The memory of mountains using Geosites. A tool for understanding natural culture and learning Earth Science. A geologic archive in the Mediterranean Puzzle (Calabria)

Salvatore Critelli (*), Gino Mirocle Crisci (*), Rocco Dominici (*), Francesco Muto (*), Antonio Pisciuneri (*) & Fabio Procopio (*)
(*) Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università della Calabria, 87036 Arcavacata di Rende (CS).

"Geological heritage" is the memory of our planet. Landforms and mountains preserve elements that, as such as a book, testify the history of Earth. In the last decades, is growing the idea of preserve not the "wonders of nature" but a system of organic and organised blocks of information revealing the story of the Earth of the life forms that have lived upon in the various regions that have yielded key clues to the fascinating history of its evolution as a planet. Even today this signal resource is still glimpsed through static perceptions–natural monuments, quirks of geological forces and events–that in any event see a given formation as something separate, detached from the surrounding landscape. Geosites include numerous meanings and potentialities that go far beyond such a museological vision, and a natural laboratory for each learning at each level of culture or curiosity. Indeed, it constitutes at once an essential resource for scientific and economic development, a habitat, landscape, an element of geodiversity, a source of knowledge about the Earth's dynamics and past history, the memory of biological evolution and of mainkind's origins and development, and a exceptional laboratory for environmental education. As far as other scientific methods, it is fundamental to develop understanding and bringing geology within the ken of society at large. Any geological subject is an integral part of mankind's common heritage, albeit the object becomes part of our cultural trust only when knowledge of it is shared and it is accesible. An example of the Memory of mountains (the "Calabria Region" , a peace of an "Orogenic Belt" within the core of the Mediterranean Region), is here discussed and illustrated using geosites as a tool for understanding natural culture and learning Earth Science at every level of knowledge.

geosites, Mediterranean region, mountain chains, Calabria