— About —
Kathelijne Bonne is the inspirer of GondwanaTalks and writes and edits most articles.
Why I started this blog:
"What could be more intriguing than the interconnectedness of all spheres of our complex planetary system? From the deep ocean floor to the stratosphere, from microscopic life to forest giants, all the environments are interwoven. Outbursts of chemical energy at black smokers may have given rise to life; the monumental drifting of tectonic plates has kept the planet habitable through the eons; invisible soil forming processes form the base of the layer of biomass we live in and are part of. Species have wandered across shifting seas and lands and so have our forebears, to finally create communities and civilizations. What we are today could not have been without lifetimes of continual change, evolution, inventions, adaptations, extinctions and new opportunities, all interspersed with some droplets of luck and maybe a fortunate alignment of stars. Endowed with an unusual mind, humanity can finally look back and connect all the dots. I take pleasure in connecting a few of those dots. This is probably one of the reasons why I started GondwanaTalks."
Some background: I'm Flemish with roots in the City of Ghent (Belgium) where I studied Geology and Soil Science. After some wanderings across Europe and Africa – for work, pleasure and discovering – absorbing languages, landscapes, friendships and ideas, I landed in a village at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama in Spain. Here my GondwanaTalks writing activities took off, but the passion for nature has been with me since I was a child.
Silvia from Mar del Plata is a writer of contemporary fiction. After studying Economics in Buenos Aires she moved to Madrid in 2005. She worked in the world of culture and then took a leap of faith and started studying Philosophy and writing. She publishes articles on filosophy, economy, big data, femenism and publishing on www.silviazuletaromano.com and regularly contributes to literary magazines.
Other authors too have contributed to GondwanaTalks, like Marc Verhaegen who provided valuable information for the article on the Waterside Hypothesis of human evolution, Dorothea Eue on the worlds of Narnia and climate change, Roseanne Chambers on the geology of Machu Picchu, Sam Poppe and colleagues on restless Etna early 2021.
Many other people, especially family members, friends and other victims, have read and commented early versions, provided ideas, picked out errors, that all contributed to the best possible final versions of my articles. Despite all the combined efforts, the articles may still contain unintentional errors, more about them in the disclaimer and copyright statements.
(the newsletter has text only, no irritating gifs or other heavy files)