World Cordillera System (place)

Jörmungandr exists.

As a counterpoint to the undersea Mid-Ocean Ridge, a vast interconnected system of mountain ranges winds its way around the landmasses of the Earth, forming their backbones.  Branches and tendrils extend to touch every continent on Earth

Some ranges are related to each other geologically, but many ranges in contact are not.  They are lines of volcanoes, the wrinkles formed by different tectonic plates slamming into each other, or both.  The only thing that places them all together here is their interconnectedness.

By no means do I attempt to list all of the mountain ranges of the Earth. Many do not fit into the system, or are sub-ranges of ranges listed here. Neither do I attempt to be consistent in detail.

In system below, lists are numbered if they form parallel branches, and are bulleted if they line up with each other.

Antarctica

• Transantarctic Mountains
• Antarctic Peninsula Mountains

South America

• Andes
• Cordillera Patagonica
• from Bolivia north, there are three main ranges:
1. Cordillera Oriental
2. Cordillera Central
3. Cordillera Occidental
• In Ecuador these merge into Cordillera Real then, in Colombia split apart again;
1. Cordillera Occidental is in contact with Panama
2. Cordillera Oriental feeds into Cordillera de la Costa, then out into the Caribbean Sea Islands

Central America sees a series of low mountain ranges in Panama progressively get higher and higher as one proceeds northward:

• Serranía del Darien
• Serranía de Tabasara
• Cordillera de Talamanca
• Cordillera Central and Cordillera de Guanacaste
• Cordillera Chontaleña
• Cordillera del Merendon
• Sierra Madre

North America

• Sierra Madre splits the Great Cordillera into three branches as it heads northward across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec:
1. a coastal branch,
• Sierra Madre del Sur
2. a branch a little east of that:
• Cordillera Volcanica
• Sierra Madre Occidental
3. a central branch
• Sierra Madre Oriental
• Sacramento Mountains, San Andreas Mountains
• Rocky Mountains
• Sangre de Cristo Mountains
• Front Range, Park Range, San Juan Mountains
• Bighorn Mountains, Abasorka Range
• Wasatch Mountains, Bitterroot Range, Lewis Range
• Columbia Mountains
• Mackenzie Mountains
• Richardson Mountains
• Brooks Range
• Mountains on Baja California
• Sierra de la Giganta
• Sierra de Muelge
• Sierra de San Padre Martir
split into
1. a branch following the West Coast, aptly named:
• Coast Ranges
• Coast Mountains
• Alaska Range feeding the Aleutian Islands
2. a branch farther inland
• Laguna Mountains
• San Gabriel Mountains
• Sierra Nevada
• Cascade Range

Asia

• Anadyr Mountains, where the Ring of Fire branches off, following Korjak Mountains and Sredinnyy Khrebet down Kamchatka into Japan, Taiwan, The Phillipines, and on into Australia and Oceania
• Kolyma Range
• Dzhugdzhur Range
• Stanovoy Range, which branches further
1. a branch passing by Lake Baikal
• Yablovny Range
• Sayan Mountains
• Altai
• Tian Shan
• Alaj Mountains
2. A branch going down into China
• Khingan Mountains
• Taihing Shan
• Qin Ling Shan
• Kunlun Shan.
• Karakoram Mountains. (The Himalaya Mountains branch off here and feed down into Southeast Asia and  Indonesia).
• Pamir Mountains
• Hindu Kush, splitting again through Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran:
1. a northern branch
• Paropamisus
• Hrebet Korpetdag
• Elburz Mountains
• Maly Kavkaz
• North Anatolia Mountains
2. a southern branch
• Toba Kakar Range
• Brahui Range
• Makran Range
1. Qohrud Mountains
2. Zagros Mountains
• Taurus Mountains, the Great Rift Valley branches off and goes down through Israel, Hejaz, Egypt, and into Africa

Europe

• This system is quite complicated in Eastern Europe, forming a branching network of Mountains.
1. The Taurus could be extended through
   • Rhodes, Crete, Peloponessus and up through
   • the Pindus Mountains of Greece
   • Shar Planina and other mountains of Macedonia and Albania
   • Dinaric Alps
2. The North Anatolia Mountains feed:
• Yildiz Mountains
• Rhodope Mountains
• Balkan Mountains
• Transylvanian Alps
• Carpathian Mountains
1. a far northern branch
• Sudeten Mountains
• Erzgebirge
2. Böhmerwald, merging with the Erzgebirge and continuing west as
3. low mountains in southern Germany culminating in the
• Swabian Alps
• Jura
4. the Tauern Mountains, part of
• the Alps, where all the branches merge back together
1. A branch of the Alps feeds down into the Apennines of Italy and into Sicily.
2. further north, several clumps of mountains zigzag down into Spain:
• Massif Central
• Pyrenees
• Cantbrian Mountains
• Iberian Mountains
• Sistema Central
• Sierra Morena
• Sistemas Beticos, ending at Gibraltar

Africa

1. Across the Strait Of Sicily, the Saharan Atlas picks up, the Middle Atlas comes own from Gibraltar, and the Great Cordillera System traditionally ends in southern Morocco, but the Canary Islands are immediately offshore.
2. The African GReat Rift Valley System branches from the Taurus and extends down through Israel into Egypt, extending all the way down East Africa
• Itbay Mountains on the west shore of the Red Sea, and
• Ehtiopian Highlands
• Ndoto Mountains in Kenya, then things branch off.
1. Western Arc
• Rwenzori Mountains,
• Virunga Mountains
• Mitumba Mountains,
• Mahale Mountains
2. Eastern Arc
• Mount Elgon
• Matthews Range
• Aberdare Range (Nyandarua)
• Kilimanjaro
• Pare Mountains
• Usambara Mountains
• Rubeho Mountains
• Uzdungwa Range
• Livingstone Mountains on the shore of Lake Malawi
• Muchinga Mountains,
• Chimanimani Mountains,
• Lebomo Mountains
• finally. the Drakensberg.

The Great Geographical Atlas, Rand McNally, 1989
Oxford World Atlas, 1973
http://www.latinsynergy.org/ was a great help for Central America
individual facts from many, many other Web sites