Part 6: Bonus Update 1: Okay What Does Gond Actually Mean Seriously

Right, so, what we've been doing is important. VERY important. I cannot overstate this. But nonetheless, we must put it on hold for a bit - just a bit! It's not even a full bite! - to answer some extremely pressing questions before they actually physically squish us.

BONUS UPDATE 1: Okay What Does Gond Actually Mean Seriously

Like most stories this one absolutely does not begin in the Victorian era but that is where we'll start anyways.


^{Did you know that cameras used to make your eyes look lazy? It could be true!}

Once upon there was a man. A man with a beard. A man who loved rocks a lot. A whole damned lot. His name was Henry Benedict Medlicott, believe it or not, and he loved rocks so much he went to India to see some exciting new ones, and there he fucked around considerably until 1872, when he noticed some rocks that didn't quite seem to fit into the older, Cambrian-ish stone of the Vindhyan supergroup. Well, this younger Permian-oid to Triassic-or-so stone needed a name, which Medlicott suggested be 'Gondwana.'


^{Actually he was completely wrong about how this all worked but let's leave that aside for the moment}

A dozen or so years after that, some other guy called Edward Suess popped up and noted that this funny little kind of seed fern called Glossopteris was found throughout the Permian stone of Africa, South America, and India. He figured they were all wedged together at some point, and called the hypothetical southern supercontinent 'Gondwanaland,' likely because everyone had already realized that 'Gondwana' was a very satisfying word to say and should be said as often as possible in as many ways as possible.


^{The picture on the left is the only image here that isn't rubber-stamped fifty times over with giant PUBLIC DOMAIN labels so have a nice citation}

But all of that doesn't matter that much because the actual, factual origin of the term 'Gond' - and henceforth, Gondwana, and so on, Gondwanaland - is the Gond (or Gondi) people of India. Unlike our own Gonds, you may notice a distinct lack of scales, feathers, a diapsid skull, or the ability to weigh multiple tons.
Do not confuse the two. It would be confusing.