Abstract
When, during the imperial expansion of the 16th and 17th centuries, coral reefs became a serious hazard to shipping, investigators began the long journey to break through the inherited traditions of mythology, superstition and folklore to understand their true nature. With the loss of most of the classical works on early marine and coral science, and against a backdrop of real fear of persecution from a powerful church that allowed no deviation from biblical tradition, early naturalists began to accumulate information and to propose primitive theories to explain the coral reef enigma.
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Notes
- 1.
Cognates to the English “reef” appeared simultaneously in Portuguese as “recife,” in Spanish as “arricefe,” in Dutch as “rif” or “ref,” and in German as “reff.”
- 2.
De lapidus VII, p. 39. The original text reads: “to gar kouralion, kai gar touth osper lithos, te chroa men erythron, periferes d’os an riza fyetai d’ente thalatte.”
- 3.
Peri phyton historias IV, p. 7.
- 4.
Aristotle’s works, although written in Greek, are conventionally known by their Latin titles.
- 5.
Historia animalium VIII(I), p. 588b; De partibus animalium IV, p. 681a.
- 6.
Historia animalium VIII(4–10), p. 588b.
- 7.
Naturalis historia IX, p. 110.
- 8.
Naturalis historia XXXII(xi), p. 20–24.
- 9.
The Semitic origin is either the Hebrew gōrál, “pebble,” or the related Arabic garal, “small stone.”
- 10.
Pliny, Naturalis historia IX(lxviii), p. 146.
- 11.
Greek has two forms of the letter “o”: long (o-mega, ω) and short (o-micron, ο). To pronounce words correctly in biology based on zōon (ζωον), such as zoology, zooxanthellae and epizootic, the two letters are separated as in cooperation. The pronunciation as zoo-ology is a vulgar abomination.
- 12.
Milne-Edwards inferred that it most likely originated with Gyllius, making the editorial comment that “C’est, croyons-nous, la première fois qu’on ait employé ce mot, au moins sous cette forme.”: “that, I believe, is the first time that word has been used, at least in that form.” Milne-Edwards 1857, p. xiv.
- 13.
This explanation follows British Museum taxonomist George Brook (1893).
- 14.
The word “Taxa,” (sing. “taxon”; Gk taxis, “order,” “regularity”) is used to designate a similar group of plants or animals at any level. The term “taxonomy,” consequently, is compounded of “taxon” and nomos, “law”: hence, the rules of classification.
- 15.
Millepora: Italian mille, “thousand”; rete, “net”; fronda, “bush, leafy.” These three terms have Latin cognates—mille, rete, frondeus— which Imperato may have used.
- 16.
First suggested by Brook (1893).
- 17.
Histories II, pp. 12–15.
- 18.
Leonardo, edited by Richter 1939: II.vi.986, p. 168; II.vi.992, p. 175.
- 19.
Text in Edwards (1967), pp. 19–21.
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Bowen, J. (2015). The Coral Reef Enigma. In: The Coral Reef Era: From Discovery to Decline. Humanity and the Sea. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07479-5_1
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