Galápagos Islands,
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The Galápagos Islands (official name:
Archipiélago de Colón, other
Spanish names:
Islas Galápagos,
Spanish pronunciation: [ɡaˈlapaɣos]) are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed on either side of the
Equator in the
Pacific Ocean, 926 km (
575 mi) west of continental
Ecuador, of which they are a part.
The Galápagos Islands and their surrounding waters form an
Ecuadorian province, a national park, and a biological marine reserve. The principal language on the islands is
Spanish. The islands have a population of slightly over 25,
000.
The islands are famed for their vast number of endemic species and were studied by
Charles Darwin during the voyage of the
Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.
The first recorded visit to the islands happened by chance in 1535, when the
Bishop of
Panamá Fray Tomás de Berlanga went to
Peru to arbitrate in a dispute between
Francisco Pizarro and
Diego de Almagro.
De Berlanga was blown off course, though he eventually returned to the
Spanish Empire and described the conditions of the islands and the animals that inhabited them. The group of islands was shown and named in
Abraham Ortelius's atlas published in 1570. The first crude map of the islands was made in 1684 by the buccaneer
Ambrose Cowley, who named the individual islands after some of his fellow pirates or after
British royalty and noblemen. These names were used in the authoritative navigation charts of the islands prepared during the Beagle survey under captain
Robert Fitzroy, and in
Darwin's popular book
The Voyage of the Beagle. The then new
Republic of Ecuador took the islands from Spanish ownership in 1832, and subsequently gave the islands official Spanish names.The older names remained in use in
English language publications, including
Herman Melville's
The Encantadas of 1854.
History The Galápagos Islands
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European discovery of the Galápagos Islands occurred when
Spaniard Fray Tomás de Berlanga, the fourth Bishop of
Panama, sailed to Peru to settle a dispute between Francisco Pizarro and his lieutenants. De Berlanga's vessel drifted off course when the winds diminished, and his party reached the islands on 10 March 1535. According to a
1952 study by
Thor Heyerdahl and Arne Skjølsvold, remains of potsherds and other artifacts from several sites on the islands suggest visitation by
South American peoples prior to the arrival of the Spanish. However, no remains of graves, ceremonial vessels and constructions have ever been found, suggesting no permanent settlement occurred at the time.
The Galápagos Islands first appeared on the maps, of
Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, in about 1570. The islands were named "Insulae de los Galopegos" (
Islands of the Tortoises) in reference to the giant tortoises found there.
The first
English captain to visit the Galápagos Islands was
Richard Hawkins, in 1593. Until the early
19th century, the archipelago was often used as a hideout by mostly English pirates who pilfered Spanish galleons carrying gold and silver from
South America to
Spain.
In 1793,
James Colnett described the flora and fauna of
Galápagos, and suggested the islands could be used as base for the whalers operating in the Pacific Ocean. He drew the first accurate navigation charts of the islands. Whalers and maritime fur traders killed and captured thousands of the Galápagos tortoises to extract their fat. The tortoises could be kept on board ship as a means of providing of fresh protein, as these animals could survive for several months on board without any food or water. The hunting of the tortoises was responsible for greatly diminishing, and in some cases eliminating, certain species. Along with whalers came the fur-seal hunters, who brought the population of this animal close to extinction.
The first known permanent human resident on
Galapagos was
Patrick Watkins, an
Irish sailor who was marooned on the
Island Floreana from 1807--1809. According to later accounts,[14][15] Watkins managed to survive by hunting, growing vegetables and trading with visiting whalers, before finally stealing an open boat and navigating to
Guayaquil.
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- published: 18 Feb 2014
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