With the beginning of the Upper Carboniferous period the most recent and the eventful era (the Aryan Era) of the Indian Geology came in to being. The main events of this era may be summarised as under :
1. During the Upper Carboniferous period the Himalayan region was occupied by a vast gcosy nclinal sea which was connected to the Pacific Ocean in the east through China and to the Atlantic Ocean in the west through Persia, Asia Minor and present Mediterranean Sea. This sea was called Tethys by the geologists.
2. The area of the Kashmir Himalayas (from Pirpanjal to Hazara in the north-west and Ladakh in the north-east witnessed violent volcanic activity. The Peninsula developed trough faults which attracted fluviatile and lacustrine deposits to form the rocks of the Gondwana system.
3. A phase of mountain building of the Hercynian time commenced in different parts of the globe.
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4. The super continent of Gondwanaland developed fissures and its broken parts started drifting away from each other. India drifted to north to collide with the Asian land mass (Angaraland).
5. There was large scale upheaval of basalt from the earth’s interior to form the Deccan Trap.
6. The Tertiary mountain building phase gave birth to new system of folded mountains, i.e., the Alps, the Rockies, and the Himalayas.
7. The sub-continent of India assumed its present set-up.
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8. The beginning of Ice Age belonging to the Pleistocene Period covering large part of the earth under ice sheet.
9. Evolution and spread of man in different parts of the world.
The rocks of the Aryan era belong to a number of systems of which Gondwana, Upper Carboniferous and Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, Eocene, Oligocene and Miocene, and Pleistocene etc. are important which cover last 300 million years of the earth’s geological history. Rock formations of these systems are preserved in the Peninsula and the Himalayan region (Table 2. V).