The cliffs of the Batoka Gorge are made up of basalt rock that was laid down 150 million years ago and when this lava cooled and solidified, it contracted – cracking or “faulting” in the area of Victoria Falls. In time this mass of broken rock was covered over with deposits from the Karoo System and later the Kalahari System and so preserved for millions of years.
Five million years ago there was a geological shift caused an uplift in the area of central Botswana. This blocked the course of the Upper Zambezi, which had been flowing south to join with the Limpopo River, and created a paleolake, the remnants of which, today form the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans. When this lake finally overflowed into the Matesi River it quickly carried away the deposits that had been covering the basalt and then began to remove the broken rock one block at a time, from within the fault lines. Basalt is a very dense, hard rock that resists erosion so the River removes it one block at a time rather than a grain at a time, as would happen with a softer rock. This explains why the gorge, and even the face of the waterfall itself, is not a smooth, water worn surface but retains a rough hewn appearance.
The traditional name of the Victoria Falls is Mosi-Oa-Tunya, taken from the Lozi language, means “The Smoke That Thunders”.
There are three different ways to measure a waterfall: by height, by width and by voluma. In terms of height, at 107m, the Victoria Falls does not feature in the top 800 waterfalls around the World, but it is 10th largest by width and 13th largest by volume. Victoria Falls is one of the large waterfalls in the World like Niagara Falls and Iguasu. Niagara Falls is significantly smaller than the other two and although Iguasu is larger, it is a multi-tiered waterfall that is broken into 270 separate falls. It is a subjective opinion, but if you are looking for the highest, widest sheet of continually falling water, then the Main Fall of the Victoria Falls is the largest waterfall in the World.
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