Terra Australis

Terra Australis (also: Terra Australis Incognita Latin for “the unknown southern land”) was an imaginary continent, appearing on the European charts between the 15th century at the 18th century.

Terra Australis was introduced by Aristote. The idea of Aristote was developed later by Ptolémée, a Greek cartographer of the first century, which thought that the Indian Ocean was girds by southernmost grounds.

With the Rebirth, when Ptolémée became the independent source of information for the European cartographers , the ground started to appear on the charts. Although voyages of exploration sometimes reduced the sector where the continent could have been found, the cartographers continued to draw it on their charts and the scientists pled for his existence, by affirming for example that there should be great continental masses in the southern like Contrepoids with the great continental masses known in the Northern Hemisphere. Often this ground was represented like a continent around the South pole, but much larger than the the Antarctic such as it today is known, overflowing far in north and more particularly in the Pacifique.

In 1605, the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernández de Quirós organized a forwarding at the beginning of the Peru to take possession of the Terra australis in the name of the Spanish crown. He thought of having found the continent while accosting on an island which he baptized “Austrialia LED Espiritu Santo”. In the middle of the 17th century, the New Zealand, firstly observed by an European (Abel Tasman) in 1642, was regarded as belonging to this continent, just like the Australia.

The idea of the Terra Australis was finally corrected by Matthew Flinders and James Cook at the end of the 18th century. Cook made it tower of New Zealand, showing that it could not belong to a continent. In its second voyage, it made it tower of the Earth with very high latitudes, crossing sometimes even the polar circle showing that if there were the possibility of such a southernmost continent this one was to be located in the polar regions. There cannot be extension in the areas to the moderated climate, as he had been imagined previously.

The country off Australia was first termed Terra Australis by Flinders when He wrote has off book this title containing the maps He had made one his several voyages, and the name Australia is derivative off the Word Australis, which means southern in Latin. --->

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