Interpreting Earth

A history of geology through encounters with Table Mountain

Towering above the city of Cape Town, Table Mountain has a tumultuous story to tell that extends back over 500 million years. The iconic landmark at the south-western tip of Africa has been a welcome sight to locals and overseas visitors for more than 500 years. One of the most-climbed mountains in the world, Table Mountain inspired many to record their thoughts and impressions. While the rocky massif has remained virtually unchanged, people’s perceptions of it have changed dramatically.

This book chronicles the evolution of how we think and feel about mountains through the written records of those who encountered Table Mountain, and how we came to read Table Mountain’s story in parallel with the development of geology as a science.

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First published 2023 by Earthspun Books
© 2023 John S. Compton All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-0-7961-1252-1 (print)
ISBN 978-0-7961-1253-8 (e-book, pdf)

Front Pages, Contents & Introduction

Interpreting Earth – Table of Contents

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1 KHOISAN – FIRST PEOPLE

Hoerikwaggo: ‘mountain rising out of the sea’
San myth and creation stories
Camissa: ‘sweet water for all’

2 EARLY EUROPEANS

Paradise on Earth
Portuguese explorers
António de Saldanha
Platteklip Gorge
Myth of Adamastor
Before Dutch settlement at the Cape
Dutch East India Company
Building the Castle
Quests for silver and gold

3 AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

French Jesuit scientists
Seashells on top of Table Mountain?
Changes in sea level
‘Stones lying in Rows one upon another’
Abbé de Lacaille’s pear-shaped Earth
Swedes at the Cape
Carl Thunberg
Carl Linnaeus – temporis filia
Anders Sparrman
Paarl Rock and the origin of granite
François Le Vaillant and past sea levels

4 BIRTH OF GEOLOGY

Abraham Gottlob Werner and Neptunism
James Hutton and Plutonism
Neptunism vs Plutonism

5 BRITISH CAPE COLONY

John Barrow
‘The depredations of time’
Sea level
Iron anchor atop Table Mountain
Lady Anne Barnard
‘Fearful evidences of some former violent concussions’
William Burchell and the sublime
Warm springs
Earthquakes
Basil Hall discovers the Platteklip granite-shale contact
Clarke Abel discovers the Sea Point Contact
Dugald Carmichael
Charles Lyell’s Principles
Uniformitarianism vs Catastrophism
A dynamic Earth
Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle
St Paul’s Rocks
Chilean earthquakes and uplift of the Andes
Coral atolls and subsidence
Darwin at the Cape
Dating rocks at the Cape
Thomas Maclear, the noontime gun and correcting Lacaille
Andrew Geddes Bain and William G. Atherstone
Mountaineering
Geological Commission

6 GEOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONS

Continental drift
Dating rocks and the age of Earth
Our wandering continents
Plate tectonics
A modern tectonic synopsis of Cape geology
End of geology?

Excerpts: click photo to download pdf