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Paper Number: 30
Pioneering
geologic mapping in northwestern South America
Aalto,Ken
1Humboldt
State University, Arcata, California, United States
In the late 19th Century regional maps of Nueva Granada
(present-day Colombia, Panama and parts of Venezuela and Ecuador) were
published by Italian geographer Agustín Codazzi (1793–1859) and German
botanist and geologist Hermann Karsten (1817–1908). Codazzi was trained
in military engineering, served under Napoleon, then Bolivar, and
emigrated to Venezuela and Colombia to serve as a government
cartographer and geographer. His Atlas físico y político de la
República de Venezuela (1840) and Resúmen de la geografía de
Venezuela (1844), for which he was awarded the French Légion
d'honneur, and Atlas geográfico e histórico de la Republica de
Colombia (1889) provided geographic, economic, political, cultural
and social commentary with accurate data on elevations, waterways, and
many important geographical, physical and statistical details. He
organized the Comisión Corográfica (1850) that utilized
geographic data to foster national development. However, geologic
mapping and most observations provided in Cardozzi's 1889 atlas were
directly taken from Karsten's Géologie de l'ancienne Colombie
bolivarienne: Vénézuela, Nouvelle-Grenade et Ecuador (1886), as
cited by Manual Paz who edited the atlas following Codazzi's death.
Karsten defined four epochs in Earth history: Primera – without
life – primary crystalline rocks, Segunda – with only marine
life – chiefly sedimentary rocks, Tercera – with terrestrial
quadrapeds and fresh water life forms life – chiefly sedimentary rocks,
and Cuarta – mankind appears, includes diluvial [glacigenic]
and post-diluvial terranes. He noted that Colombia is composed chiefly
of Cretaceous – Quaternary sedimentary formations plus plutonic and
volcanic rocks, and that Earth's internal heat (calor central)
accounted, by escape of inner gases, for volcanism, seismicity and
uplift of mountains. Karsten's regional mapping and interpretation thus
constitutes the primary source and ultimate pioneering geologic
research.
