Some of these may have been artificial and built by native peoples. Others might be remnants of ancient tsunami and hurricanes, changing sea levels, floods and so on.
The same phenomenon occurs elsewhere. The Netherlands have tiny features they call hills. In East Anglia, the flattest region of England, there are tiny hills. If you look at any pictures of the Gog Magog Hills south of Cambridge, you could walk up them barely breaking a sweat. In fact in some of the pictures, you'd struggle to spot the hills. In Scotland, they wouldn't even be considered a hill range.
No one believes me, but there is a respectable example in Norwich called Kett's Hill. It's not huge, but it has enough of a slope on it to qualify as a hill, and I've walked up it.
I mentioned Birnam Wood in another post, which features in MacBeth. Shakespeare plays fast and loose with Scottish history, but Birnam Wood was a real place. One or two of the old trees are still there, but not much. The area has been reforested a bit within the past two hundred years.
It was spoken in the north of Caithness into the 20th century in Dounreay parish, and previously some other areas just to the west of Thurso. (There is evidence of past Gaelic usage in Dunnet parish, and if "the Caithness Book" is to be believed, even in Stroma, the most northerly part of Caithness.)
Names like Cults outside Aberdeen may refer to forests. Calton Hill in Edinburgh appears to refer to hazel trees. Beith/Beath in placenames may refer to birch trees.
This is without going into the Brythonic names, of which there are many.
kgkglhlpppo•1d ago
Im powering humanity forward