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Deccan Plateau
The great volcanic tableland of peninsular India
The Deccan Plateau is the broad, ancient tableland that makes up most of peninsular India, a triangular upland of black volcanic soil and weathered rock covering well over a million square kilometres south of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Tilted gently eastward and flanked by the Western and Eastern Ghats, it is one of the oldest and most stable landmasses on the planet, its name derived from the Sanskrit for south. Across it spread the heartlands of southern and central Indian civilisation.
Much of the northwestern Deccan is built from the Deccan Traps, one of the largest volcanic provinces on Earth - layer upon layer of basalt poured out in colossal eruptions some 66 million years ago, around the time the dinosaurs died out, in an event some scientists link to that extinction. The plateau's elevation generally ranges from a few hundred to a thousand metres, rising toward the steep Western Ghats that wring rain from the monsoon and leave the interior in a relative rain shadow. Its rivers - the Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri - run eastward to the Bay of Bengal.
The rich black soils weathered from its basalt have supported cotton and agriculture for millennia, and the plateau has cradled a succession of powerful states, from the Satavahanas and Chalukyas to the Vijayanagara empire and the Marathas. Its mineral wealth and central position made it long contested. Today the Deccan is home to major cities and a large share of India's people, its ancient rock underpinning a fast-modernising society.