South America

Click a letter for the index

Or search the encyclopaedia:

 

 

Go

 

Click images to enlarge
Fourth largest of the continents, nearly twice as large as Europe (13% of the world's land surface), extending south from Central America.

Area
17,864,000 sq km/6,897,000 sq mi

Largest cities
(population over 3.5 million) Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Santiago, Lima, Belo Horizonte

Features
Lake Titicaca (the world's highest navigable lake); La Paz (highest capital city in the world); Atacama Desert; Inca ruins at Machu Picchu; rivers include the Amazon (world's largest and second longest), Paraná, Madeira, São Francisco, Purús, Paraguay, Orinoco, Araguaia, Negro, Uruguay

Physical
occupying the southern part of the landmass of the Western hemisphere, the South American continent stretches from Point Gallinas on the Caribbean coast of Colombia to Cape Horn at the southern tip of Horn Island, which lies adjacent to Tierra del Fuego; the most southerly point on the mainland is Cape Froward on the Brunswick peninsula, southern Chile; at its maximum width (5,120 km/3,200 mi) the continent stretches from Point Pariñas, Peru, in the extreme west to Point Coqueiros, just north of Recife, Brazil, in the east; five-sixths of the continent lies in the southern hemisphere and two-thirds within the tropics

Population
(2001 est) 350 million. Because of rapid, but now declining, population growth rates, about a third of the population are under 15 years of age. The urban population has increased rapidly since 1950, as millions of poor people left the countryside in the hope of a better standard of living in the cities. By 1998 over 75% of the population was living in cities

Language
Spanish, Portuguese (chief language in Brazil), Dutch (Suriname), French (French Guiana), American Indian languages; Hindi, Javanese, and Chinese spoken by descendants of Asian immigrants to Suriname and Guyana; a variety of Creole dialects spoken by those of African descent

Religion
90–95% Roman Catholic; local animist beliefs among Amerindians; Hindu and Muslim religions predominate among the descendants of Asian immigrants in Suriname and Guyana

South America is a compact land mass and has a fairly regular coastline, except in southern Chile, where sunken valleys have resulted from subsidence that has left mountain peaks as islands. The continent can be divided into the following physical regions: (1) the Andes mountain system, which consists of extensive chains of parallel folded mountains, formed during the subsidence of the bed of the Pacific Ocean; they are new mountains as distinct from the ancient rocks, and contain limestones which were deposited under deep water later than the older sandstones of the eastern highlands; they show signs of crustal movement due to earthquake and volcanic action; the Andes begin as three separate ranges in the north and stretch the whole length of the west coast, approximately 7,200 km/4,500 mi; the highest peak is Cerro Aconcagua, 6,960 m/22,834 ft; the width of the Andes ranges from 40 km/25 mi in Chile to 640 km/400 mi in Bolivia; a narrow coastal belt lies between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean; (2) the uplifted remains of the old continental mass, with interior plains at an elevation of 610–1,520 m/2,000–5,000 ft, which are found in the east and northeast, in the Brazilian Highlands (half the area of Brazil) and Guiana Highlands; (3) the plain of the Orinoco River, which is an alluvial tropical lowland lying between the Venezuelan Andes and the Guiana Highlands; (4) the tropical Amazon Plain, which stretches over 3,200 km/2,000 mi from the eastern foothills of the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean, separating the Brazilian and Guiana highlands; once an inland sea, the Amazon basin was filled with sediment from highland rivers and then uplifted; the Amazon's chief tributaries are the Tocantins, Xingu, Tapajós, Madeira, Purús, Ucayali, Negro, Yapura, Napo, and Morona; it has a huge estuary 80–320 km/50–200 mi wide; (5) the Pampa-Chaco plain of Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia, which occupies a former bay of the Atlantic Ocean that has been filled with sediment brought down from the surrounding highlands; and (6) the Patagonian Plateau in the south, which consists of a series of terraces that rise from the Atlantic Ocean to the foothills of the Andes; glaciation, wind, and rain have dissected these terraces and created rugged land forms; the plateau is traversed by rivers including the Colorado, the Negro, and the Chubut; lakes are formed in some of the valleys by dams of residual moraines left from the ice age.

Climate
The distribution of rainfall in South America is affected by three factors: (1) the areas of high pressure over the South Atlantic and the South Pacific between latitudes 20° and 40°; (2) the tropical continental region of low pressure in the Upper Amazon basin; and (3) the direction of the ocean currents which wash both east and west coasts, together with a cold current that clings to the coast along most of the west coast. The continent's summer rainfall is of a monsoonal type, but differs from that of Asia in that there is no movement outwards of high-pressure air owing to the continent being as a whole warmer than the surrounding seas during all seasons. The warm periodical El Niño, flowing southwards along the western coast of South America and displacing the cold Peru Current, has caused serious climatic effects. In the late 1990s the warm waters of the current caused exceptionally heavy rainfall in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, resulting in floods, mudslides, ruined crops, and polluted water supplies.

Industries
South America is still to a large extent a producer of foodstuffs and raw materials, yielding 44% of the world's coffee (Brazil, Colombia), 22% of its cocoa (Brazil), 35% of its citrus fruit, meat (Argentina, Brazil), soybeans (Argentina, Brazil), cotton (Brazil), and linseed (Argentina); Argentina is the world's second-largest producer of sunflower seed; Brazil is the world's largest producer of bananas, its second-largest producer of tin, and its third-largest producer of manganese, tobacco, and mangoes; Peru is the world's second-largest producer of silver; Chile is the world's largest producer of copper.

The emblem was added to distinguish the flag from that of Italy. The design is based on the French tricolour. The colours are those of the Mexican liberation army. Effective date: 23 November 1968. >>