Termier puts in evidence as biological corroboration the researches of
Louis Germain, especially in the mollusca, which have convinced him of
the continental origin of this fauna in the four archipelagoes, the
Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde. He also notes a few
species still living in the Azores and the Canaries, though extinct in
Europe, but found as fossils in Pliocene rocks of Portugal. He deduces
from this a connection between the islands and the Iberian Peninsula
down to some period during the Pliocene.[23]
Dr. Scharff has devoted some space and assiduous effort to similar
considerations. He reviews the insular flora and fauna, pointing out
that some of the forms common to the islands, or some of them, and a
now distant continent could hardly have reached there over sea. He
comes to the following conclusion: “I believe they [the islands] were
still connected, in early Pleistocene times, with the continents of
Europe and Africa, at a time when man had already made his appearance
in western Europe, and was able to reach the islands by land.”[24]
He also points out that the Azores Islands were first known and named
for their hawks, which feed largely on small mammalia, that presumably
would have come thither overland, and also points out that some of
the islands were named in Italian on old maps Rabbit Island, Goat
Island, etc., before the Portuguese rediscovery in the fifteenth
century.[25] Those names (on several fifteenth-century maps St. Mary’s
is Louo, Lovo, or Luovo--“Wolf Island,” cf. Portuguese _lobo_) are
certainly interesting, but they may have been given for some supposed
resemblance of outline or other fancy. There is this in favor of Dr.
Scharff’s supposition: the name Corvo in its original form Corvis
Marinis (Island of the Sea Crows) appears to have been prompted by
the abundance of birds of a particular species--possibly cormorants,
possibly black skimmers--and not by any typical bird form of the island
itself. Also Pico, now named for its peak, was called the Isle of
the Doves, and wild doves or pigeons are said to abound still on its
mountain side. But, if we assume by analogy that Li Conigi (Rabbit
Island) and Capraria (Goat Island) were so named by reason of the
pre-Portuguese wild rabbits and goats, these may be the donations of
earlier visitants or settlers--Italian, Carthaginians, or what not. We
cannot well believe that wolves were voluntarily brought by man to Lovo
(Lobo), now St. Mary’s; but here there may have been some mistake, as
of dogs run wild or some play of imitative fancy, as before indicated.
In any case these archaic island names are a long way from being
convincing evidence of former land connection with any continent, still
less of the former existence of Atlantis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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