Anyone have any idea what these islands were called before the Europeans got there? According to Wiki there may be some evidence of earlier settlement, and it seems reasonable to suppose that the natives of what is now Argentina would at least have known they were there. Did they give them a name?
I don’t know if there was one. The Patagonia area was very sparsely populated as much as Alaska and northern Canada were before Europeans arrived. The Falklands were uninhabited when the Europeans came. The evidence of an Indian settlement isn’t that strong and had one ever existed, it would have probably been a temporary fishing camp.
I’m not sure this is so, given that the shortest distance you’d have to sail to get there is around 240 miles, in an area where weather is notoriously unfriendly to small boats. I’m not aware of evidence that aboriginal natives of South America had anything like the nautical skill necessary for trips of that length.
Those few pre-european artifacts mentioned in your link could be the result of a single one-way trip - someone blown offshore and lucky enough to fetch upon an island.
Would there have been a land bridge during the last Ice Age?
According to this map, it looks like there was.
Interesting point. Until relatively recently it would have been accepted that humans didn’t reach the area where Argentina is now located until well after the last ice age. But recent evidence (not yet, as I gather, widely endorsed) apparently allows that possibility.
In any case, if humans reached the Falklands by a land bridge, any name the place acquired would have been lost in the time (10,000 years?) since the land bridge disappeared.
Gavin Menzies claims that the Chinese reached the Falklands on their round-the-world voyages in the early 1400s, but looking at my copy of 1421, I don’t see that he mentions a Chinese name for the islands.
It should probably be noted that Gavin Menzies’ theories on the Chinese discovery of America is taken seriously by very few ( and by approximately zero academics I’ve ever heard of in any relevant field I can think of ).
That’s why I said ‘claims’. He does lay out a lot of info in the book, though. What other academics say he’s wrong, and why?
Here’s one critique, but there is a slew more out there if you do some searching. Far as I can tell professional Chinese historians and historical cartographers have remained intensely sceptical of the bulk of Mr. Menzies claims - wikipedia gives a bit of a summation.
Thanks! I’ll give them a read.
The Falkland islands are such an inhospitable place, that i would be amazed to finf any pre-european settlement. And Patagonia (the mainland) is very thinly [populated as well. My question, was the place ever warm and nice? I understand the present day climate is pretty cold and rainy.
The Mesozoic maybe? The Falklands are located at 52 degrees South. For comparison, 52 degrees North will place you at the Aleutian Islands.
Well, I read your first cite, Tamerlane. Bother. I was hoping he had something, but if it’s that inaccurate… sigh
Or, less chillily, south Wales.
Yeah, but Europe has a jet stream that keeps it warmer than the Western Hemisphere and makes Great Britain an almost hospitable place to live.
Don’t you mean the Gulf Stream?