In 1831, the English naturalist Charles Darwin embarked on a trip aboard the British ship Beagle, which It would last five years. During the crossing, Darwin had to collect and study specimens of plants and animals, to prepare a report of their observations.
During the trip, Darwin devoted himself to studying the nature of the South American coast and noted evidence of certain changes happened in the earth's crust, as failures, folding and erosion. Darwin also conducted excavations, where he could find fossils of large mammals.
The monument to Charles Darwin in Iquique is located in front of the former Customs building, also known as Rímac Palace, between Aníbal Pinto streets, Jorge Barrera and Arturo Prat Chacón avenue. It consists of a bright black painted iron anchor on a white cement base. Two bronze plates are embedded in the cement plinth, one has the bust of the English naturalist engraved next to a brief review of his work and the figure of the brig Beagle, and the other a fragment of the grapes and the wind of Neruda where reference to Darwin's passage through Chile. Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, in 1809. He entered to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh with only 16 years, but his true passion was geology and natural sciences, which he studied in Cambridge. He embarked on the second expedition of the Beagle brig along the South American coasts, between 1831 and 1836, under the command of Robert Fitz-Roy. After crossing the Atlantic and crossing the coasts of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, the expedition crossed the Strait of Magellan and disembarked at the port of Valparaíso in 1834.
Darwin and the other scientists toured the central valleys, Chiloé and the archipelagos of Guaitecas and Chonos, in southern Chile. On July 12, 1835, the Beagle boat docked at the port of Iquique, this being the particular landmark that commemorates the monument. As a result of this journey of exploration and research in different fields of science, Charles Darwin wrote Journey of a Naturalist Around the World, published in 1839. The observations made in this expedition were the basis on which Darwin developed his theory of the evolution of the species, which was severely attacked by the Catholic Church because it contravened creationism. The Copernican turn that brought the Darwinist theory of evolution in the scientific world was remarkable.
During the twentieth century some biologists have refuted or complemented Darwin's theory, such as the American Lynn Margulis, who argues from the symbiogenesis that biological diversity is not produced by competition as much as by collaboration.
Source: https://www.monumentos.gob.cl/monumentos/monumentos-publicos/charles-darwin
