Brief information about Tierra del Fuego

Fireland or the Land of Fire (Spanish: Tierra del Fuego) is an archipelago on the south of South America. Tierra del Fuego incorporates about 40 000 islands which are separated from South America by the Strait of Magellan and by the Drake Strait from Antarctica.

The total area of the islands makes about 74 thousand square kilometers more than half of which – 48 thousand square kilometers – is the territory of the biggest one – Isla Grande. This island is divided between Argentina and Chili, and the most part of the archipelago belongs to the latter. Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, is located on Isla Grande.

First humans appeared in Tierra del Fuego more than 10 thousand years ago. In the 16th century Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan discovered these islands during his round-the-world voyage. He believed it was the northern part of the Unknown Land in the South (Terra Australis Incognita). The indigenes built fires by night so Magellan’s travelers, having taken them for volcanoes, called this land the Land of Fire.

In the middle of the 19th century Tierra del Fuego was colonized by Europeans and, as a consequence of the colonization, indigenous people disappeared. At present pure-blooded indigenes don’t exist: the last representative of a local tribe died in 1999.