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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren boge obam Here. In December of eighteen o two,

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Speaker 1: a small sailing ship called the Casino Set sail from Cajal,

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Speaker 1: Peru northward along the South American coastline towards guaya Quill

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Speaker 1: in present day Ecuador, a trip of about seven hundred

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Speaker 1: miles or about one thousand, one hundred kilometers. One of

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Speaker 1: the ship's passengers was a thirty three year old Prussian aristocrat,

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Speaker 1: Alexander von Humboldt. A mining engineer by training, Humboldt had

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Speaker 1: an instatiable curiosity about nature that led him to roam

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Speaker 1: the planet, studying plants and animals, as well as phenomena

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Speaker 1: ranging from magnetic rocks to river systems and ocean currents.

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Speaker 1: Fresh from studying the value of backguando as manure in Cajao,

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Speaker 1: Humboldt used the sailing trip to investigate a powerful cold

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Speaker 1: current that flowed from the tip of Chile to northern Peru,

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Speaker 1: ranging from just off shore to about six hundred miles

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Speaker 1: off the coast that's just under a thousand kilometers. The

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Speaker 1: currents existence had been known for centuries to sailors and fishermen,

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Speaker 1: but no scientists had ever systematically studied the flow. Humbolt

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Speaker 1: carefully measured the water temperature and the speed, and continued

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Speaker 1: on his journey, which eventually would lead him to Mexico.

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Speaker 1: Humboldt's work was the beginning of scientific understanding of what's

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Speaker 1: now known as the Humboldt Current or the Peru Current.

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Speaker 1: The current helps hold warm, moist air off the coast,

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Speaker 1: keeping the climate cool. It also pulls plankton rich water

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Speaker 1: from deep in the Pacific to the surface, feeding a

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Speaker 1: vast number and variety of fish and birds, and creating

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Speaker 1: the richest marine ecosystem on the planet. Its fishing grounds

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Speaker 1: provide about six percent of the world's catch, and the

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Speaker 1: Humboldt currents nutrients support the marine food chain of the

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Speaker 1: Galapagos Islands and influence its climate as well. It has

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Speaker 1: helped to make possible the archipelagos incredible biodiversity. In that sense,

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Speaker 1: the Humbolt Current also helped shape the development of evolutionary theory.

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Speaker 1: The Galapagos provided the living laboratory for another nineteenth century scientist,

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Speaker 1: Charles Darwin, whose paradigm shifting work on the origin of

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Speaker 1: the species was published in eighteen fifty nine, the year

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Speaker 1: of Humboldt's death. Darwin himself was inspired by the work

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Speaker 1: of Humboldt, who might be the most important scientist that

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Speaker 1: we don't hear much about in the early tobid eighteen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: though he might have been the most renowned researcher on

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Speaker 1: the planet. Humboldt was the first to investigate the relationship

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Speaker 1: between mean temperature and elevation, and came up with the

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Speaker 1: concept of maps with isothermal lines that delineate areas with

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Speaker 1: the same temperature at a given time. He did important

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Speaker 1: early work on the origin of tropical storms. Most importantly,

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Speaker 1: Humboldt altered the way that scientists see the natural world

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Speaker 1: by finding interconnections. The scientist invented the concept of a

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Speaker 1: web of life, what he called this great chain of

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Speaker 1: causes and effects. Some consider him to be the first ecologist.

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Speaker 1: He was ahead of the curve on understanding environmental problems

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Speaker 1: such as deforestation and its effect upon climate, which he

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Speaker 1: first observed around Lake Valencia and Venezuela back in eighteen hundred.

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Speaker 1: Humboldt was also a predecessor to Albert Einstein as a

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Speaker 1: scientist with a strong interest in social justice. He was

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Speaker 1: a critic of colonialism and supported revolutionary movements in South America,

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Speaker 1: and also criticized the US, a country he otherwise admired

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Speaker 1: for its institution of slavery. We spoke via email with

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Speaker 1: Aaron Sachs, a history professor at Cornell University and author

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Speaker 1: of The Humboldt Current nineteenth Century Exploration and the Roots

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Speaker 1: of American Environmentalism. He thinks that rather than focusing on

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Speaker 1: Humboldt scientific discoveries, it's more important to look at the

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Speaker 1: insights and approaches to the work that were based upon

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Speaker 1: his research and observations. He said to me his version

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Speaker 1: of ecology was significant not just because he stressed interconnection,

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Speaker 1: but because he combined it with a social and ethical perspective.

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Speaker 1: The fact of interconnection had certain implications with regard to

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Speaker 1: human responsibilities towards each other and the environment. It was

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Speaker 1: a cosmopolitan, open minded ecology. Today's episode was written by

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Speaker 1: Patrick J. Kaiger and produced by Tyler Clain. Brain Stuff

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Speaker 1: is production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For

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Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other interconnected topics, visit

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Speaker 1: our home planet, how stuff Works dot com and for

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