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Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Gondwana

name of a region in north central India, from Sanskrit gondavana, from vana "forest" + Gonda, name of a Dravidian people, literally "fleshy navel, outie belly-button." The name was extended by geologists to a series of sedimentary rocks found there (1873), then to identical rocks in other places; the fossils found in this series were used by geologists to reconstruct the ancient southern supercontinent, which therefore was called Gondwanaland (1896), from German, where it was coined by German geologist Eduard Suess (1831-1914) in 1885.

Wikipedia
Gondwana (band)

Gondwana is a reggae group from La Pincoya, Santiago, Chile, founded in 1987 by I-Locks Labbé. They have been produced by Dr. Dread of RAS Records. With their charismatic leader Quique Neira, they found success in Chile and abroad, as the band played shows in Jamaica and the United States, cradles of reggae.

Gondwana (disambiguation)

Gondwana may refer to:

  • Gondwana, a super continent also known as Gondwanaland
  • Gondwana Game Reserve, a game reserve in the Western Cape of South Africa
  • Gondwana (India), region also known as Gondaranya
  • Gondwana (band), Chilean reggae group
  • Gondwanaland (Australian band), Australian world music band, also known as Gondwanaland Project, Gondwana, and Charlie McMahon and Gondwana
    • Gondwanaland, a 1988 album by the above group
  • Gondwanaland (album), an album by Steroid Maximus
  • Gondwana (composition), musical composition by Tristan Murail
  • Gondwana, a song on live album Pangaea by Miles Davis
  • Gondwana-1, a submarine communications cable between Australia and New Caledonia
  • Gondwana Choirs, an Australian National Children's Choir
  • MV Gondwana, a ship that belonged to Greenpeace
Gondwana (Murail)

Gondwana (1980) is a defining musical composition of spectral music for large orchestra composed by Tristan Murail using simulated synthesis to create a harmonic interpolation between an orchestrally synthesized chord derived from a simulated bell sound ( inharmonic) and a chord derived from a trombone sound ( harmonic). This process is meant to evoke the shifting of continents and thus the piece is named after the former supercontinent Gondwana.

The piece uses interpolation to make a smooth transformation on all musical parameters including spectral profile, envelope, and instrumental attacks. The bell sounds were created through a Frequency Modulation (FM) synthesis with a single modulator affecting five carriers to create five different harmonies, these being connected by interpolated chords. The components of the trombone's frequency spectrum was derived through a Fourier transform.

The piece's long quiet or silent moments are shaped in "long, seamlessly evolving paragraphs" evoking the geological processes which created the continent. The first opening slowly transforms a chord before turning to trills. The opening chord is compared to Messiaen. The piece, "incorporates a substantial passage directly modelled upon," Sibelius's Lemminkäinen in Tuonela from the Four Lemminkäinen Legends op.22 (1896).

Gondwana

In paleogeography, Gondwana , also Gondwanaland, is the name given to an ancient supercontinent. It is believed to have sutured between about 570 and 510 million years ago ( Mya), joining East Gondwana to West Gondwana. Gondwana formed prior to Pangaea, and later became part of it.

Around 300 Mya Gondwana and Laurasia joined together to form the supercontinent Pangaea, which existed until approximately 200-180 Mya. Gondwana then separated from Laurasia (the mid- Mesozoic era) in the breakup of Pangaea, drifting farther south after the split. Gondwana itself then also broke apart.

Gondwana included most of the landmasses in today's Southern Hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar, and the Australian continent, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Subcontinent, which have now moved entirely into the Northern Hemisphere.

The continent of Gondwana was named by Austrian scientist Eduard Suess, after the Gondwana region of central northern India which is derived from Sanskrit for "forest of the Gonds". The name had been previously used in a geological context, first by H.B. Medlicott in 1872. from which the Gondwana sedimentary sequences ( Permian- Triassic) are also described.

The adjective "Gondwanan" is in common use in biogeography when referring to patterns of distribution of living organisms, typically when the organisms are restricted to two or more of the now-discontinuous regions that were once part of Gondwana, including the Antarctic flora. For example, the Proteaceae family of plants known only from southern South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand is considered to have a "Gondwanan distribution". This pattern is often considered to indicate an archaic, or relict, lineage.

Usage examples of "gondwana".

In the southern continent of Gondwana a rift developed between Australia and Antarctica.

When Gondwana split, heat was released by volcanos and earthquakes, not by a superplume.

It leaves the southern pole, it cracks across at the equator into twin continents, Laurasia and Gondwana.

Although textbooks give confident-looking representations of ancient landmasses with names like Laurasia, Gondwana, Rodinia, and Pangaea, these are sometimes based on conclusions that don’t altogether hold up.