The Rhenohercynian Zone is in structural geology a fold belt of west and central Europe, formed during the Hercynian orogeny (about 350 to 280 million years ago). The zone consists of folded and thrusted Devonian and early Carboniferous sedimentary rocks that were deposited in a back-arc basin along the southern margin of the then existing paleocontinent Laurussia.
The Rhenohercynian Zone presently forms a narrow zone through western and central Europe, from Cornwall in the west to the Harz mountains of central Germany in the east, including the Rhenish Massif (Ardennes, Taunus, Eifel and Hunsrück). The total length of this basin (the Rhenohercynian Basin) could have been more than 2500 km. In the east the basin merges with the East-Silesian basin of southern Poland. The sedimentary rocks are often weakly metamorphic (greenschist facies). Most geologists consider the South-Portuguese zone to be a continuation of the zone to the west.
If the Rhenohercynian Basin was a continuous feature or rather a string of temporaneously interconnected smaller basins is not well-understood, because in many places the Devonian and Carboniferous rock strata are covered with younger deposits. Parts of the basin have their own names, like the Cornwall basin in Cornwall, the Munster basin in Ireland or the Rhenisch basin in Belgium and Germany.
Read more about Rhenohercynian Zone: Tectonic Structure and Metamorphism, Stratigraphy
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“In the zone of perdition where my youth went as if to complete its education, one would have said that the portents of an imminent collapse of the whole edifice of civilization had made an appointment.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)