REVISTA ESPAÑOLA
DE HISTORIA DE LAS CIENCIAS DE LA NATURALEZA
Y DE LA TECNOLOGÍA
SPANISH JOURNAL OF HISTORY OF NATURAL SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY
Historia de la Biología.
Facultad de Biología.
Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
DL: M-34954-1995. ISSN:
1136-2049.
1995. Vol. I. Article Nº 4.
Francisco Pelayo López.
Department of History of Science..
Historical Studies Center. CSIC.
Madrid. SPAIN.
The land connexion between Cuba and the American continent: a paleontologic alternative to the continental drift. (*)
1. Introduction.
The prior decades to the publication of Das Antlitz der Erde (1883-1909), a great Eduard Suess’ (1831-1914) geological synthesis work constituted a very active period by the great number of practical studies on Geology and Paleontology accomplished, as well as the discussions on the theoretical content of both disciplines. The polemics in the geological ideas came determined because, in spite the impact that exercised in the geologists of 19th century the uniformity principle postulate by Charles Lyell (1797-1875) in his Principles of Geology (1830-1833), in the French geology influence area, Spain included, did not abandon fully the catastrophists postulates, defended mainly by Élie de Beaumont (1798-1874).
The 19th century paleontologists, before the publication of the book On the Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), must explain, from the different theoretical creationists interpretations, the appearance of organisms in the fossil record. They accomplished an important effort studying the fossil deposits of different continental areas and comparing the specimens found with the ones existing in Europe. The morphologic similarities between the distant fossil floras and faunas, that permitted to think about an ancient biological continuity between regions located in different continents, were explained, in principle, supposing the existence in the past of intercontinental land connections or ancient continents, as the Atlantis, that they had been submerged in some period more or less distant due to a great geological cataclysm.
It was during this period, 19th century second half, when Spanish and Cuban naturalist and mine engineers discussed in their geological and paleontological works on the problem of the geological constitution of Cuba and its possible ancient connection with the American continent. These studies of paleontology and Cuban geology were arguments to reject the hypothesis that the Antilles could be geological fragments originated by the separation of the African and American continents. In the past, according to this explanation, Cuba, Africa and Europe had been united, but they had been fragmented due to a great geological catastrophe, that had impelled and displaced Cuba westward.
The paleontological tests, based on the found in the island of large vertebrates osseus rests related with the continent fauna, seemed to confirm the existence in previous periods of land bridges that connectted Cuba with some of the close American peninsulas, Florida or the Yucatan, and by those had passed animals and men.
2. Cuba’s drift hypothesis.
The contributions accomplished during the 19th century by the spanish naturalists, geologists and mine engineers, furthermore their practical insular soil works, and their contribution to the development of the history of Earth’s sciences in Cuba, discussed the precedents of a polemic that would be outlined in the first decades of 20th century, after the publication the Alfred Wegener's (1880-1930) work, in connection with the mobility/stability of the continents and oceans on the Earth’s crust.
The question that began the discussion in the 19th century was if Cuba had been part in the past of the American continent, united to Yucatan or Florida, or if, it had been off from Africa due to a catastrophic phenomenon as the universal deluge. This polemic collected the arguments that would discuss more than half century later by whole world geologists: the stabilist -Cuba and the American continent always had occupied the same geographical position, though in the past had been connected by land bridges- and the movilist -it had been drift of continents, because in the origine of time they were found gathered forming an only continental bulk-.
Cuba geographical position, next to the bosom of the gulf of Mexico, whose coasts encass with the great African western projection, converted this island in object of study from approaches as the historical instability of the Earth’s crust and the paleobiogeography the diversity, life distribution and spread in the past. Thus, historical problems such as the geological origin of Cuba, its connection in previous eras with the American continent, the animals and peoples entry in the island, botanical species spread, etc. were discussed.
The polemics on the historical geology of Cuba was started by Fernando Valdés Aguirre (1837-1871), a Havanan Chemistry professor in the La Habana University. He was substitute of Geography and History in 1858, when he accomplished a trip to Paris, where he knew the publication of the work La Création et ses mystères dévoilés (1858) of Antonio Snider-Pellegrini, considered by some authors as a Wegener’s predecessor (1). Valdés Aguirre could prove that the hypothesis of Snider-Pellegrini concided with a previous exposition(2), in which he indicated that in past geological periods the American and African continents had been united and later they had been separated. The island was for both authors a small land bulk portion a product of the continents fragmentation (3).
The two authors, Valdés and Snider-Pellegrini, began with the correspondence that seemed to exist between the coast relief South America and Africa, something that had been observed already by Francis Bacon in the 17th century, but Snider did risk to issue a hypothesis to explain continental drift. In his opinion, after the cataclysms occurred in the fifth day of the biblical Creation, and due to Earth’s crust cooling, the universal deluge had provoked the definitive separation the only one and great land bulk in the globe, whose fragments had derived until constituting the current continents.
In Snider opinion, the great cataclysm of the fifth day of the Creation had been different from the previous. The difference was that the Earth had gone from a nature more or less brandish and doughy, that had permitted a continuous adjustment in its balance and, by so much, that its bulk might have stayed united, to other composition. During this fifth period the Earth was toughened and increased its density. This Earth hardening had been so strong that had crystallized in some points, and, as consequence of such crystallization, finally upon taking place the cataclysm the fifth day, had been broken the crust, appearing crakcs and being separating some parts from the great land bulk (4).
The separation had been expressed in those zones where explosions and steams from the interior of the Earth, had found cracks that facilitated them the way to the exterior. The land bulks that were separated then, and that continued separated, were removed much more in this occasion that in the cataclysm caused by the universal deluge, mainly thanks to the impulse and the potent energy communicated by the numerous volcanoes that were exhaling "the superficial fragments the globe". The distance that the bulks were impelled was underlying the expansive power of such volcanoes (5).
According to Snider, the Earth’s crust, that was formed by an only and huge bulk in the fifth day and the beginning of the sixth only had more or less deep cracks opened by the preceding cataclysms, had experimented in its surface during the universal deluge a violent separation that caused fragmentation in isolated bulks, that, depending on their extension, constituted continents or islands (6).
The separation had supposed a complete change in the surface distribution of land globe. The great and more important crack was located from North to South and was well visible and vast in the fifth day, though it was not preventing the communication between the peoples located on both sides of it. Snider calculated that this crack should be half league deep and that divided the Earth in the indicated direction. With so unstable land structure the separation was unavoidable, the greater weight bulk would remain in its site while the minor would be rejected to considerable distance, so that in this way could be re-established the land balance. The land bulk larger, that were found located to the East of the great fissure, constituted the continents Asia, Africa and Europe, while the partial bulk located to the West, that experienced a shake on its surface, was impelled toward such direction and formed the American continent.
Finally Snider asserted:
"Con el mapa a la vista tenemos la prueba de que la América se separó del antiguo mundo, y de que toda su extensión corresponde perfectamente a la parte oeste de nuestro continente... por las costas de la Europa y del Africa. Si la correspondencia es mas visible a partir del 30º de latitud norte, hasta el cabo de Magallanes, es porque el espacio, o el mar, que separa los dos continentes, está menos sembrado de esas islas diseminadas a causa del cataclismo. Baste notar la parte saliente del Africa, desde el cabo Verde hasta el sur de Liberia: entraría muy bien en el mar de las Antillas y el golfo de Méjico, que han quedado frente a frente en América; esta parte del continente americano ha perdido fragmentos, que son las islas de cabo Verde, las Azores, las Antillas, Haití, Cuba, etc. Al contrario, la parte saliente del Brasil, en América, corresponde al golfo de Guinea en Africa, en el que se acomodaría perfectamente..."(7).
Though in his work Valdés collected these Snider-Pellegrini's geological arguments, he preferred the tests etnological proofs, being centered in the origin of the Cuba indigenous.
Valdés supported that after the great universal cataclysm, in the island existed the same peoples that were inhabiting it before the continents fragmentation. Later, Cuba had remained isolated from the rest of the continent, therefore the communication would have been quite difficult with the means maritime transportation of that era. Furthermore, he thoguht Geology demonstrated that Cuba never had been united to the American continent. Thus, the only one conjecture that could be established in relation with the primitive inhabitants of Cuba and the rest of Antilles, before the cataclysm, with these would be the guanches. In his opinion, this could be proven through the study the mummies of this people found in the Canary Islands and Azores (8).
3. Manuel Fernández de Castro and the Paleontology of Cuban vertebrates.
Though in the works of naturalists as Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), Ramón de La Sagra (1798-1871) and Felipe Poey (1799-1891)(9) there were references to the union of Cuba with the American continent, it can be said that the paleontological data more complete, provided a proof of the close geological relationship between the island and the continent, were due to the Spanish inspector mine engineer Manuel Fernández de Castro (1825-1895).
Between the components Spanish body of mine engineers that had executive charges in Cuba, must be mentioned, in addition to Fernández de Castro, Policarpo Cía (1817-1867) (10), nominated by Royal Order on 11 July 1846 Inspector in the province of Port-au-Prince (11). Both developed a fertile labor in the geological and paleontological fields, as well as the Cuban miner, layed the foundations for the scientific study of these disciplines in the 19th century.
Manuel Fernández de Castro migrateed to Cuba being child. Returned to Spain, he entered in 1841 in Madrid School of Mine Engineers. In 1857 he requested the vacancy of Mines Inspection in Cuba, staying in the island until 1872, and combined his multiple geological and paleontological works with the direction of the Diario de Marina. When he returned to Spain in 1873, during the I Republic, he was appointed Director of the Spain Geological Map Commission. He was elected senator, and reelected four times, by the district of Santa Clara (Cuba), participating in the law of abolition of slavery, mining taxation, etc. (12).
In his paleontological works De la existencia de grandes mamíferos fósiles en la Isla de Cuba (13) and Paleontología. El Myomorphus cubensis, nuevo subgénero de Megalonix (14), in which Fernández de Castro provided his principal arguments about the geological connection of Cuba with the American continent.
In the first cited paleontological reports readed in the Sciences Academy of La Habana, Fernández de Castro exposed that Cuba had formed part of American continent in a geological period not very distant, in the more recent terciary or the beginning of quaternary, while the previous era had been practically all covered by the sea. The fundamental proof that in his opinion demonstrated the ancient union of the island to the continent was the existence in Cuba of large mammal fossils (15). To support his arguments Fernández de Castro presented to various scientific institution vertebrates fossils: molar teeth of equine, hippopotamus tusks and jaw of a third mammal gender, whose determination was so much polemics.
When he disccused on the horse fossils and their existence in pasts geological eras in Europe and America, Fernández de Castro show himself supporter catastrophist explanation when he approached the topic the extinction of several species of equines, indicating that these had disappeared from the European continent in some of the last geological revolutions that had affected to the land globe, and that thereinafter, in the current era, they had been replaced by new species arrived from Asia. Also in America, Fernández de Castro said, had existed horses before or during the flood era, as Richard Owen (1804-1892), Joseph Leidy (1823-1891), Peter Wilhelm Lund (1801- 1880) and Charles Darwin (1809-1882), who had described several extinguished species American equine, had indicated (16). Darwin had introduced a species of the most American southern region continent, that was considering contemporary the Megatherium, and Fernández de Castro emphasized that fossils found in Cuba were belonging to this same kind of Equus. This implied in his opinion, that island central part lands, where it had been accomplished the discovery, were contemporary of the Pampass of Brazil, Buenos Aires and Paraguay clayey deposits, belonging to the terciary period more modern, that were corresponding to those which it had been found the fossil Megatherium (17).
More interesting seemed to Fernández de Castro the fossil hippopotamus teeth found in several places on the island. In addition to characterizing the modern terciary lands and confirming that the Antilles had formed part in recent era of the American continent, these rests enriching the American pre-flood fossil fauna, because in François J. Pictet (1809-1872) and James D. Dana (1813-1895) works were not appearing hippopotamus rests in the terciary and quaternary lands of America (18).
The third fossil type was a mammal jaw that in a principle was identified by the Cuban naturalist Felipe Poey as own to order of rodent. Poey presented the finding in the La Habana Sciences Academy in 1861, and commented that have consulted the paleontological books of Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Pictet, but he had not been able to determine the animal genera to which had belonged the jaw (19).
Poey sent a note with a fossil drawing to the American paleontologist Joseph Leidy, specialist in American vertebrate fossils. Leidy, after studying the drawing, suggested that the jaw was not seeming to belong to a rodent but rather were resembled to a Edentata and possibly it would be a species of the genera Megalonix, family Megathriums. Poey, after accepting the Leidy observations, consulted to prove the determination the works of Pictet and Henri Paul Gervais (1816-1879) and arrived to the conclusion that the fossil was belonging certainly to the order of the Edentata but not to the family proposed by Leidy but to the Tardigrada or sloth, probably to the genera Bradypus or to other close (20).
Fernández de Castro attempted to seek a middle point between the classification of Poey and Leidy and proposed to form a new family, intermediate between the Megatheriums and Tardigrada, since he was observing that the Cuban fossil was gathering characters of both groups (21).
In any case, more than the taxonomic interest Fernández de Castro insisted on the presence in Cuba of three mammals groups fossil , considered it the palpable proof for the fact that the lands of the island had formed part, in times not very remote, of the American continent. The question for him was very clear: such mammals fossil only had been able to arrive to the island by their own foot or dragged by large current of water. But this second explanation was not valid because the bony rests were not presenting marks of have been rolled and affected by the waters, but on the contrary, preserved its corners and edges in perfect state, unequivocal sign that they had not suffered mechanical alteration (22). Fernández de Castro ended this first paleontological report asserting:
"Es, pues, un hecho incontestable que el territorio de Cuba formó parte del continente cuando en él se encuentran perfectamente conservados los restos de hipopótamos, caballos y edentes contemporáneos del Megaterio, que según unos vivieron en la última época de los terrenos terciarios, y segun otros en la cuaternaria ó postpliocena" (23).
The interest by the rests of the Cuban fossil Edentata surpassed the insular border limits. Thus, Leidy did not satisfied with the rapid and superficial identification requested by Poey’s note, studied more in-depth the fossil, and propossed the denomination Megalocnus rodens (24).
Other paleontologist that studied the fossil jaw was the French Auguste Pomel (1821-1898), mines engineer destined in Algeria an specialist in north-african vertebrate fossils. Pomel discussed the fossil belonging the Edentata and Cuban hippopotamus in two notes presented in the Académie des Sciences of Paris, and proposed for the first the name of Myomorphus cubensis, subgenera of the Megalonyx (25).
In his first note, Pomel seemed to accept the paleontological evidence presented by Fernández de Castro, concluding that the presence a great fossil Edentata in Cuba makes to think that the quaternary fauna of the Antilles had been in relationship to that of American continent (26). However, in the second he modified his opinion, expressing that Fernández de Castro was:
"aún más afirmativo que nosotros en cuanto a la antigua unión de Cuba con el continente americano; pero se apoya en la existencia en aquella época de otros dos animales: Caballo e Hippopótamo, cuya presencia en Cuba, si se confirmase conduciría a otras consecuencias, por lo menos en cuanto se refiere a este último animal. No obstante, sin averiguar cómo han podido introducirse en la isla los ejemplares en que se apoya esta conclusión, se puede casi asegurar, por el simple examen de uno de ellos, que provienen del Hippopótamo que vive en Africa y que no son fósiles" (27).
This last Pomel affirmation was rejected by Fernández de Castro; he supported, between other arguments, that he had consulted the works of Cuvier and Pictet to determine the hippopotamus fangs and had identified it as belonging to the species major of Cuvier. Furthermore, he said, osteology specialists so important as Henri Ducrotay de Blainville (1777-1850) had supported that there were not large morphological differences between the Hippopotamus major and the living species (28).
Finally, Fernández de Castro provided as proof for the ancient Cuban mammals fauna related with that of American continent the rests a Mastodon, that were studied by the Paleontology teacher of the Madrid Mines School Justo Egozcue y Cía (1833-1900) (29). Though later Fernández de Castro would send a rectification note, because the rests proceed from Honduras, he said:
"En vista de todo lo que precede no vacilo en repetir que el Mastodon , como el Hippopotamus, como el Myomorphus cubensis han habitado la Isla de Cuba, cuando ésta, en períodos anteriores al actual, estuvo unida al continente americano" (30).
In spite of the different generic determination the Edentata fossil that they had effected, Leidy and Pomel, agreed to indicate that the jaw had belonged to an mammals order, whose representative only was found in fossil state in America. Fernández de Castro outlined then the close relationship of the Cuban fossil with the American fauna, that with the paleontological data that moment seemed be autochthonous of the New Continent.
This idea was developed by Fernández de Castro in the IV Congress of Americanist celebrated in 1881 in Madrid: In it, one of the order the day topics, that had been decided in the previous congress in Brussels, was ¿Puede deducirse de la historia y del estudio de los fenómenos geológicos que ofrece la isla de Cuba que ésta haya estado unida o no al continente de América en los tiempos precolombinos?.
The problem of the possible union between Cuba and the American continent was approached by Fernández de Castro with the data that already had exposed, provided by the Paleontology (31). He asserted that Cuba had been united to the continent
"fuera por una lengua de tierra completamente seca, ya por una restinga que permitió el paso de animales que no viven en el agua salada, ni tienen costumbres de hacer nadando travesías marítimas" (32)
. To him, the best proof of such union was the finding of large mammal fossils, as the Myomorphus cubensis, Edentata family, autochthonous of the American continent, and that only were found in this geographical area.
4. For a American Cuba: the unionists thesis of Miguel Rodríguez Ferrer.
The ancient union of Cuba with the American continent was, also, defended with passion in the same Congress of Americanist by the Spanish naturalist Miguel Rodríguez Ferrer (1815-1889), who from years before defended this proposal, was categorically opposed to the interpretation of Valdés and Snider. From Lebrija (Sevilla), Rodríguez Ferrer had studied Law and Theology, and was appointed substitute teacher in the University of Sevilla. Thereinafter he was assistant of the reserve of the Estado Mayor del Ejército in Andalucía during 1838, correcting of Vizcaya in 1841 and political chief of the Álava province in 1843 (33). That same year was commissioner by the Spanish government to travel and study the island of Cuba, in whose labor was interested fundamentally by archaeologic and anthropologic problems (34). His principal work in this sense was Naturaleza y civilización de la grandiosa isla de Cuba (Madrid, 1876) (35), in the one which he collected a series of articles on this topic that there were published previously in the Revista de España in 1871 (36). His thesis was that Cuba had been united in the past to the American continent, presenting to support his arguments historical, geological, paleontological, anthropologic and archaeologic data.
Rodríguez Ferrer criticized in his work to Valdés and Snider-Pellegrini, emphasizing the correspondence between projecting and incoming the coasts of Africa and South America; he did not fix in the geographical differences, as the different direction of the two continent axis, that were indicated by Humboldt. Furthermore, had expressed that the Earth had not been formed by a sudden manner, as seemed to think Snider, but by the continuous underground forces action, that they had provoked raisings and successive collapses, being complemented this action with the small isolated continents agglutination, until constituting the current figure of the land surface (37).
Other important objection to the African hypothesis of Valdés and Snider, according to Rodríguez Ferrer, was based on the tectonic studies effected by Élie de Beaumont, who in his works about the Europe mountain ranges direction and its correspondence with those of other continents, did not find any that agreed with the direction of the Cuban mountainous systems (38). This observation, Rodríguez Ferrer said, was confirmed by the geological studies accomplished in Sierra Maestra by Policarpo Cía. When comparing the island geology with that of American continent, Ferrer found support in the work of Cía. This, applying the tectonic study method of Élie de Beaumont, based on the existing relationship between mountains system direction and the era of its raising, and based on the parallelism between the direction of the geological lands of the center of the island and the prolongation of the Andean chain to its step by Central America, thought that Cuba, together with the rest of the archipelago and several continental nearby areas, had emerged at the same time that the great Central American territory, concretely, during the terciary era, when had taken place the raising of the mountain chains of the Andes (39).
For Rodríguez Ferrer, the West Indian archipelago, after its emersion in the Terciary era, had formed one of those partial continents mentioned by Humboldt, in the one which the island of Cuba had constituted the nucleus. This region, he said, had been united to the American continent and had been fragmented and covered by the waters in some of the geological catastrophes that had destroyed the Earth’s crust (40). He attributted, forward, to a flood cataclysm, that had provoked a great oceanic flood by the north part of the island, the fragmentation of all that region, constituted by Cuba, the peninsulas of Yucatan and Florida, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, together with the rest of the archipelago, being the submarine ramifications formed by the sand banks and reefs surrounding the island the marks of its ancient union to the continent (41).
Other proofs of the flood catastrophe that had deluged the island of Cuba were, in Rodríguez Ferrer opinion, the injured profile of the north coast, indicium of the violent sea effects, and the red clay lands, sand and rolled stones, characteristic signs of the flood action, whose tradition had been preserved between different American peoples (42).
Based on these geological data, Rodríguez Ferrer thought that he had enough proofs to rebut the Valdés thesis, supported by Snider, on the fact that Cuba never had been united to the American continent. Furthermore, he said, the other argument used by Valdés to prove that Cuba had been united to Africa was that its primitive inhabitants had been the guanches, proposition based on the supposed that the Azores and the Antilles were detached parts of a great primitive continent and that in Canarias there was mummies of the people guanche, whose rests could be found in the northafrican Atlas. However, Rodríguez Ferrer said, in Cuba never had been found guanches mummies and though it might have been found, this would not prove an affinity of the island with the Canarias and Africa, because some mummies that they had been discovered in the American continent had similar forms to the guanches ones, while other were similar to those of the Sandwich islands and Fidji in Oceania. The mummies found in America proved that the primitive inhabitants of this continent proceed of Asia. Both continents, he said, had been connected in the past, well from the Japan, through the Kuriles islands, or from China (43).
Between the proofs in favor of the Cuba union to the American continent, Rodríguez Ferrer exposed also the paleontological data provided by Manuel Fernández de Castro.
Rodríguez Ferrer insisted on his previous arguments about the union, in the past times, in the previously cited IV Congress of Americanist. In his report La isla de Cuba estuvo unida un día al continente americano (44), he emphasized the historical data found in the works of 16th-18th century writers, mentioning between other to F. López de Gómara (1511-1562) and F. J. Clavijero (1731-1787). While the first, Rodríguez Ferrer said, had assured that the Atlantis of Plato was the New World, Clavijero had indicated in his Historia antigua de México (1780) that Cuba had to have been united in the past to Florida and Yucatan.
Furthermore, Rodríguez Ferrer expressed that not even could be considered to Snider-Pellegrini the forerunner of the idea of America and Africa had been united in the past, because it had been supported by the Asturian historian Pedro Canel Acevedo (1763-1839). In his opinion, this author had written in 1818 Descubrimiento de la antigua Navia, manuscript preserved in the Academia de la Historia, in the one which Canel developed a theory on the ancient union of Africa and America, the pre-flood men and the catastrophe that separated them.
5. The union of Cuba to the American continent in the century change.
The discussion about the geological constitution of Cuba and its possible American continent connections, would continue in the last years of the 19 th century and first of the 20th, with the participation of the medicine doctors Pedro Valdés y Ragués (1848-?), Zoology and Mineralogy professor in the University of La Habana and Francisco Vidal y Careta (1860-1923) (45), professor Stratigraphic Paleontologu in the University of La Habana and, later, of Paleontology and Dynamic Geology in Madrid, as well as the argentine paleontologist Florentino Ameghino (1854-1911).
The geological formation of the island of Cuba was the regulatory work that must present Valdés y Ragués in 1889 to aspire to the doctor degree in natural sciences by the University of La Habana. Some years after, in 1896, read in the Academia de Ciencias Médicas, Físicas y Naturales de La Habana a report with the same title (46). The first conclusions of his work was that could not be assured the Atlantis existence, of a continent in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. The data of the naturalist P.M. Duncan (1821-1891), that had found similarities between the coral of the islands of the Antilles and those of Mediterranean, seemed to confirm the existence of at least a series of islands that were communicating the two continents through Atlantic. At any rate, Valdés y Ragués thought that the union between the Asian and American continents by the Bering strait had been more probable than that of America with Africa and Europe, as Valdés Aguirre and Snider proposed. This was linked with his second conclusion, Cuba had formed part during the miocene superior of the American continent (47). He supported this affirmation in the paleontologic, herpetologic and malacological data supplied by Fernández de Castro and Poey.
The most commendable hypothesis of Cuba origin was, according to Valdés y Ragués, that the island, submerged with part of the American continent under the ocean, had emerged united to the mainland. In the terciary era had been fragmented the union by earthquakes, volcanoes and the action of waters, being fractioned in small islands, such as Humboldt said, that to be agglutinated constituted the West Indian archipelago (48).
The discussion about the union of Cuba to the continent reached a new dimension with the introduction of paleoanthropologic data and the participation of the paleontologist F. Ameghino. When Luis Montané (1849-1936), that would be Anthropology professor in the University of La Habana, found a series of human crania in an exploration by the mountainous central region of the island, in Lomas de Banao, in the cavern Boca de Purial of Sancti Spiritus (49), Ameghino determined the rests as belonging to an extinguished species of man, designated it Homo cubensis. This new fossil man was framed perfectly in his theory on the american origine of the man. The Homo cubensis was a detached branch of the human trunk that departing from the South American continent had penetrated in Cuba. The fossil mammals existence in Cuba and in small islands of the Antilles, that were forming part of the fauna of Edentata and rodents characteristic of South America, was demonstrating, according to Ameghino, that in a past geological era the Antilles had constituted a continuous land, that was forming a prolongation northward of South America. During the last third of the Miocene and the Pliocene, the South American mammals and men penetrated in the Antilles. The same as the fossil mammals fauna, the Homo cubensis had been extinguished, "exterminado por invasores más recientes llegados allí por mar procedentes de las tierras más vecinas de Norte y Sudamérica"(50).
These scientific works of the 20th century first decade put in manifesto the importance that the paleontologic data had to emphasize the ownership of Cuba to the american geohistoric and etnologic area. At any case, it must be indicate that the previous and subsequent years to 1898, date of the Cuban independence, the problem of the geological past of Cuba had a repercussion that transcended it the paleontological range, because the land connection to the American continent permited be used as a scientific factor to prove the American identity of Cuba, in some years in which was in full summit the nationalistic discussion.
Notes.
* This work is framed in the Project financed by the DGICYT PB94-0060
1. About the work of A. Snider-Pellegrini and of the precedents of the theory of continental drift can deal: Acerca de la obra de A. Snider-Pellegrini y de los antecedentes de la teoría de la deriva de los continentes puede verse: A. Robb "Anticipation of Wegener's Hypothesis". Nature, 126, (1930), pág. 841; A. V. Carozzi, "A propos de l'origine de la théorie des derives continentales: Francis Bacon (1620), François Placet (1668), A. von Humboldt (1801) et A. Snider (1858)". Comptes Rendus, Societé de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle de Genève, 4 (1969), p. 171-179; A. V. Carozzi, "New Historical data on the Origin of the Theory of Continental Drift". Geological Society of America Bulletin, 81 (1970), p. 283-286 y N.A. Rupke, "Continental Drift before 1900". Nature, 227 (1970), p. 349-350.
2. Valdés Aguirre had outlined the topic in "¿Los dos continentes estarían unidos antiguamente por Africa y América?" published by La Floresta Cubana in 1856.
3. Apuntes para la historia de Cuba primitiva. (Paris, Imp. E. Thunot, 1859), p. 23-37.
4. Ibidem, p. 25. 5. Ibidem, p. 26.
6. Ibidem, p. 27.
7. Ibidem, p. 28.
8. Ibidem, p. 36-37.
9. On the history of the Geology, Paleontology and Mining of Cuba see: A. García González, A. Rangel Rivero, Apuntes para la historia de la geología, la minería y la espeleología en Cuba. (La Habana, CEHOC, 1987).
10. Cfr. E. Maffei. y R. Rúa Figueroa, Apuntes para una biblioteca española de libros, folletos y artículos, impresos y manuscritos, relativos al conocimiento y explotación de las riquezas minerales... (Madrid, Imp. J. M. Lapuente, 1871), I, p. 149-151 and J. M. López Azcona "Mineros destacados del Siglo XIX: Policarpo Cía y Francés (1817-1867)". Boletín Geológico y Minero, XCVIII, (II), (1987), p. 256-259. Between the activities of Cía in Cuba López Azcona mentions his participation in the Commission for drafting the mining ordinances of the island, the study of the development of copper in Santiago de Cuba and of gold in Holguín, as well as the delineation of the geological map of the island.
11. The geological work of P. Cía on the island of Cuba is considered in "Observaciones geológicas de una gran parte de la isla de Cuba, por el ingeniero de minas don Policarpo Cía" Revista Minera, t. V, (1854), p. 365-381, 393-405, 419-426 y 451-460.
12. The biography and bibliography of M. Fernández de Castro can be consulted in: G. Puig y Larraz, "Noticia biográfica del Excmo. é Ilmo. Sr. D. Manuel Fernández de Castro Suero". Actas de la Sociedad Española de Historia Natural, XXIV, (1895) p. 110-128 y J. M. López Azcona, "Mineros destacados del siglo XIX: Manuel Fernández de Castro (1825-1895)". Boletín del Instituto Geológico y Minero, t. XCIX-V, (1988), p. 809-836.
13. This first report was published, after its reading in the meeting on 10 July 1864 in the Academia de Ciencias Médicas, Físicas y Naturales of La Habana, in the I volume, August, of the Anales of this scientific institution, from where was made an issue apart. Thereinafter it would appear in the Revista Minera, t. XVI, 1865, p. 161-178 and 193-199. A second part of this work, with the same title, would be published in Madrid, Printed of J.M. Lapuente, 1871.
14. This report was firstly published in the Anales de la Real Academia de Ciencias de La Habana, t. VII, 1870, being reproduced in the Revista Minera, t. XXII, 1871, p. 165-178 and 190-205, including the articles "Colmillos de Hipopótamo en la isla de Cuba" and "Restos de Mastodon en Cuba". Thereinafter, Fernández de Castro continued being interested by the Cuban paleontology and would publish "Diente de Placoide fósil de la isla de Cuba, que parece ser una especie nueva del género Aétobatis", report that was readed in the Sciences Academy of La Habana 15 of April of 1872 and first publish in the Revista Minera, t. XXIII, 1872, p. 485-498 and 509-523 and in the Anales de la Sociedad Española de Historia Natural, II, 1873, p. 193-212, with the title: "Aétobatis Poeyii. Nueva especie fósil procedente de la isla de Cuba".
15. De la existencia de grandes mamíferos fósiles en la Isla de Cuba, (Habana, Imp y Librería 'El Iris', 1865), p. 5.
16. Ibidem, p. 6.
17. Ibidem, p. 7-8.
18. Ibidem, p. 8.
19. Ibidem, p. 14.
20. Ibidem, p. 15-16.
21. Ibidem, p. 29.
22. Ibidem, p. 29.
23. Ibidem, p. 31.
24. The reference to the articles of Leidy and Pomel can be found in C. M. Trelles, Biblioteca Científica Cubana. (Matanzas, Imp. de Juan Oliver, 1918-1919), p. 222-223. The article of Leidy was published in July of 1868 in the volume XV of the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Science of Philadelphia, with the title of "News on some remains of vertebrados originating from Western Indias".
25. The notes were readed in corresponding meetings to the months of September and October of 1868: ""Notes sur le Myomorphus cubensis" and "Note bibliographique additionnel sur le Myomorphus cubensis" and published in the Comptes Rendus of Paris Sciences academy. The reference is found in the article of Fernández de Castro "Paleontología. El Myomorphus cubensis, nuevo subgénero del Megalonyx" Revista Minera, t. XXII, (1871), p. 165-178 and 190-205.
26. Cf. M. Fernández de Castro "Paleontología. El Myomorphus Cubensis". Revista Minera, XXII (1871), p. 170.
27. Ibidem, p. 171.
28. Ibidem, p. 173-174.
29. Ibidem, p. 196-205: "Restos de Mastodon en Cuba".
30.Ibidem, p. 205.
31. Actas del IV Congreso de Americanistas, (Madrid, s.e. 1884), p. 74-94. The title "Pruebas paleontológicas de que la isla de Cuba ha estado unida al continente americano y breve idea de su constitución geológica". Boletín de la Comisión del Mapa Geológico, VIII, (1881), p. 357-372.
32. Ibidem, p. 75.
33. Data of his biography are found in Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana, (Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1966), t. LI, p. 1319-1320.
34. Manuel Rivero de la Calle and Miguel Angel Puig Samper "Aportes de Miguel Rodríguez Ferrer a la antropología cubana" Revista de Indias, LII, (1992), p. 194-201.
35. "Estudios Cosmogónicos. Del archipielago de las Antillas, y de si Cuba estuvo unida o no a aquel continente", p. 123-148; "Estudios Arqueológicos. De las antigüedades de Cuba, según las excursiones y objetos varios a que me refiero", p. 151-176; "Continuan de las antigüedades cubanas, según otras exploraciones y objetos", p. 177-210 y "Conclusion de las antigüedades cubanas con referencia a más excursiones y objetos", p. 211-244.
36. Revista de España, XIX, (1871), p. 324-350: "Estudios Cosmogónicos. Del archipielago de las Antillas, y de si Cuba estuvo unida o no a aquel continente".
37. Ibidem, p. 326.
38. Ibidem, p. 326.
39. Cf. "Observaciones geológicas de una gran parte de la isla de Cuba, por el ingeniero de minas don Policarpo Cía" Revista Minera, t. V, (1854), p. 459-460.
40. Ibidem, p. 328-330.
41. Ibidem, p. 338.
42. Ibidem, p. 338-339. Rodríguez Ferrer was mentioning in note to F.J. Clavijero and Humboldt, who were collecting various indigenous traditions of Mexico, the Orinoco and Santo Domingo in those which were described the statement of a deluge.
43. Ibidem, p. 342. In a subsequent article tittled "Continuan las antigüedades cubanas, según otras exploraciones y objetos" in Naturaleza y civilización de la grandiosa isla de Cuba, (Madrid, s.e., s.f.) p. 196-197, Rodríguez Ferrer discussed different opinions on the colonization of America. A first explanation maintained that America had been united to Europe and Africa by a series of islands -for some people, the Atlantis of Plato- that had been sunk in the Ocean due to some great cataclysm. Other supported that the colonization had taken place by the extremes of North America, that it had been in the past communicate with the West Europe and East Asia. Thus, some authors thought that the inhabitants had come from Asia, crossing the Bering strait and, descending by the west southward. To other, the first inhabitants would be from Greenland, went through the Labrador peninsula, descended by the East American coast, from Ohio until the Florida, from here to Cuba, arriving, later, to the Yucatan. Between the multiple opinions, Rodríguez Ferrer mentioned a, to the one which he designed "prehistoric novel", considered that America had been populated with African tribes, Lybian, Persian and Egyptian that carthaginian were moving of their cities to establish colonies. 44. Actas del IV Congreso de Americanistas, (Madrid, s.e.,1884), p. 95-113.
45. "¿La isla de Cuba estuvo unida al continente americano? ¿a qué parte estuvo unida, a la Florida o a Yucatán?" Conferencia pronunciadad en la Unión Ibero Americana de Madrid, 1910. Citada por M. C. Trelles, Biblioteca Científica Cubana op. cit. p. 211.
46. "Formación geológica de la isla de Cuba por el Dr. Pedro Valdés Ragués" Anales de la Academia de Ciencias Médicas, Físicas y Naturales de La Habana, t. 33, (1896-1897), p. 362-373.
47. Ibidem, p. 373.
48. Ibidem, p. 369.
49. "L'Homme de Sancti Spiritus (Ile de Cuba)" Congrès International d'Anthropologie et d'Archéologie Préhistorique. Compte Rendu de la trezième Session, t. II, (1906,). p. 141-152.
50. F. Ameghino "Otra nueva
especie extinguida del género Homo" En: Obras completas y correspondencia
científica de Florentino Ameghino. Paleoantropología argentina, (La Plata,
Taller de Impresiones Oficiales, 1934), Vol. XVIII, p. 401-405.
The original edition of this work appeared in the Congreso Científico Internacional
Americano, (Buenos Aires, s.e., 1910), pág. 6.