Explorations Speaker John Splettstoesser
John Splettstoesser is a geologist with extensive experience in the polar regions, particularly in Antarctica. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota (Bachelors in Geological Engineering), and took graduate studies at the University of Nebraska. He spent eight summers conducting fieldwork in Antarctica, and has been a part-time lecturer on more than 100 cruises on tour ships to Antarctica for more than 20 years. He is an Advisor to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, attending Antarctic Treaty meetings on their behalf, and has also testified on Antarctic legislation in the U.S. House and Senate in Washington, D.C. He has authored more than 175 publications in his field, including five books (edited), and received two polar medals (U.S. and U.S.S.R.) for his work in Antarctica, where he has a glacier and a mountain named for him. He is currently President of the American Polar Society (2003-2006). The first of John Splettstoesser’s lectures will be today in the Queen’s Lounge at 10:45 am entitled Antarctica as a Destination. Be sure not to miss all the exciting lectures he has to offer as well as the other Antarctic based informational sessions that will take place as we visit this isolated and grandiose continent.
January 29, 2006
Early Argentinian History
Little is known of the earliest inhabitants of the region. Only in northwest Argentina was there a native population with a material culture. They were an agricultural people (recalled today by ruins north of Jujuy), but their importance was eclipsed later by the Araucanians from Chile. Europeans probably first arrived in the region in 1502 in the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci. The southern inhabitants at that time primarily hunted and fished, while the northwestern Incas were agricultural and quite advanced, having built a highway before the arrival of the Spanish. The search for a southwest passage to Asia and the East Indies brought Juan Diaz de Solis to the Rio de la Plata in 1516. In 1520 Ferdinand Magellan entered the estuary, and Sebastian Cabot ascended the Parani and Paraguay rivers in 1536. Pedro de Mendoza in 1536 founded the first settlement of the present Buenos Aires, but native attacks forced abandonment of the settlement, and Asuncion became the unquestioned leading city of the Rio de la Plata region. Buenos Aires was refounded in 1580 by Juan de Garay. His son-in-law, Hernando Arias de Saavedra, secured the division of the Rio de la Plata territories, and Buenos Aires achieved a sort of semi-independence under the viceroyalty of Peru in 1617. The mercantilist system, however, severely hampered the commerce of Buenos Aires, and smuggling, especially with Portuguese traders in Brazil, became an accepted profession. While the cities of present west and northwest Argentina grew by supplying the mining towns of the Andes, Buenos Aires was threatened by Portuguese competition. By the 18th century, cattle (which were introduced to the Pampas in the 1550s) roamed wild throughout the Pampas in large herds and were hunted by gauchos for their skins and fat. In 1776 the Spanish government made Buenos Aires a free port and the capital of a viceroyalty that included present Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and (briefly) Bolivia. From this combination grew the idea of a Greater Argentina to include all the Rio de la Plata countries, a dream that was to haunt many Argentine politicians after independence was won.
posted by Hills @ 1:40 PM
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