Abraham Ortelius - Imagining Continental Drift

Imagining Continental Drift

Ortelius was the first to underline the geometrical coincidence between the coasts of America and Europe-Africa, and to propose continental drift as an explanation. Kious described Ortelius' thoughts in this way:

Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus ... suggested that the Americas were "torn away from Europe and Africa ... by earthquakes and floods" and went on to say: "The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three ."

The continental drift theory was generally accepted in geosciences only during the second half of the 20th century, after the hypotheses of Alfred Wegener had been supported through the discovery of a mechanism for continental drift, and an adequate energy source, in the convection currents of the plastic, very weak upper mantle, or asthenosphere.