Table Mountain : The Oldest Mountain Maybe?

Could Table Mountain, the flat topped mountain that overlooks Cape Town on the southern tip of the African continent, be the oldest mountain in the world ?

Going up the mountain in the cablecar.

Layer on layer of sandstone and granite formed by volcanic and glacial action some 520 million years ago puts Table Mountain at least 6 times older than the Himalayas.

View from Table Mountain over Cape Town.

The early Khoi / San people named the mountain “Hoerikwaggo” which means Mountain of the Sea and towers over the Cape peninsula named Cape of Good Hope by Bartholomew Dias, famed Portuguese explorer who rounded the Cape en route to India.  The first European to land in Table Bay was António de Saldanha. He climbed the mountain in 1503 and named it Taboa do Cabo (Table of the Cape).

The view looking at Lions Head and Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years)

Table Mountain has been named one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.

Dassies are the most common mammal found on the mountain.

A Dassie on Table Mountain.

An estimated 2,285 species of plants are found on Table Mountain, of which a great proportion can be found nowhere else.

A view from Table Mountain over the mountain range known as the Twelve Aspostles on the Atlantic Coast.