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Brazil
Factfile |
 Brazil |
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Discovery of the Amazon |
While the Spanish and Portuguese first conquered South America in the 1500s, it remained virtually unexplored until the 1700s when scientists started to examine this varied and rich continent. The French mathematician Charles-Marie de la Condamine (1701-74) went to Ecuador in 1735 to record the size and shape of the Earth (the science of geodesy) by calculating its width at the equator. He was so fascinated and amazed by the wildlife there that he stayed for another 10 years.
At the end of the 18th Century, Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859) a Prussian naturalist and explorer explored much of Central and South America. Humboldt and his friend, the French medical doctor/botanist Aime-Jacques-Alexandre Goujoud Bonpland (1773-1858), explored the coast of Venezuela, the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers, and much of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico (1799-1805).
Alex von Humboldt
On their many expeditions, Humboldt and Bonpland collected plant, animal, and mineral specimens, studied electricity (including discovering the first animal that produced electricity, Electrophorus electricus, the electric eel), did extensive mapping of northern South America, climbed mountains (and set altitude records), observed astronomical phenomena, and performed many scientific observations.
Humboldt also discovered what is now called the Humboldt Current off the west coast of South America, while he was investigating why the interior of Peru was so dry. It is a cold ocean current that runs along much of the western coast of South America, and is also known as the Peru Current.
This period of great scientific discovery, continued 50 years later when the English naturalists Henry Bates (1825) and Alfred Wallace traveled to the Amazon rainforest. When Bates returned to England in 1859, he had over 14,000 specimens with him.
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