A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. Caves form naturally by the weathering of rock and they often extend deep underground. The word "cave" can also refer to much smaller openings such as sea caves, rock shelters, and grottos.
Speleology is the science of exploration and study of all aspects of caves and the environment that surrounds the caves. Exploring a cave for recreation or science may be called caving, potholing, or, in Canada and the United States, spelunking (see caving).
Read more about Cave: Types and Formation, Physical Patterns, Geographic Distribution, Records and Superlatives, Ecology, Archaeological and Cultural Importance, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the word cave:
“We are not cave dwellers anymore, we live in the age of technology. When someone needs a car, he does not need to build it. He can buy it. When someone needs a murder, he himself does not need to kill. He can order it.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Under the one word “house” are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)