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| HUMBOLT |
Filled with a thirst for exploration and knowledge that would never be quenched during his long and extraordinary career, Berlin-born scientist Alexander von Humboldt always wanted to travel to the Tropic. He fulfilled his dream as an adult, in a Spanish colony that was about to set out on a violent process of change: the General Captaincy of Venezuela.
The trip Humboldt made in 1799 would change his life and the history of science, leaving a lasting mark in the country.
Humboldt and his expedition partner, the French botanist Aimé Bonpland, arrived in Cumaná, Eastern Venezuela, on July 16th, 1799, and they remained here until November 24th, 1800, when they sailed to Cuba. They stayed in the island for about three months and travelled to Cartagena, where they arrived in March 1801; then they went to Bogota and explored the Andes down to Quito, following to Cajamarca (Peru), eventually reaching Acapulco. In August 1804, they returned to Europe and, in Paris, they started writing.
Five years of travelling through America were enough to collect abundant scientific material to write an essential book: “Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America,” published between 1816 and 1831, in thirteen volumes.
Humboldt made the first known annotation about the effects of human activity on the climate, by documenting the consequences of colonial agricultural practices in Lake Valencia. He started a theory of natural equivalents that would become the first global environmental philosophy, seeing the planet as a whole.
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