Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren boge obam Here. In December of eighteen o two, a small sailing ship called the Casino Set sail from Cajal, Peru northward along the South American coastline towards guaya Quill in present day Ecuador, a trip of about seven hundred miles or about one thousand, one hundred kilometers. One of the ship's passengers was a thirty three year old Prussian aristocrat,
Alexander von Humboldt. A mining engineer by training, Humboldt had an instatiable curiosity about nature that led him to roam the planet, studying plants and animals, as well as phenomena ranging from magnetic rocks to river systems and ocean currents. Fresh from studying the value of backguando as manure in Cajao, Humboldt used the sailing trip to investigate a powerful cold current that flowed from the tip of Chile to northern Peru, ranging from just off shore to about six hundred miles
off the coast that's just under a thousand kilometers. The currents existence had been known for centuries to sailors and fishermen, but no scientists had ever systematically studied the flow. Humbolt carefully measured the water temperature and the speed, and continued on his journey, which eventually would lead him to Mexico. Humboldt's work was the beginning of scientific understanding of what's now known as the Humboldt Current or the Peru Current.
The current helps hold warm, moist air off the coast, keeping the climate cool. It also pulls plankton rich water from deep in the Pacific to the surface, feeding a vast number and variety of fish and birds, and creating the richest marine ecosystem on the planet. Its fishing grounds provide about six percent of the world's catch, and the Humboldt currents nutrients support the marine food chain of the Galapagos Islands and influence its climate as well. It has
helped to make possible the archipelagos incredible biodiversity. In that sense, the Humbolt Current also helped shape the development of evolutionary theory. The Galapagos provided the living laboratory for another nineteenth century scientist, Charles Darwin, whose paradigm shifting work on the origin of the species was published in eighteen fifty nine, the year
of Humboldt's death. Darwin himself was inspired by the work of Humboldt, who might be the most important scientist that we don't hear much about in the early tobid eighteen hundreds, though he might have been the most renowned researcher on the planet. Humboldt was the first to investigate the relationship between mean temperature and elevation, and came up with the concept of maps with isothermal lines that delineate areas with the same temperature at a given time. He did important
early work on the origin of tropical storms. Most importantly, Humboldt altered the way that scientists see the natural world by finding interconnections. The scientist invented the concept of a web of life, what he called this great chain of causes and effects. Some consider him to be the first ecologist.
He was ahead of the curve on understanding environmental problems such as deforestation and its effect upon climate, which he first observed around Lake Valencia and Venezuela back in eighteen hundred. Humboldt was also a predecessor to Albert Einstein as a scientist with a strong interest in social justice. He was a critic of colonialism and supported revolutionary movements in South America, and also criticized the US, a country he otherwise admired
for its institution of slavery. We spoke via email with Aaron Sachs, a history professor at Cornell University and author of The Humboldt Current nineteenth Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism. He thinks that rather than focusing on Humboldt scientific discoveries, it's more important to look at the insights and approaches to the work that were based upon
his research and observations. He said to me his version of ecology was significant not just because he stressed interconnection, but because he combined it with a social and ethical perspective. The fact of interconnection had certain implications with regard to human responsibilities towards each other and the environment. It was a cosmopolitan, open minded ecology. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Kaiger and produced by Tyler Clain. Brain Stuff
is production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other interconnected topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com and for more podcast us from my heart Radio is the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H