Galápagos () is a

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...

in the country's Insular region, located approximately off the western coast of the mainland. The capital is Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. The province administers the

Galápagos Islands The Galápagos Islands () are an archipelago of volcanic islands in the Eastern Pacific, located around the equator, west of the mainland of South America. They form the Galápagos Province of the Republic of Ecuador, with a population of sli ...

, a group of tiny volcanic islands that sit on the equator, famous for their unique

biodiversity Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distribut ...

popularized by naturalist

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

and his theory of evolution.

Demographics

Ethnic groups as of the Ecuadorian census of 2010: *

Mestizo ( , ; fem. , literally 'mixed person') is a term primarily used to denote people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry in the former Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturall ...

74.5% *

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

9.7% * Indigenous 7.0% *

Afro-Ecuadorian Afro-Ecuadorians (), also known as Black Ecuadorians (), are Ecuadorians of predominantly Sub-Saharan African descent. History and background Most Afro-Ecuadorians are the descendants of enslaved Africans who were transported by predominantly B ...

5.2% *

Montubio Montubio is the term used to describe the Mestizos in Ecuador, mestizo people of the countryside of coastal Ecuador. The Montubio make up 7.4% of the country's population and were recognized as a distinct ethnicity by the government in the sprin ...

1.9% *Other 1.7%

History

It is estimated that the islands were formed 8 million years ago as a result of tectonic activity on the seabed. The archipelago was likely inhabited long ago: the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl in 1963 reported that he found Inca archaeological sites and objects. The Galapagos Islands were discovered by chance on 10 March 1535, when the Dominican friar Fray Tomas de Berlanga, Bishop of Panama, went to Peru in pursuance of an order of the Spanish monarch, Charles V, to arbitrate in a dispute between Francisco Pizarro and his subordinates after the conquest of the Inca empire. Because of a calm and strong currents, the ship of Bishop was dragged to the Galapagos. In chronicling his adventure, directed from Portoviejo Emperor Charles V on the discovery of the Galapagos Islands, Berlanga described the bleak desert conditions in the islands and the giant tortoises that inhabited them. He also described the marine iguanas, sea lions and many types of birds, emphasizing the unusual mildness of animals and expressed in the following words:

Early explorations

The first maps to include the islands were prepared by

Abraham Ortelius Abraham Ortelius (; also Ortels, Orthellius, Wortels; 4 or 14 April 152728 June 1598) was a cartographer, geographer, and cosmographer from Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands. He is recognized as the creator of the list of atlases, first modern ...

and

Gerardus Mercator Gerardus Mercator (; 5 March 1512 – 2 December 1594) was a Flemish people, Flemish geographer, cosmographer and Cartography, cartographer. He is most renowned for creating the Mercator 1569 world map, 1569 world map based on a new Mercator pr ...

around 1570. The islands were described as "the Galopegos Insulae" (Turtle Island). The Galapagos were used by pirates hideout in English as trips to plunder Spanish galleons carrying gold and silver from America to Spain. The first known pirate to visit the islands was Richard Hawkins, in 1593. From then until 1816 many pirates came to the archipelago. Alexander Selkirk, (1676 – 13 December 1721), also known as Alexander Selcraig, was a Scottish sailor who was the man whose adventures on the islands of Juan Fernández (explorer), () was a Spanish explorer and navigator in the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

regions of the

Viceroyalty of Peru The Viceroyalty of Peru (), officially known as the Kingdom of Peru (), was a Monarchy of Spain, Spanish imperial provincial administrative district, created in 1542, that originally contained modern-day Peru and most of the Spanish Empire in ...

and

Captaincy General of Chile The General Captaincy of Chile (''Capitanía General de Chile'' ), Governorate of Chile, or Kingdom of Chile, was a territory of the Spanish Empire from 1541 to 1818 that was, initially, part of the Viceroyalty of Peru. It comprised most of mod ...

west of colonial

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

who inspired

Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; 1660 – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, merchant and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translati ...

to write Robinson Crusoe, visited the Galapagos in 1708 after he was rescued from the island of Juan Fernández by the privateer Woodes Rogers. Rogers was at the archipelago to repair their ships after sacking

Guayaquil Guayaquil (), officially Santiago de Guayaquil, is the largest city in Ecuador and also the nation's economic capital and main port. The city is the capital (political), capital of Guayas Province and the seat of Guayaquil Canton. The city is ...

Sea lion sleeping on bench in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno 2013

The first scientific mission that visited the Galapagos was the Malaspina expedition, a Spanish expedition led by Alejandro Malaspina, who arrived in 1790. However, the records of the expedition were never published. In 1793, James Colnett, (1753 – 1 September 1806) was an officer of the British

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

, an explorer, and a maritime fur trade described the flora and fauna of the islands and suggested they could be used as base for the whalers operating in the Pacific Ocean. Collnet also drew the first charts of the Galapagos. These whalers captured and killed thousands of tortoises in the archipelago because the tortoises could survive for months without food or drink. The gigantic Galapagos tortoises were transported inside the holds of whaling ships. A phrase "living cupboards" could be desortugas would be kept alive and killed when fresh meat was required by the whaling crews. Tortoises provided fresh protein on the long journeys typical of whaling ships. Hunting of these tortoises was the cause of the large decrease of their population, and in some cases the destruction of certain species of the Galapagos Tortoise.

Political divisions

The province is divided in three cantons, each encompassing a number of islands. They are:

References

External links