Teide Everest: in search of the highest mountain (In)

For: Eduardo Martinez de Pison
Previous Image
Next Image

info heading

info content

How and when was the fame of the Teide like the biggest mountain in the world? Probably very old date, not precise, among the sailors who saw their cloud tops protrude from a certain distance. Later, from the 14th century, there are even references of numerical attributions of uncontrollable altitudes to the summit of Teide. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, very high figures were awarded, between 12 and 18 leagues and even 30 miles, so that Torriani, despite having promoted it without difficulty and in a short time in 1587 the 1588, did not contradict in his writing the ingrained belief that it surpassed all the known peaks, although there was also some less excessive, being among the most moderate that of 2.700 toesas.

Precisely because of its confusing origins, as indicated They will, It is not possible to determine the duration of the Teide as orographic champion, but it is true that such fame persisted well into the eighteenth century even in the pages of such prudent writers as Feijóo. Not so, however, in all cases, for there were enlightened naturalists who, from their cabinets, they questioned it, as Buffon (despite granting him a league and a half, What is not little) the Torrubia (with a germanic mile).

From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, Teide was awarded very high figures, from 12 and 18 leagues and even 30 miles

What is significant is that it was the instrumental measurements on the ground that first banished the exaggerated heights and then adjusted the calculation quite precisely.. Those expert observers were Search in 1724, which lowered the figure to 4.313 meters, which placed the peak in another order of magnitude and called into question its priority over other competitors, and Edge in 1776, who already calculated its dimensions almost exactly in 3.713 meters. They were not the only ones to take the measurements to the volcano, well they soon followed Humboldt in 1799 and Cordier in 1803. Addition, However, would be measured and reached its very peak in 1786 and 1787 the Mont Blanc in Europe and, especially, the Chimborazo In America, rising this, thanks to the altitude of 6.279 meters that it granted The Condamine in 1735, on the apparently highest mountain on Earth.

In this way it came to be considered another volcano, the Chimborazo, highlighted with its icy summit and easily perceptible from its base in the well-known American mountain range of the Andes, the highest peak on the globe. But not only for being really very tall and crowned by ice, but also for establishing its base in the intertropical zone, namely, where the globe widens, so that its higher altitude could be estimated both above sea level and with respect to the center of the Earth.

And 1735 another volcano, the Chimborazo, step to be considerate of your 6.279 meters the highest peak of the Globe

Although it remained as such a coronation of the Planet (above sea level) Little time, was enough for the ascension of Humboldt and his companions in 1802 by one of its flanks until near its top they were classified as the men who had been until then at the highest altitude, at least stepping on the ground. Humboldt thus visited two renowned suitors on his equinoctial journeys (Teide and Chimborazo) to the highest elevation in the world, although one was lowered somewhat earlier and the other replaced shortly after. But evidently the latter was something unknown to the Andean Humboldt., although later he knew the first topographic results obtained in the Himalayas.

Toward 1820, according to Humboldt and also Whymper, the Asian explorations of the British passed the location of the first position to this mountain range of Asia. Within it, that extreme rank was initially attributed to Dhaulagiri, with an altitude still inaccurate, then to Kangchenjunga and then to Gaurisankar, already with a level similar to that granted today to Everest.

After the first topographic results in the Himalayas and the British explorations, the first place went to Dhaulagiri

This last case was a baptism error, not mountain. So, on a graph estimating the altitudes of the main mountains of Asia, published by the French geographer Figuier in 1864, the highest in the Himalayas is called Gaurisankar, with 8.840 m., and the second the Dapsang, in Karakorum, with 8.625 m. Except for the names used, the dimensions are approximate, respectively, those of the peaks that today we commonly call Everest (also Chomolungma and Sagarmatha) and K2 (also Chogori): In other words, the unknown was already cleared in relation to the magnitudes, although they still need adjustments, and it only remained to find the appropriate place names for the era of the geodesists.

the same George Everest (the great British surveyor to whom Royal Geographic Society granted the great tribute of baptizing the mountain with his surname) was not in favor of giving new western names to mountains that already had local names.

British surveyor George Everest was not in favor of giving new western names to mountains that already had local names

But the Kangchenjunga had initially been recognized in cartographic jargon only as "Peak IX" and Everest, as "Pico XV". The award of the name of the British cartographer was thirteen years after the topographical survey and, how we see, its expansion was not immediate. However, yes the measurement was propagated by the “Survey of India” in 1852 of the so-called Pico XV (or Gaurisankar then - not in all cases- o Mount Everest generally after), above the 8.800 meters and, therefore, quite close to reality, and hence that, with minor adjustments for such a figure, was its exceptional altitude a number already present in the atlases reported from the second half of the XIX.

This article is extracted from the foreword by Eduardo Martínez de Pisón to the translation of the book Claudius Bombarnac, Jules Verne, published in Madrid by Fórcola Ediciones (2013).

  • Share

Write a comment