Sand, silt, and mineral particles accumulated in layers over millions of years, compressing under their own weight and cementing together into the sandstones and related rocks that now form the main body of the tepuis.

Here is a critical distinction that is frequently misunderstood in popular descriptions of Roraima: the age of the rocks is not the same as the age of the current landscape.

The sedimentary rocks of the Roraima Supergroup are genuinely among the oldest exposed sedimentary rocks on Earth — roughly 1.7 to 2 billion years old.

That age is real and it is remarkable.

But the specific shape of Roraima as it exists today — the cliff walls, the tabletop summit, the particular configuration of the mountain — is the product of hundreds of millions of years of erosion working on those ancient rocks.