Pratica di Shadowing: Venezuela's "Islands In The Sky", Explained. - Impara a parlare inglese con YouTube
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This is Angel Falls, and it is the tallest waterfall on Earth.
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This is Angel Falls, and it is the tallest waterfall on Earth.
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It drops a staggering 979 meters in a single uninterrupted plunge off the edge of a mountain in southern Venezuela.
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The waterfall so far that much of it turns into a mist even before it reaches the ground.
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But none of this is probably news to you,
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because most people have heard of Angel Falls.
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But most people don't know what mountain it falls from,
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or why that mountain exists,
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or what's on top of it,
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or what the people who have inhabited this landscape for thousands of years believe about it.
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Today that is about to change.
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This mountain, or rather plateau,
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is called the Ayan Tepui.
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It is one of roughly 115 formations scattered across the Guiana highlands of Venezuela, Guyana, and Brazil.
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And in my opinion, this is one of the most fascinating parts of the planet.
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These formations are known as the Tipui.
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They are flat-top mountains rising up to a thousand meters above the landscape.
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And each one of these almost acts like an island in the sky.
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Each one carrying on its summit an ecosystem that has been isolated for a long time.
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And all of this makes this region,
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the Guyana Highlands, one of the great geographical stories on the planet.
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But what are the Tupui and how were they formed?
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Well, the Tupui are the remnants of what you all just called the Guiana Shield,
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one of the oldest exposed rock formations on the surface of this planet.
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The ancient layers of rock
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that makes up the Tupui plateaus was laid down as sediment
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on the floor of an ancient sea roughly 1.7 billion years ago ago.
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To put that into perspective,
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it is estimated that complex animal life didn't begin until 530 million years ago.
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The rock on the Te Pui was already ancient before the first fish appeared in the ocean.
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And for the vast majority of that time,
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these formations were not mountains at all,
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they were part of a vast flat plateau.
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So what happened between that time to the present day?
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How did the Tipui go from one massive plateau to hundreds of individual plateaus?
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What happened was differential erosion.
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Keep in mind that the rock of the Tipui is extraordinarily hard,
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primarily made up of quartzite.
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The softer rock around it eroded away.
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Rivers, rainfall, and time wore down everything that was less resistant.
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And slowly, over an almost incomprehensible span of time,
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the plateau was dismembered, away on all sides,
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leaving behind the most resistant sections as isolated,
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flat-topped mountains rising above the eroded lowlands.
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So the Tapui you see here are what's left.
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They are not mountains that were built up,
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they are a plateau that was carved away.
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They are just what remained.
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And as the lowlands eroded away from them, the summits became isolated.
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Not immediately, but slowly.
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The cliff faces of the tallest Tipui are sheer vertical rock walls hundreds of meters tall.
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They're smooth and overhanging in places,
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offering almost no route for organisms to travel between the summit and the jungle below.
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The summits became, in biological terms, islands.
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And on islands, whether surrounded by water or air in this case,
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evolution does its most creative work.
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Now the summits of the Tipui have been isolated for millions of years,
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long enough for evolution to produce species found nowhere else on Earth.
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The Te Pui region has one of the highest rates of plant endemism anywhere in the world,
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meaning a remarkably high proportion of its species exist on these summits and nowhere else.
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Some individual Te Pui have endemic species found on that single formation and no other.
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Now an important distinction we need to make is
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that the soils on the Te Pui summits are among the most nutrient-poor on the planet.
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The ancient rock weathers into sand that retains almost no minerals.
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Water pools in shallow depressions,
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which are acidic and dark.
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Normal tropical vegetation cannot survive here.
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What has evolved instead is a suite of highly specialized plants.
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Most are slow growing and compact,
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many of which have actually developed to be carnivorous due to nutrient scarcity.
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Sundews, pitcher plants, and bladder warts.
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These are organisms that catch and digest insects to obtain the nitrogen and phosphorus that soil cannot provide here.
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If you are ever so lucky to walk across the Tipui summit,
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which by the way is definitely on my bucket list,
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you might think you're walking on another planet.
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The vegetation is low and strange.
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The rock is black with cyanobacteria and stained rust red with iron.
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There's pools of dark water that sit in shallow depressions.
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The clouds move here through eye level,
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reducing visibility to mere meters.
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And as these clouds part,
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they reveal a view of hundreds of kilometers of jungle spread below like a green ocean.
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It truly is one of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth.
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Now this region is concentrated in what's known as the Guyana Highlands,
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and this is one of the most sparsely populated and isolated regions in South America.
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The infrastructure here is minimal at best,
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and the terrain, well, of course, it's formidable.
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Venezuela contains the greatest concentration and the most dramatic individual tepuy.
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The state of Bolívar in southern Venezuela is home to the Canaima National Park,
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a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering nearly 30,000 square kilometers.
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Within Canaima sit some of the most famous tepuy,
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Ollantepuy, from which Angel Falls descends,
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Mount Roraima, the highest and arguably the most iconic,
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in the cluster formation of the Grand Savanna,
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where dozens of Te Pui rise from a high altitude grassland that itself sits above 1000 meters.
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It really feels like a magical landscape,
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and a place that inspired many stories such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 classic novel,
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The Lost World.
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But of all the Tepui,
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Mount Roraima is the one that most fired western imagination.
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It sits at the tri-point of where Venezuela, Guyana, and Brazil meet.
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It rises approximately 2,810 meters above sea level,
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with cliff faces on each side dropping 400 meters.
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Mount Roraima is perhaps the Tepui most closely associated with Conan Doyle's The Lost World,
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the story of a plateau in South America where prehistoric creatures had survived,
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isolated evolutionary changes by their cliffs.
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Conan Doyle had never visited Roraima,
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but he had read accounts of the first European ascents in 1884.
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Their descriptions of the summit,
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the bizarre plants and strange rock formations,
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the sense of absolute separation from the world below,
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were enough to inspire the author.
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The novel was fiction, but the biological realities of life on Roraima's summit might be just as strange,
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Because the summit holds species found nowhere else on earth,
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including the strange Rorima bush toad.
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A small, dark amphibian that has lived on this summit for so long,
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isolated from its nearest relatives below,
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that it has become its own distinct species.
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And interestingly, it's evolved a unique defense mechanism.
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When threatened by predators, the toad curls into a ball and rolls away.
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Then there is the Ooyan Te Pui.
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The name literally means Devil Mountain in the Paman language.
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It is one of the largest Tepui,
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covering roughly 700 square kilometers on the summit plateau.
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It is deeply dissected by canyons and gorges,
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and it receives some of the highest rainfall of any Tepui.
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Angel Falls drops from a notch on the northern rim of the Aoyan Tepui into the Churung River gorge below.
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The full height of the fall is 979 meters,
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of which the uninterrupted initial drop is 807 meters.
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For comparison, the Eiffel Tower is only 330 meters tall.
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The Empire State is 443 meters.
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Angel Falls drops more than twice the height of the Empire State Building.
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But why is it called Angel Falls?
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It's actually named after an American pilot called Jimmy Angel.
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He was the first westerner to document Angel Falls.
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His flights in the region actually helped explore,
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map, and evaluate the Tipuis and the Grand Sabana region.
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Biologically, the Tipuis can be best described as the Galapagos of the sky.
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The Galapagos Islands are famous for producing distinct species through isolation.
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The Tipuis have also been doing the same thing.
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But here, the isolation is not oceanic, but altitude.
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The cliffs replace the sea,
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but the evolutionary mechanism is pretty much the same.
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The region of the Guiana Highlands is extremely biodiverse,
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and much of that diversity is concentrated in its endemism.
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According to recent studies of the Te Pui,
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it is believed that this region harbors nearly 1300 endemic species of plants alone.
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But have humans ever lived in this strange and unique environment?
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The short answer is yes.
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The Pomon people, an indigenous group of perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 people living across the Grande Sabana and adjacent areas of Venezuela,
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Guyana, and Brazil, have lived in the shadow of the Tepui for at least several thousand years,
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and possibly much longer.
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Their language, their cosmology, their entire understanding of the world is structured around the mountains that dominate their landscape.
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For them, the Tepui are holy places,
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sacred guardians of the savannah.
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According to their beliefs, the Tipui are home to the Mawari,
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ancient ancestral spirits that are sometimes considered dangerous.
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Now the summits of most Tipui were not regularly visited by the Pumon.
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The difficulty of the ascent and the spiritual weight of those mountains combined to make them places of respect rather than habitation.
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The first ascent of a Tipui was the 1884 expedition by British explorer Im Third.
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But even before all of that,
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European awareness of the Tipui region dates back to the late 16th century,
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when Walter Raleigh led an expedition up the Orinoco River in search of the famous El Dorado,
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that mythical city of gold that European explorers believed lay somewhere in the interior of South America.
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Raleigh's 1595 account, the discovery of the large,
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rich, and beautiful empire of Guyana,
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described flat-topped mountains in the interior with a vividness that suggested he or his sources had seen them.
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But El Dorado was never found,
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at least not in the form the Europeans imagined,
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but the search for it drove European penetration of the Guiana Highlands for nearly two centuries,
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and it brought the Tepui into Western consciousness,
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however distorted, long before any scientist actually set foot on a summit.
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From that moment, the Tepui became objects of fascination,
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expedition, and scientific inquiry that has continued with varying intensity ever since.
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But in a way there is still so much to learn about the Teppui because of the 115 Teppui formations identified,
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many of which have still not been studied in a systematic way.
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Many have never even been visited by biologists at all.
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Each new expedition to a previously unstudied summit returns with new species to science,
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whether that be plants, insects, or amphibians.
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In an era where it feels as though the entire surface of the earth has been catalogued,
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the Te Pui represent a genuine frontier for exploration.
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Now there is another piece of the puzzle that I haven't mentioned yet,
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and that is the cave systems within the Te Pui.
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Now this is another major frontier in terms of exploration,
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because erosion has carved extensive cave networks into the sandstone.
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Some of the largest quartzite caves in the world are found here,
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including the the famous Cueva del Fantasma,
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a huge cave that's only recently been found.
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The name stands for Cave of the Ghost in Spanish,
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and it's so vast that almost two helicopters can comfortably fly in and land.
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There's actually already been new species of poison dart frogs found in this cave.
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What else can be found in these caves?
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Are there other species of amphibians?
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And what microorganisms inhabit this perpetual darkness?
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So we started this video by talking about Angel Falls,
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the tallest waterfall in the world.
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The kind that appears on Instagram posts,
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on screensavers and travel posters.
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But behind that waterfall is a billion year old geological history.
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It's located on a mountain and an ecosystem that has been evolving in isolation for a long time.
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And around the mountain are people who have known it,
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named it and built their understanding of the world around it for thousands of years.
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And even inside the mountain are caves that have never been explored.
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The Te Pui of this region really are one of the most fascinating geological and geographical stories on the planet.
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Over the years, biologists have studied this ecosystem,
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but there is a lot we still don't know,
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and we are still learning,
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still finding new species every time we visit.
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Hence proving that despite modern day science,
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there is still so much we do not know about this beautiful planet.
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And as always, if you like content like this and you like learning more about the planet and its cities,
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its landscapes, and its countries,
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don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
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There's a lot more awesome content on the way, so stay tuned.
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And if there's any specific topic,
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a place, a city, a region,
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a country, a landform that you want me to cover on this channel,
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let me know in the comments below.
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I genuinely love reading the comments and the ideas that people have.
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And as always, I will catch you in the next one.
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Peace.
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Perché praticare il parlato con questo video?
Praticare parlando con questo video su "Islands In The Sky" del Venezuela offre un contesto ricco di contenuti che stimolano l'interesse e la curiosità. La descrizione di paesaggi naturali stupendi come le cascate Angel e i monti Tepui non solo cattura l'attenzione, ma offre anche l'opportunità di cimentarsi con vocaboli specifici e frasi complesse. Utilizzare shadowing - una tecnica che implica il ripetere immediatamente ciò che si ascolta - aiuta a migliorare la pronuncia e la fluidità. Questo è un metodo eccellente per migliorare la pronuncia inglese mentre si assorbono nuove informazioni su geografia e cultura.
Grammatica & Espressioni nel Contesto
- "This mountain, or rather plateau, is called..." - Questa struttura introduce l'argomento in modo chiaro, mostrando come specificare e chiarificare le informazioni possa arricchire la comunicazione.
- "What happened was differential erosion." - L'uso di "what happened" è un ottimo esempio di come fornire spiegazioni logiche e dettagliate, perfetto per imparare l'inglese con youtube.
- "The rock on the Tepui was already ancient before..." - L'uso del passato remoto aiuta a costruire narrazioni, dando storicità e contesto alle informazioni.
- "They are just what remained." - Questa espressione semplice ma potente sottolinea l'importanza di semplificare il linguaggio senza perdere significato.
Trappole Comuni nella Pronuncia
Quando si ascolta il video, ci sono alcune parole e frasi che potrebbero risultare difficili da pronunciare. Ad esempio, termini come Tepui e erosione differenziale potrebbero rappresentare delle sfide. Inoltre, la pronuncia della parola "quartzite" può essere un po' ingannevole per i non madrelingua. Praticare la pronuncia corretta di queste parole attraverso esercizi di shadow speech o shadowspeak è fondamentale. Ricordatevi di ascoltare attentamente le intonazioni e gli accenti, poiché possono cambiare notevolmente il significato di una frase. Utilizzare il video per ripetere e migliorare la propria pronuncia è un modo efficace per apprendere.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.
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