Hill

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  A hill is a landform that rises above the terrain around it. It often carries a distinct summit, a peak that lifts out of the relative landmass without ever reaching the prominence of a mountain. That single word, mountain, is where the trouble begins. There is no clean line that separates the two. The distinction is unclear and largely subjective, and people have argued over the boundary for generations. So what is a hill, exactly, and who gets to decide? Why have armies fought and died for these modest rises? And why would anyone chase a wheel of cheese down one? The answers run from glaciers and downhill creep to seven hills in ancient Rome and a cathedral built on the highest point in a capital city.

• 2. Drawing The Line

  ›

  Geographers once treated mountains as hills greater than 1000 ft above sea level, a tidy figure that hillwalkers promptly ignored. Hillwalkers leaned toward 2000 ft instead, and the Oxford English Dictionary suggests the same 2000 ft limit. Whittow offers yet another marker, writing that "Some authorities regard eminences above 600 m as mountains, those below being referred to as hills." Today the UK and Ireland usually call any summit at least 2,000 ft a mountain, while the UK government's Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 drew its line for open access at 600 m. Some definitions add a topographical prominence requirement, typically 100 ft or 500 ft. In Scotland the rules dissolve in practice. Peaks are called hills no matter their height, as in the Cuillin Hills and the Torridon Hills. In Wales the word has nothing to do with height at all, turning instead on land use and appearance. The United States once set its own threshold at 1000 ft, anything lower being a hill, until the United States Geological Survey concluded the terms have no technical definition in the US. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia drew a stricter circle, defining a hill as an upland with a relative height of up to 200 m.

• 3. A Vocabulary Of Rises

  ›

  A hillock is simply a small hill, but the language of high ground runs far deeper. There is the knoll, and in Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England its variant, the knowe. Artificial hills carry their own technical names, including mound and tumulus. Many of these words began in one region to describe a local form, then spread as geologists adopted them. A brae is the Scots, Ulster, and North of England term for a hillside or the brow of a hill. A drumlin is an elongated whale-shaped hill formed by glacial action, while a butte is an isolated hill with steep sides and a small flat top, shaped by weathering. Central Europe gives the Kuppe, a rounded hill or low mountain. South West England and the Peak District speak of the tor, a rock formation on a hilltop that can name the hill itself. France's Auvergne contributes the puy, a conical volcanic hill, and the Arctic and Antarctica hold the pingo, a mound of earth-covered ice.

• 4. How Hills Are Made

  ›

  Faulting, erosion, and the slow work of ice all build hills out of the wider landscape. Larger landforms such as mountains wear down into them, and glaciers move and deposit sediment that gathers into moraines and drumlins. Sometimes erosion simply exposes solid rock, which then weathers down into a hill of its own. The familiar rounded peak has a quieter cause. Soil and regolith covering a hill drift slowly downward in a process known as downhill creep. That diffusive movement is what smooths a summit into a curve rather than a crag. The next chapter shows what people did once those curves dotted the land.

• 5. Where People Settled

  ›

  Ancient Rome was built on seven hills, a choice that helped shield it from invaders. Settlements rose on high ground for plain reasons: to escape floods near large bodies of water, to gain a defensive view that forced attackers to fight uphill, and to avoid densely forested ground. In the Middle East, some settlements sit on artificial hills made of debris, particularly mudbricks, piled up over many generations. Such a place is known as a tell. Northern Europe scattered ancient monuments across heaps of earth. Some were defensive, like the hillforts of the Iron Age, while others seem to carry hardly any purpose at all. In Britain, many hilltop churches are thought to stand on earlier pagan holy places. The Washington National Cathedral followed that old habit, rising on the highest hill in Washington, D.C. San Francisco shows how hills shape a city long after its founding, steering its fog and inspiring engineering feats now famous as tourist draws, including the cable cars and Lombard Street.

• 6. The High Ground

  ›

  An army that holds the heights gains an elevated view, a firing position, and an enemy forced to charge uphill toward a fort. A hill can also hide a force entirely. Soldiers lie in wait on the crest, use it for cover, and fire on attackers as they broach the top. Conventional military strategy has long demanded possession of the high ground for exactly these reasons. The record of battles reflects it. The Battle of Alesia came in 52 BC, and the first recorded military conflict in Scotland, the Battle of Mons Graupius, in AD 83. The 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill of the American War of Independence was actually fought on Breed's Hill. Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill featured in the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point of the American Civil War. At the Battle of San Juan Hill in the 1898 Spanish-American War, the Americans won control of Santiago de Cuba, but only after heavy casualties inflicted by a much smaller force dug in on the hilltop. The fight for high ground has often been bloody for both sides, as in the 1969 Battle of Hamburger Hill in the Vietnam War, the Battle of Stalingrad and Battle of Peleliu in World War II, and the 1969 Kargil War between India and Pakistan. The Great Wall of China endures as a hilltop fortification, built along ridgelines to defend against invaders from the north, such as the Mongols.

• 7. Climbing For Sport

  ›

  Hillwalking is a British English term for hiking that involves the ascent of hills, set apart from mountaineering because it needs no ropes or technically difficult rock climbing. In Britain the words mountain and hill blur together anyway. The activity thrives in places like the English Peak District and the Scottish Highlands. Many hills appear on lists named after mountaineers, such as the Munros of Scotland and the Wainwrights of England, ranked by relative height or other criteria. Peak bagging, or Munro bagging, turns that into a quest to climb every hill on a chosen list. Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake takes a stranger approach in the West Country of England. Contestants gather at the top, a wheel of cheese is sent rolling down, and they chase it to the bottom. Whoever catches it keeps the cheese as a prize. Cross country running courses borrow hills too, adding diversity and challenge to the route.

• 8. Hills Built By Hand

  ›

  Sophienhöhe in Germany rises 200 m, the tallest of the artificial mounds people have raised. Monte Kaolino in Germany reaches 120 m, and Kvarntorpshögen in Sweden stands at 100 m, matched by England's Mount Manisty at 100 ft. Malminkartanonhuippu in Finland reaches 91 m, while the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor in China is 76 m and Five Sisters Bing in Scotland is 70 m. A cluster of mounds settles near 45 m: Monte Stella in Italy, Blackstrap Ski Hill in Canada, and Jingshan Hill in China. Silbury Hill in England measures 40 m, and Monks Mound in Illinois reaches 30 m. Beyond mounds lies a bolder category, the man-made mountain, represented by the Shanghai Expo Park Mountains at 40 m. From a tell of accumulated mudbrick to a hill engineered for an expo, the high ground keeps being remade by the people who live on it.