Wikibooks: Australian History/Early Explorers

• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Subjects: Pacific; Indian; New Zealand; South Pole; Polo; Terra Australis; Antarc*; Antarctica; South pole
• Online Access: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Australian_History/Early_Explorers

lsaquo [[Return to the Contents]] lsaquo [[Back to First Settlers]] Prior to the arrival in Australia of Captain James Cook Australia has been the focus both of European mythology as Terra Australis. Similarly contrary to popular mythology a number of non Indigenous explorers have travelled to Australia prior to Captain Cook s discovery of the continent. =Terra Australis= The term Terra Australis was first introduced by Aristotle. Aristotle s ideas were later expanded by Ptolemy a Greek cartographer from the first century AD who believed that the Indian Ocean was enclosed on the south by land. When during the Renaissance Ptolemy became the main source of information for European cartographers the land started to appear on their maps. Although voyages of discovery sometimes did reduce the area where the continent could be found cartographers kept drawing it on their maps and scientists argued for its existence with such arguments as that there should be a large landmass in the south as a counterweight against the known landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere. Usually the land was shown as a continent around the South Pole but much larger than the actual Antarctica spreading far north in particular in the Pacific Ocean area. New Zealand discovered by Abel Tasman in 1642 was by some regarded as a part of the continent as well as Africa and Australia. The idea of Terra Australis was finally corrected by James Cook. On his first voyage he circumnavigated New Zealand showing it could not be part of a large continent. On his second voyage he circumnavigated the globe at a very high southern latitude at some places even crossing the south polar circle showing that any possible southern continent must lie well within the cold polar areas and not in regions with a temperate climate as had been thought before. =Key Explorers= =Marco Polo and Cristóvão de Mendonça= In about 1300 Marco Polo made reference to the reputed existence of a vast southern continent although there is no evidence that he had specific knowledge of ...