28.05.2025 – Our usual dolphin guests
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29.05.2025 – Dolphin friends
June 5, 2025
Image credit:: https://www.britannica.com/
We all know that the Galapagos Islands were crucial for the development of Darwin’s evolution theory, but they are not the only islands he visited who gave him ideas for that theory. Other islands which shaped that idea are the island of Santiago in the Cape Verde archipelago and some of the islands of the Azores. His impression of those islands are described in his journal.
Generally his journal is a must read for every biologist fans, but in general for everyone who wants to learn something about our world. His almost 5 year long voyage on the HMS Beagle, from the 27th of December 1831 to the second of October 1836, took him one time around the world starting and ending in Plymouth, UK. On this trip he passed trough all of the Macaronesian archipelagos and visited extensively the coast of South America, especially Patagonia. After South America the Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were visited before heading back to the UK. On all of these stops Charles Darwin, the naturalist of the Crew, collected data about the geology and biology of the places. Apart from that he collected fossils from which later many were described by experts in the Uk as new species.
This trip helped to forge Darwins ideas and mind, helping him to understand evolution as we see it today and leading him to publish some years after the trip his most famous book “On the Origins of Species”. But also other concepts like biogeography, the distribution of species and ecosystems in the geographic spaces, but also the concept of the creation of atolls were discussed and forged by the journey.
So if you are biology fan or simply want to know how our understanding of nature was changed by one man, you simply have to read Charles Darwins journal, “The voyage of the Beagle”.
By Horst Schulte
