was known as the Mounth, a name still held by a number of geographical features.

Recorded first as Graupius in 83 A. D, the origin of the name Grampians is uncertain. The name Grampians is believed to have first been applied to the mountain range in 1520 by the Scottish historian Hector Boece, perhaps an adaptation of the incorrect Mons Grampius. Thus the range may owe its name to a typesetter's mistake. This introduction appears to suggest that Wyness defines the Grampians as being the range of mountains running from immediately south of Aberdeen westward to Beinn Dearg in the Forest of Atholl. Similarly, Adam Watson, when defining the extent of the Cairngorms, specifically excluded the range south of the River Dee, writing:

The other main hill group is the long chain running from Drumochter in the west almost to the sea just south of Aberdeen. Many maps and books have given its name as 'the Grampians' but although children have to learn this at school, they do not learn it at home and nowhere is it used in local speech. Some map makers have confused the issue by printing 'Grampians' over the Cairngorms and Strath Don hills as well!|Adam Watson

Both Wyness and Watson appear to exclude the Cairngorms from the Grampians, regarding them as a separate range. In effect, Wyness' and Watson's definition of the Grampians is as a synonym for the Mounth. However Robert Gordon, writing in the 1650s, used the term Grampians to refer to hills on either side of the River Dee, and thus explicitly included the Cairngorms within the range. Wyness and Watson both exclude areas west of the Pass of Drumochter from the Grampians, but the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica adopted a wider definition, including the highlands as far as Dunbartonshire in the west.

The Grampian Mountains are chiefly made up of metamorphic and igneous rocks. The mountains are composed of granite, gneiss, marble, schists and quartzite. The Quaternary glaciation (<2.6 Ma) eroded the region significantly, and glacial deposits, such as tills, are largely those of the last Ice Age (< 20 Ka).