Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of the main island, Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, with an area of 48,100 km2, a group of many islands, including Cape Horn and Diego Ramírez Islands. Tierra del Fuego is divided between Chile and Argentina, with the latter controlling the eastern half of the main island and the former the western half plus the islands south of Beagle Channel; the southernmost extent of the archipelago is at about latitude 55 S. The earliest known human settlement in Tierra del Fuego dates to around 8,000 BCE. Europeans first explored the islands during Ferdinand Magellan's expedition of 1520. Settlement by those of European descent and the great displacement of the native populations did not begin until the second half of the 19th century, at the height of the Patagonian sheep farming boom and of the local gold rush. Today, petroleum extraction dominates economic activity in the north of Tierra del Fuego, while tourism and Antarctic logistics are important in the south.
The earliest human settlement occurred around 8,000 BCE. The Yaghan were some of the earliest known humans to settle in Tierra del Fuego. Archeological sites with characteristics of their culture have been found at locations such as Navarino Island; the name Tierra del Fuego was given by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan while sailing for the Spanish Crown in 1520. He believed he was seeing the many fires of the Yaghan, which were visible from the sea, that the "Indians" were waiting in the forests to ambush his armada. In 1525 Francisco de Hoces was the first to speculate that Tierra del Fuego was one or more islands rather than part of what was called Terra Australis. Francis Drake in 1578 and a Dutch East India Company expedition in 1616 learned more about the geography; the latter expedition named Cape Horn. On his first voyage with HMS Beagle in 1830, Robert FitzRoy picked up four native Fuegians, including "Jemmy Button" and brought them to England; the surviving three were taken to London to meet the King and Queen and were, for a time, celebrities.
They returned to Tierra del Fuego in Beagle with FitzRoy and Charles Darwin, who made extensive notes about his visit to the islands. During the second half of the 19th century, the archipelago began to come under Chilean and Argentine influence. Both countries sought to claim the whole archipelago based on de jure Spanish colonial titles. Salesian Catholic missions were established in Dawson Island. Anglican missions were established by British colonists at Keppel Island in the Falklands in 1855 and in 1870 at Ushuaia on the main island, which continued to operate through the 19th century. Thomas Bridges learned the language and compiled a 30,000-word Yaghan grammar and dictionary while he worked at Ushuaia, it was considered an important ethnological work. An 1879 Chilean expedition led by Ramón Serrano Montaner reported large amounts of placer gold in the streams and river beds of Tierra del Fuego; this prompted massive immigration to the main island between 1883 and 1909. Numerous Argentines and Croatians settled in the main island, leading to increased conflicts with native Selk'nam.
Julius Popper, a Romanian explorer, was one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the region. Granted rights by the Argentine government to exploit any gold deposits he found in Tierra del Fuego, Popper has been identified as a central figure in the Selk'nam genocide. Following contact with Europeans, the native Selk'nam and Yaghan populations were reduced by unequal conflict and persecution by settlers, by infectious diseases to which the indigenous people had no immunity, by mass transfer to the Salesian mission of Dawson Island. Despite the missionaries' efforts, many natives died. Today, only a few Selk'nam remain; some of the few remaining Yaghan have settled in Villa Ukika in Navarino Island. Following the signing of the Boundary Treaty of 1881, Tierra del Fuego was divided between Argentina and Chile; the gold rushes of the late 19th century led to the founding of numerous small settlements by immigrants such as the Argentine settlements of Ushuaia and Río Grande and the Chilean settlements of Porvenir and Puerto Toro.
In 1945 a division of Chilean CORFO engaged in oil exploration made a breakthrough discovery of oil in northern Tierra del Fuego. Extraction began in 1949, in 1950 the state created ENAP to deal with oil extraction and prospecting; until 1960, most oil extracted in Chile came from Tierra del Fuego. During the 1940s Chile and Argentina formulated their Antarctic claims; the governments realized the key role of Tierra del Fuego's geographical proximity in backing their claims as well as in supplying their Antarctic bases. In the 1950s, the Chilean military founded Puerto Williams to counter Ushuaia's monopoly as the only settlement in the Beagle Channel, a zone where Argentina disputed the 1881 borders. In the 1960s and 1970s, sovereignty claims by Argentina over Picton and Nueva Islands in Tierra del Fuego led the two countries in December 1978 to the brink of war. In response to the threat of an Argentine invasion, minefields were deployed and bunkers built on the Chilean side in some areas of Tierra del Fuego.
The threat of war caused the Chilean Pin
Second voyage of HMS Beagle
The second voyage of HMS Beagle, from 27 December 1831 to 2 October 1836, was the second survey expedition of HMS Beagle, under captain Robert FitzRoy who had taken over command of the ship on its first voyage after the previous captain committed suicide. FitzRoy had thought of the advantages of having an expert in geology on board, sought a gentleman naturalist to accompany them as a supernumerary; the young graduate Charles Darwin had hoped to see the tropics before becoming a parson, accepted the opportunity. He was influenced by reading Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology during the voyage. By the end of the expedition, Darwin had made his name as a geologist and fossil collector, the publication of his journal which became known as The Voyage of the Beagle gave him wide renown as a writer. Beagle sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, carried out detailed hydrographic surveys around the coasts of the southern part of South America, returning via Tahiti and Australia after having circumnavigated the Earth.
While the expedition was planned to last two years, it lasted five. Darwin spent most of this time exploring on land: three years and three months on land, 18 months at sea. Early in the voyage he decided that he could write a book about geology, he showed a gift for theorising. At Punta Alta he made a major find of gigantic fossils of extinct mammals known from only a few specimens, he ably collected and made detailed observations of plants and animals, with results that shook his belief that species were fixed and provided the basis for ideas which came to him when back in England, led to his theory of evolution by natural selection. The main purpose of the expedition was to conduct a hydrographic survey of the coasts of the southern part of South America; this was a continuation and correction of the work of previous surveys, in order to produce accurate nautical charts showing navigational and sea depth information for the navy and for commerce. An Admiralty memorandum set out the detailed instructions.
The first requirement was to resolve disagreements in the earlier surveys about the longitude of Rio de Janeiro, essential as the base point for meridian distances. The accurate marine chronometers needed to determine longitude had only become affordable since 1800; the ship was to stop at specified points for four-day rating of the chronometers and to check them by astronomical observations: it was essential to take observations at Porto Praya and Fernando de Noronha to calibrate against the previous surveys of Owen and Foster. It was important to survey the extent of the Abrolhos Archipelago reefs, shown incorrectly in Roussin's survey proceed to Rio de Janeiro to decide the exact longitude of Villegagnon Island; the real work of the survey was to commence south of the Río de la Plata, with return trips to Montevideo for supplies. The west coast was to be surveyed as far north as time and resources permitted; the commander would determine his own route west: season permitting, he could survey the Galápagos Islands.
Beagle was to proceed to Point Venus, on to Port Jackson, which were known points to verify the chronometers. No time was to be wasted on elaborate drawings. Continued records of tides and meteorological conditions were required. An additional suggestion was for a geological survey of a circular coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean including its profile and of tidal flows, to investigate the formation of such coral reefs; the previous survey expedition to South America involved HMS Adventure and HMS Beagle under the overall command of the Australian Commander Phillip Parker King. During the survey Beagle's captain, Pringle Stokes, committed suicide and command of the ship was given to the young aristocrat Robert FitzRoy, a nephew of George FitzRoy, 4th Duke of Grafton; when a ship's boat was taken by native Fuegians, FitzRoy took. After their return to Devonport dockyard on 14 October 1830 Captain King retired; the 27-year-old FitzRoy had hopes of commanding a second expedition to continue the South American survey, but when he heard that the Lords of the Admiralty no longer supported this, he grew concerned about how to return the Fuegians, taught English with the idea that they could become missionaries.
He made an agreement with the owner of a small merchant-vessel to take himself and five others back to South America, but a kind uncle heard of this and contacted the Admiralty. Soon afterwards FitzRoy heard that he was to be appointed commander of HMS Chanticleer to go to Tierra del Fuego, but due to her poor condition Beagle was substituted. On 27 June 1831 FitzRoy was commissioned as commander of the voyage, Lieutenants John Clements Wickham and Bartholomew James Sulivan were appointed. Captain Francis Beaufort, the Hydrographer of the Admiralty, was invited to decide on the use that could be made of the voyage to continue the survey, he discussed with FitzRoy plans for a voyage of several years, including a continuation of the trip around the world to establish median distances. Beagle was commissioned on 4 July 1831 under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy, who promptly spared no expense in having Beagle extensively refitted. Beagle was taken into dock for extensive rebuilding and refitting.
As she required a new deck, FitzRoy had the upper deck raised by 8 inches aft and 12 inches forward. The Cherokee-class brig-sloops had the reputation of being
Cape Verde
Cape Verde or Cabo Verde the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country spanning an archipelago of 10 volcanic islands in the central Atlantic Ocean. It forms part of the Macaronesia ecoregion, along with the Azores, Canary Islands and the Savage Isles. In ancient times these islands were referred to as "the Islands of the Blessed" or the "Fortunate Isles". Located 570 kilometres west of the Cape Verde Peninsula off the coast of Northwest Africa, the islands cover a combined area of over 4,000 square kilometres; the Cape Verde archipelago was uninhabited until the 15th century, when Portuguese explorers discovered and colonized the islands, establishing the first European settlement in the tropics. Ideally located for the Atlantic slave trade, the islands grew prosperous throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, attracting merchants and pirates; the end of slavery in the 19th century led to economic emigration. Cape Verde recovered as an important commercial center and stopover for shipping routes.
Incorporated as an overseas department of Portugal in 1951, the islands continued to campaign for independence, peacefully achieved in 1975. Since the early 1990s, Cape Verde has been a stable representative democracy, remains one of the most developed and democratic countries in Africa. Lacking natural resources, its developing economy is service-oriented, with a growing focus on tourism and foreign investment, its population of around 540,000 is of mixed European, Moorish and African heritage, predominantly Roman Catholic, reflecting the legacy of Portuguese rule. A sizeable diaspora community exists across the world outnumbering inhabitants on the islands; the name "Cape Verde" has been used in English for the archipelago and, since independence in 1975, for the country. In 2013, the Cape Verdean government determined that the Portuguese designation Cabo Verde would henceforth be used for official purposes, such as at the United Nations in English contexts. Cape Verde is a member of the African Union.
The name of the country stems on the Senegalese coast. In 1444, Portuguese explorers had named that landmark as Cabo Verde, a few years before they discovered the islands. On 24 October 2013, the country's delegation announced at the United Nations that the official name should no longer be translated into other languages. Instead of "Cape Verde", the designation "Republic of Cabo Verde" is to be used. Before the arrival of Europeans, the Cape Verde Islands were uninhabited; the islands of the Cape Verde archipelago were discovered by Genoese and Portuguese navigators around 1456. According to Portuguese official records, the first discoveries were made by Genoa-born António de Noli, afterwards appointed governor of Cape Verde by Portuguese King Afonso V. Other navigators mentioned as contributing to discoveries in the Cape Verde archipelago are Diogo Gomes, Diogo Dias, Diogo Afonso and the Italian Alvise Cadamosto. In 1462, Portuguese settlers arrived at Santiago and founded a settlement they called Ribeira Grande.
Ribeira Grande was the first permanent European settlement in the tropics. In the 16th century, the archipelago prospered from the Atlantic slave trade. Pirates attacked the Portuguese settlements. Francis Drake, an English privateer, twice sacked the capital Ribeira Grande in 1585 when it was a part of the Iberian Union. After a French attack in 1712, the town declined in importance relative to nearby Praia, which became the capital in 1770. Decline in the slave trade in the 19th century resulted in an economic crisis. Cape Verde's early prosperity vanished. However, the islands' position astride mid-Atlantic shipping lanes made Cape Verde an ideal location for re-supplying ships; because of its excellent harbour, the city of Mindelo, located on the island of São Vicente, became an important commercial centre during the 19th century. Diplomat Edmund Roberts visited Cape Verde in 1832. With few natural resources and inadequate sustainable investment from the Portuguese, the citizens grew discontented with the colonial masters, who refused to provide the local authorities with more autonomy.
In 1951, Portugal changed Cape Verde's status from a colony to an overseas province in an attempt to blunt growing nationalism. In 1956, Amílcar Cabral and a group of fellow Cape Verdeans and Guineans organised the clandestine African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, it demanded improvement in economic and political conditions in Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea and formed the basis of the two nations' independence movement. Moving its headquarters to Conakry, Guinea in 1960, the PAIGC began an armed rebellion against Portugal in 1961. Acts of sabotage grew into a war in Portuguese Guinea that pitted 10,000 Soviet Bloc-supported PAIGC soldiers against 35,000 Portuguese and African troops. By 1972, the PAIGC controlled much of Portuguese Guinea despite the presence of the Portuguese troops, but the organization did not attempt to disrupt Portuguese control in Cape Verde. Portuguese Guinea declared independence in 1973 and was granted de jure independence in 1974. A budding independence movement — led by Amílcar Cabral, assassinated in 1973 — passed on to his half-brother Luís Cabral and culminated in independence for the archipelago in
Santa Fe, Argentina
Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz is the capital city of the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It is situated near the junction of the Paraná and Salado rivers, it lies 15 kilometres from the Hernandarias Subfluvial Tunnel that connects it to the city of Paraná. The city is connected by canal with the port of Colastiné on the Paraná River. Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz has about 391,164 inhabitants as per the 2010 census; the metropolitan area has a population of 653,073, making it the eighth largest in Argentina. The third largest city in Argentina is Rosario located in Santa Fe Province. Rosario has a population of 1.24 million and it is the largest city in Argentina not to be a provincial capital. Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz is linked to Rosario, the largest city in the province, by the Brigadier Estanislao López Highway and by National Route 11, which continues south towards Buenos Aires, it is home to Sauce Viejo Airport with daily direct flights to Rosario and Aeroparque Jorge Newbery in Buenos Aires. Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz was founded by Captain Juan de Garay in the nearby site of Cayastá in 1573.
The site is today a historical park containing the grave of Hernandarias, the first American-born governor in South America. The settlement was moved to the present site in 1653 due to the constant flooding of the Cayastá River; the city became the provincial capital in 1814, when the territory of the province of Santa Fe was separated from the province of Buenos Aires by the National Constituent Assembly, held in the city in 1853. Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz is the commercial and transportation center for a rich agricultural area that produces grain, vegetable oils, meats; the city is the site of the National Technological University – Santa Fe Regional Faculty, Catholic University of Santa Fe, the National University of the Littoral. A suspension bridge was completed in 1924, though severe flooding destroyed it in 1983; the cities location is still not immune to flooding, however. On April 29, 2003, the Salado, which empties into the Paraná near Santa Fe, rose 2 m in a few hours following heavy rainfall, caused a catastrophic flood.
No fewer than 100,000 people had to be evacuated, large sections of the city remained under water more than a week later. That year, the suspension bridge was reopened, in 2008, the city's historic grain silos were converted into the Los Silos Hotel and Casino, San Martín Street was converted to pedestrian use; the city's historical role in the Argentine Constitution led national lawmakers to choose it as the site of Constitutional Conventions in 1949, 1957, 1994. The city has a climate considered as "Humid subtropical" or "Cfa" by Köppen classification. Winters are mild, though minimum temperatures can fall below 0 °C on cold nights during the winter. Summers are hot and humid. During the most extreme heat waves, temperatures have exceeded 45 °C. Temperatures have exceeded 35 °C in every season). Rainfall can be expected throughout the year though summer is the wettest season. Thunderstorms can be intense with frequent lightning, powerful downdraughts and intense precipitation; the lowest record temperature was −7.0 °C on June 13, 1967 while the highest recorded temperature was 45.6 °C on January 25, 1986.
Santa Fe has a lot of important commercial centres, busy cultural life, interesting options in sports and tourism, numerous artistic and musical events, an exciting nightlife. There is important infrastructure for tourism, developed: river side bars and nightclubs, chic restaurants, the improvement of the major highways and a subfluvial tunnel and, combine that with the beauty of the landscape and the various attractions that tourists enjoy make this a popular region to spend holidays. Hunting, excursions, walks by the river, practising water sports on the River Paraná, visiting the Space Observation Centre or the Zoo- Experimental Station of "La Esmeralda" Farm, make the tourist feel amazed and eager to know more about the region. In a nutshell, Santa Fe offers a complete and varied shade of attractions that make one dive into history when visiting monuments, museums or find oneself in the beautiful parks and streams surrounded by wild flora and fauna. Despite of having had four railway stations, nowadays the city Santa Fe is not served by rail transport.
The Mitre Railway station is no longer used since 2007, when defunct company Trenes de Buenos Aires cancelled its services to Santa Fe. The Santa Fe Belgrano and Guadalupe stations had been entered into disuse in 1993 when the railway privatisation in Argentina ceased all the long-distance services in the country. In the 2010s, the local municipality remodelled both stations as Guadalupe would be terminus for a new urban train; the original project was not carried out. On the other hand, the Santa Fe Belgrano station was re-opened as a convention center; the fourth station had been built by French company Province of Santa Fe Railway in 1885. It was replaced by a bus station. Railway stations in the city of Santa Fe are: Notes: 1 No longer active since TBA cancelled its services. 2 Granted in concession to the Municipality of Santa Fe that remodelled it completely. The station re-opened as a convention center. 3 Refurbished in 2011 by the Municipality to be term
Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. While these definitions may seem adequate, when looked at more they represent problematic species concepts. For example, the boundaries between related species become unclear with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, in a ring species. Among organisms that reproduce only asexually, the concept of a reproductive species breaks down, each clone is a microspecies. All species are given a two-part name, a "binomial"; the first part of a binomial is the genus.
The second part is called the specific epithet. For example, Boa constrictor is one of four species of the genus Boa. None of these is satisfactory definitions, but scientists and conservationists need a species definition which allows them to work, regardless of the theoretical difficulties. If species were fixed and distinct from one another, there would be no problem, but evolutionary processes cause species to change continually, to grade into one another. Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed kinds that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped. Charles Darwin's 1859 book The Origin of Species explained how species could arise by natural selection; that understanding was extended in the 20th century through genetics and population ecology. Genetic variability arises from mutations and recombination, while organisms themselves are mobile, leading to geographical isolation and genetic drift with varying selection pressures.
Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal gene transfer. Viruses are a special case, driven by a balance of mutation and selection, can be treated as quasispecies. Biologists and taxonomists have made many attempts to define species, beginning from morphology and moving towards genetics. Early taxonomists such as Linnaeus had no option but to describe what they saw: this was formalised as the typological or morphological species concept. Ernst Mayr emphasised reproductive isolation, but this, like other species concepts, is hard or impossible to test. Biologists have tried to refine Mayr's definition with the recognition and cohesion concepts, among others. Many of the concepts are quite similar or overlap, so they are not easy to count: the biologist R. L. Mayden recorded about 24 concepts, the philosopher of science John Wilkins counted 26. Wilkins further grouped the species concepts into seven basic kinds of concepts: agamospecies for asexual organisms biospecies for reproductively isolated sexual organisms ecospecies based on ecological niches evolutionary species based on lineage genetic species based on gene pool morphospecies based on form or phenotype and taxonomic species, a species as determined by a taxonomist.
A typological species is a group of organisms in which individuals conform to certain fixed properties, so that pre-literate people recognise the same taxon as do modern taxonomists. The clusters of variations or phenotypes within specimens would differentiate the species; this method was used as a "classical" method of determining species, such as with Linnaeus early in evolutionary theory. However, different phenotypes are not different species. Species named in this manner are called morphospecies. In the 1970s, Robert R. Sokal, Theodore J. Crovello and Peter Sneath proposed a variation on this, a phenetic species, defined as a set of organisms with a similar phenotype to each other, but a different phenotype from other sets of organisms, it differs from the morphological species concept in including a numerical measure of distance or similarity to cluster entities based on multivariate comparisons of a reasonably large number of phenotypic traits. A mate-recognition species is a group of sexually reproducing organisms that recognize one another as potential mates.
Expanding on this to allow for post-mating isolation, a cohesion species is the most inclusive population of individuals having the potential for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms. A further development of the recognition concept is provided by the biosemiotic concept of species. In microbiology, genes can move even between distantly related bacteria extending to the whole bacterial domain; as a rule of thumb, microbiologists have assumed that kinds of Bacteria or Archaea with 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences more similar than 97% to each other need to be checked by DNA-DNA hybridisation to decide if they belong to the same species or not. This concept was narrowed in 2006 to a similarity of 98.7%. DNA-DNA hybri
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
The Territory of Cocos Islands is an Australian external territory in the Indian Ocean, comprising a small archipelago midway between Australia and Sri Lanka and closer to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It is in the Southern Hemisphere; the territory's dual name reflects that the islands have been known as either the Cocos Islands or the Keeling Islands. The territory consists of two atolls made up of 27 coral islands, of which only two – West Island and Home Island – are inhabited; the population of around 600 people consists of Cocos Malays, who practise Sunni Islam and speak a dialect of Malay as their first language. The territory is administered by the Australian federal government's Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities, together with Christmas Island forms the Australian Indian Ocean Territories administrative unit. However, the islanders do have a degree of self-government through the local shire council. Many public services – including health and policing – are provided by the state of Western Australia, Western Australian law applies except where the federal government has determined otherwise.
The islands were first discovered in 1609 by William Keeling, but no settlement occurred until the early 19th century. One of the first settlers was a Scottish merchant; the Clunies-Ross family ruled the islands as a private fiefdom for 150 years, with the head of the family recognised as resident magistrate. The British formally annexed the islands in 1857, for the next century they were administered from either Ceylon or Singapore; the territory was transferred to Australia in 1955, although until 1979 all of the island's real estate still belonged to the Clunies-Ross family. The islands have been called the Cocos Islands, the Keeling Islands, the Cocos–Keeling Islands and the Keeling–Cocos Islands. Cocos refers to the abundant coconut trees, while Keeling is William Keeling, who discovered the islands in 1609. John Clunies-Ross, who sailed there in the Borneo in 1825, called the group the Borneo Coral Isles, restricting Keeling to North Keeling, calling South Keeling "the Cocos properly so called".
The form Cocos Islands, attested from 1916, was made official by the Cocos Islands Act 1955. The territory's Malay name is Pulu Kokos. Sign boards on the island feature Malay translations; the Cocos Islands consist of two flat, low-lying coral atolls with an area of 14.2 square kilometres, 26 kilometres of coastline, a highest elevation of 5 metres and thickly covered with coconut palms and other vegetation. The climate is pleasant, moderated by the southeast trade winds for about nine months of the year and with moderate rainfall. Tropical cyclones may occur in the early months of the year. North Keeling Island is an atoll consisting of just one C-shaped island, a nearly closed atoll ring with a small opening into the lagoon, about 50 metres wide, on the east side; the island is uninhabited. The lagoon is about 0.5 square kilometres. North Keeling Island and the surrounding sea to 1.5 km from shore form the Pulu Keeling National Park, established on 12 December 1995. It is home to the only surviving population of the endemic, endangered, Cocos Buff-banded Rail.
South Keeling Islands is an atoll consisting of 24 individual islets forming an incomplete atoll ring, with a total land area of 13.1 square kilometres. Only Home Island and West Island are populated; the Cocos Malays maintain weekend shacks, referred to as pondoks, on most of the larger islands. There are no lakes on either atoll. Fresh water resources are limited to water lenses on the larger islands, underground accumulations of rainwater lying above the seawater; these lenses are accessed through shallow wells. Cocos Islands experiences tropical monsoon climate according to Köppen climate classification as the archipelago lies in the midway between the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn; the archipelago has two distinct precipitation totals between the dry season. The wettest month is April with precipitation total 250.0 millimetres, while the driest month is October with precipitation total 50.9 millimetres. The temperature varies a little as its location away from the Equator; the hottest month is March with average high temperature 29.8 °C, while the coolest month is August with average low temperature 23.6 °C.
In 2010, the population of the islands is estimated at just over 600. The population on the two inhabited islands is split between the ethnic Europeans on West Island and the ethnic Malays on Home Island. A Cocos dialect of Malay and English are the main languages spoken, 80% of Cocos Islanders are Sunni Muslim; the archipelago was discovered in 1609 by Captain William Keeling of the East India Company, on a return voyage from the East Indies. North Keeling was sketched by Ekeberg, a Swedish captain, in 1749, showing the presence of coconut palms, it appears on a 1789 chart produced by British hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple. In 1825, Scottish merchant seaman Captain John Clunies-Ross stopped at the islands on a trip to India, nailing up a Union Jack and planning to ret
Anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humans and human behavior and societies in the past and present. Social anthropology and cultural anthropology study the values of societies. Linguistic anthropology studies. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans. Archaeology, which studies past human cultures through investigation of physical evidence, is thought of as a branch of anthropology in the United States and Canada, while in Europe, it is viewed as a discipline in its own right or grouped under other related disciplines, such as history; the abstract noun anthropology is first attested in reference to history. Its present use first appeared in Renaissance Germany in the works of Otto Casmann, their New Latin anthropologia derived from the combining forms of the Greek words ánthrōpos and lógos. It began to be used in English via French Anthropologie, by the early 18th century. In 1647, the Bartholins, founders of the University of Copenhagen, defined l'anthropologie as follows: Anthropology, to say the science that treats of man, is divided ordinarily and with reason into Anatomy, which considers the body and the parts, Psychology, which speaks of the soul.
Sporadic use of the term for some of the subject matter occurred subsequently, such as the use by Étienne Serres in 1839 to describe the natural history, or paleontology, of man, based on comparative anatomy, the creation of a chair in anthropology and ethnography in 1850 at the National Museum of Natural History by Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau. Various short-lived organizations of anthropologists had been formed; the Société Ethnologique de Paris, the first to use Ethnology, was formed in 1839. Its members were anti-slavery activists; when slavery was abolished in France in 1848 the Société was abandoned. Meanwhile, the Ethnological Society of New York the American Ethnological Society, was founded on its model in 1842, as well as the Ethnological Society of London in 1843, a break-away group of the Aborigines' Protection Society; these anthropologists of the times were liberal, anti-slavery, pro-human-rights activists. They maintained international connections. Anthropology and many other current fields are the intellectual results of the comparative methods developed in the earlier 19th century.
Theorists in such diverse fields as anatomy and Ethnology, making feature-by-feature comparisons of their subject matters, were beginning to suspect that similarities between animals and folkways were the result of processes or laws unknown to them then. For them, the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was the epiphany of everything they had begun to suspect. Darwin himself arrived at his conclusions through comparison of species he had seen in agronomy and in the wild. Darwin and Wallace unveiled evolution in the late 1850s. There was an immediate rush to bring it into the social sciences. Paul Broca in Paris was in the process of breaking away from the Société de biologie to form the first of the explicitly anthropological societies, the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, meeting for the first time in Paris in 1859; when he read Darwin, he became an immediate convert to Transformisme, as the French called evolutionism. His definition now became "the study of the human group, considered as a whole, in its details, in relation to the rest of nature".
Broca, being what today would be called a neurosurgeon, had taken an interest in the pathology of speech. He wanted to localize the difference between man and the other animals, which appeared to reside in speech, he discovered the speech center of the human brain, today called Broca's area after him. His interest was in Biological anthropology, but a German philosopher specializing in psychology, Theodor Waitz, took up the theme of general and social anthropology in his six-volume work, entitled Die Anthropologie der Naturvölker, 1859–1864; the title was soon translated as "The Anthropology of Primitive Peoples". The last two volumes were published posthumously. Waitz defined anthropology as "the science of the nature of man". By nature he meant matter animated by "the Divine breath". Following Broca's lead, Waitz points out that anthropology is a new field, which would gather material from other fields, but would differ from them in the use of comparative anatomy and psychology to differentiate man from "the animals nearest to him".
He stresses. The history of civilization, as well as ethnology, are to be brought into the comparison, it is to be presumed fundamentally that the species, man, is a unity, that "the same laws of thought are applicable to all men". Waitz was influential among the British ethnologists. In 1863 the explorer Richard Francis Burton and the speech therapist James Hunt broke away from the Ethnological Society of London to form the Anthropological Society of London, which henceforward would follow the path of the new anthropology rather than just ethnology, it was the 2nd society dedicated to general anthropology in existence. Representatives from the French Société were present. In his keynote address, printed in the first volume of its new publication, The Anthropological Review, Hunt stressed the work of Waitz, adopting his definitions as a standard. Among the first associates were the young Edward Burnett Tylor, inventor of cultural anthropology, his brother Alfred Tylor, a geologist. Edward had referred to himself as an ethnologist.
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