Caprona (island)

Caprona
Original map of Caprona, drawn by Burroughs (1917)
The Land That Time Forgot location
Created by	Edgar Rice Burroughs
Genre	Lost World
Type	Fictional island
Notable characters	Bowen J. Tyler, Lys La Rue

Caprona (also known as Caspak) is a fictitional island in the literary universe of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Caspak trilogy, including The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot, and Out of Time's Abyss.

In the first novel, Caprona is described as a land mass near Antarctica and was first reported by the (fictitious) Italian explorer Caproni in 1721, the location of which was subsequently lost. The island is ringed by high cliffs, making it inaccessible to all but the most intrepid explorers (the people who first explore the island accessed it by taking a submarine through an underground tunnel). It has a tropical river teeming with primitive creatures extinct elsewhere and a thermal inland sea, essentially a huge crater lake, whose heat sustains Caprona’s tropical climate.

Burroughs postulates a unique biological system for his lost world in which the slow progress of evolution in the world outside is recapitulated as a matter of individual metamorphosis. This system is only hinted at in The Land That Time Forgot; presented as a mystery whose explication is gradually worked out over the course of the next two novels, it forms a thematic element serving to unite three otherwise rather loosely linked stories. Dinosaurs, mammals, and primitive humans coexist on the island.

The island is also called Caspak by its native humanoid inhabitants – thus the name of the trilogy.

Various prehistoric creatures reside on Caprona. Among the prehistoric creatures are:

Caprona is home to various tribes. The following tribes are found on Caprona:

Caprona is featured in several films: