In the Pursuit of Darwin: the Problem of American Fauna in the Chronicles of José de Acosta and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo

Abstract

The present text contains a series of examples and considerations of the reflections of the first ‘Chroniclers of the Indias’ on American fossils and fauna.  It is not as much a descriptive outline to visualise an often disregarded matter, as an interpretive reading of the key contributions bequeathed to the theories of land and life.  The chronicles of Oviedo and Acosta are opposed in many senses in their conceptualisation of this problem. The first is resigned to perpetuating the scholastic model, although not without examining its limitations. The second formally presages evolutionism.  I will attempt to reexamine said models in light of the Darwinian revolution.