Alexander Selkirk's cave

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www.gerdzen.de/crusoe/url01.html
British, Japanese and Chilean archaeologists have discovered the spot where Alexander Selkirk, the model for the castaway Robinson Crusoe, survived in solitude for four years and four months.
After a 13-year search, the team, led by Daisuke Takahashi, a Japanese explorer, believe that they have identified where the 18th-century sailor camped, cooked and kept a lonely lookout. The crucial breakthrough was the discovery of a fragment of one of Selkirk’s navigational instruments.
Last January Mr Takahashi took a team of four scientists to the remote spot where he suspected Selkirk’s camp had been. There they found traces of a fire, animal bones and holes in which Selkirk appears to have placed poles to support a shelter.
But the decisive evidence was a 6mm piece of copper, discovered by David Caldwell of the National Museums of Scotland, and identified by him as the point of a pair of 17th-century dividers. Dr Caldwell said: “Selkirk was a navigator, and the account of this discovery states that he had his navigational equipment with him. In archaeological terms that is as good evidence that you are going to get.”

academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_18c/def...

www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/crusoe/
www.travel-images.com/juan-fernandez.html
www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/js/a11.htm
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Coordinates:   33°37'15"S   78°50'49"W
This article was last modified 14 years ago