History
Up until some 180 million years ago South America was part of the
supercontinent known as Gondwanaland, a combined landmass that also included
what is now India, Antarctica and Australia. Then, the continents split and
South America drifted some 4,800 km westwards to its current latitude.
Patagonia was first home to dinosaurs who roamed the region about 230 million
years ago. As a result of their fossil discoveries, Paleontologists have now
concluded that thousands of dinosaurs roamed Patagonia during the Jurassic,
Triassic and Cretaceous periods. Recent dramatic finds include Argentinosarus
huinculensis, the biggest dinosaur to have ever walked the earth, which
measured a tiny 42m in length from head to tail!
View of the Andes
Around 100 million years ago, the Andes began to emerge as a result of tectonic
pressures and volcanic activity. The Andes you see today are the result of a
second period of volcanic activity that took place from 15 million to around 4
million years ago and form a nature frontier between Chile and Argentina. A
seismic fault runs the length of the Andes so quakes and volcanic eruptions are
still a regular feature on both sides of the mountains.
Suddenly, around 4 million years ago, Patagonia became very, very cold. One
theory is that an enormous asteroid hit Patagonia and blocked out the sun,
which caused the dinosaurs to be wiped out. The region then become subject to a
constant cycle of freezing and melting which has shaped the present landscape.
Humans first appeared in Patagonia about 25-40,000 years ago as nomadic hunters
migrated across the frozen Baring Strait from Siberia to Alaska to live on both
sides of the Andes. By the 16th century, when the first Europeans arrived by
sea, there were approximately 400,000 inhabitants in Patagonia.
Ferdinand Magellan
One of the earliest explorers to Patagonia was Ferdinand Magellan, who made
landfall in 1520 and gave Tierra del Fuego its name which means `Land of Fire’
after the thousands of distant fires that the native people lit at night.
Magellan proved there was a western route to Asia from Europe as he charted the
strait that still bears his name.
Straits of Magellan
Later, Francis Drake sailed to Patagonia in 1578 in an attempt to take
possession of any territory he could find south of the Magellan Strait and to
attack spanish treasure ships and ports on the west coast of South America.
Drake and his crew suffered from scurvy, starvation, mutinies and storms, but
he earned himself a knighthood in the process.
By the end of the 17th century, whalers had joined the explorers and navies
discovering Patagonia and until the Panama Canal was built in the early 20th
century, towns like Punta Arenas and Valdivia were important stopover ports for
anyone on a long sea voyage.
Charles Darwin, the naturalist explored Patagonia in the 1830s in search of
fossils, shells and wildlife and from the late 19th century on, Europeans
settled in Patagonia from Britain, Spain, France and Germany bringing foreign
investment and a newly stable economy based on farming with them.
From the late 1870s, Argentina and Chile began to take an interest in the
unpopulated south. In 1881 the two nations signed a treaty which divided Tierra
del Fuego and recognised the natural frontier of the Andes. In 1896,
disagreements flared between Argentina and Chile about the details of the
treaty but these were eventually settled in 1902.
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