The Ural Mountains mark one of the traditional boundaries between Europe from Asia, and represent one of the later acts in the long slow assembly of the supercontinent Pangaea. It built itself up from the disparate pieces that had formed the earlier supercontinent Rodinia that disintegrated into its constituent sub plates some half billion years earlier in the last iteration of the supercontinent (aka Wilson) cycle. Their formation was a long and drawn out process; running from around 300 to 200 million years ago as a continent called Kazakhstania collided with Baltica in a series of slow motion violent tectonic events. Laurussia was the result, and, having also collided with Gondwana brought about the very final act of Pangaea's slow birth. Old continental boundaries like these are known as sutures, and they are very deep features, often marking the weak points where the continents will split again should the mantle convection currents below indicate a change of direction. Some mark places where several oceans have been born, lived, and closed again, obvious examples being the Iapetus Ocean which ran along the line running through Scotland, Scandinavia and the Appalachians and lived between 600 and 400 million years ago, which reopened and finally closed some 280 million years ago, opening again to form the current incarnation, known as the Atlantic. Sutures of various ages are preserved around the world, from old boys such as the Urals to brand new kids on the block like Himalayas.
Kazakhstania was pushed under Baltica, like India is below Asia today. Being weaker and more faulted than Baltica, huge chunks of its crust were snapped apart and stacked one atop the other, folding and faulting, birthing a 3500km long mountain range that remain one of the globe's oldest. For such old mountains, they remain high (peaking at 1895 metres with Mount Narodnaya), having avoided the usual collapse that affects mountain ranges as the pressures of continental collision change to extension as the mountains bounce back. Much of the original range is now overlain by younger sediments. Like many such events a metallogenetic pulse accompanied the collision, whereby many interesting and valuable mineral deposits were generated, including many gemstones like emerald, aquamarine and alexandrite. The origin of the name is lost in the mists of history, but the Turkik for stone belt has been suggested.
In Tsarist Russia they marked the boundary of civilisation and a major source of mineral wealth, and many an expelled exile, forcibly transported serf or zek wrote of their despair and bitter tears when taken eastwards towards Siberia through the range in chains. Modern cities such as Perm and Yekaterinburg were originally founded in the early 1700's CE as ore smelting centres in mining areas. They played their part in the Great Strata Scramble of the mid 19th century, when (mostly British) scientists were divvying up geological time using fossils as markers, and the Permian system was mapped in the Urals in 1841 by Roderick Murchison, as close to the Big Cheese of British Geology as one could get.
