George, the last survivor of the Chelonoidis Abingdoni subspecies of giant tortoises, has died. He lived in one of the ships of evolution, he traveled at the pace of a tortoise, this is how the Galapagos Islands move and now they have lost their most emblematic navigator. The ship on which George sailed moves at about seven centimeters per year in the direction of the continent. The Galapagos Islands are home to the world's most active volcanoes. With their frenetic activity they are the engine that makes that area of the earth maintain those levels of revolutionary activity for life and geology.

Perhaps Darwin and George, who until yesterday was over a hundred years old, once crossed their eyes. In that time, until yesterday, the islands traveled about a decameter through the oceanic crust. When they had traveled a quarter of a decameter since George came into the world, the hypothesis of evolution, of which he was an active interpreter through the pen of Charles Darwin, became the theory considered as the primary explanation of the evolutionary process.

What is truly peculiar and transcendental about his death is that a species that was doomed to extinction for more than forty years, has finally done so, the announced agony; now there are only thirteen of the seventeen species of giant tortoises catalogued.

Since George was born, many things have happened in the world, even without knowing it, he revolutionized the theory of continental drift and plate tectonics. From static or creationist postulates when he was a child, everything evolved to dynamic, mutable and changing theories; he lived through the 20th century, the century of the world wars he may have experienced, the century of the scientific and technical revolution in which he actively participated.

When those islands had travelled almost half a diameter since he was born, someone discovered George. It was 1971, but he had to be saved in 1972, the invasive species that were introduced for livestock, killed his relatives, then we realized: he was the only specimen of his species, he could never have offspring with relatives from other islands, the species was no longer salvageable.

Half a decade later, he left us when he was on his way to his watering place, he was thirsty, but he did not get to drink. It has orphaned a small piece of land, small in extension but enormous in significance for our cultural and scientific evolution. The Galapagos Islands, a World Heritage Site since 1978, were named after the subspecies Chelonoidis Abingdoni.

Paradoxically, these giant tortoises are no longer there or anywhere else; now the Galapagos Islands are the islands without Galapagos. A faithful reflection of a Nature manipulated by the human being and of a world of stratified relationships that we are living at all levels that no one is surprised anymore, because it is the normal thing in our days: we pretend to be the opposite of what we are, claiming repeatedly to be an appearance. This time history has wanted the very cradle of modern science to participate in our diabolical game. Could it be a test of evolution?