1 Stratigraphic section on the Bight of Sardanje (i.e. Bloubergstrand). http://sajs.co.za/index.php/SAJS/article/downloadSuppFile/544/3029
Discussion and conclusions The stratigraphy of the well dug near Sandenburgh, on the shoreline opposite the site of the wreck of the Haarlem, as described by Hondius 9is comparable to the stratigraphy of the Pleistocene and Holocene formations of the Cape coastal belt, known from modern studies. 36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48 The good correspondence between Hondius’ stratigraphic units and the modern data, in terms of lithologies and thicknesses, attests to the veracity of the sources that provided Hondius with his information, namely the survivors of the wreck of the Haarlem. 9The wholly empirical description of strata found in the well predated, by more than a decade, the publication of the two most influential 17th-century works on geology – the Mundus Subterraneus 52of Athanasius Kircher (1665) and the Prodromus 53 of Nicolaus Steno (1669), which provided theoretical foundations for hydrology and stratigraphy. In the mid-17th century, the works of Georg Bauer (better known as Georgius Agricola), such as De Natura Fossilium 54(1546) and De Re Metallica 55(1556) were well established in Europe (including in the Netherlands Republic, e.g. at the University of Leiden) as standard texts on mineralogy, mining and metallurgy (in German and in Latin). However, none of Agricola’s works, or those of his contemporaries, dealt with stratigraphy, or with the layering of strata. 55It was only in the early 18th century, following the influence of Steno 53, that detailed accounts of stratigraphic successions in wells, unconsolidated sediments and in coal mines began to appear in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London. 56,57,58,59,60 This singular case of a detailed stratigraphic column predates by more than a century the next published accounts of South African stratigraphy, those by Carl Peter Thunberg 61(who gave a very basic stratigraphy of Table Mountain in 1778) 62and John Barrow (1801), 7who gave a description of boreholes near Wynberg. It therefore played no part in the development of geological stratigraphy as a science in South Africa, but is nevertheless interesting in the light it throws on the rudimentary understanding of rock types, stratigraphy and hydrology by Dutch sailors in the mid-17th century, at the beginnings of South African colonial history. Together with the measurements of latitude in early 16th century Portuguese roteiros, 63,64 and records of magnetic declination dating from 1595 onwards, 65the observations of the thicknesses of the strata in the well near Sandenburgh are amongst the first quantitative measurements taken in the history of South African science. The application of quantitative and semi-quantitative measurements in the description of the water well and salt resources near the Haarlem wreck site is a harbinger to a whole new way of approaching the natural world, and the exploitation of its resources, which was to change forever the future history of South Africa. 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