Terra Australis Incognita Definition

Ptolemy (2nd century AD) believed that the Indian Ocean was surrounded by land to the south and that the countries of the northern hemisphere should be balanced by land to the south. [1] Marcus Tullius Cicero used the term cingulus australis («southern zone») in reference to the antipodes of Somnium Scipionis («Scipio`s dream»). [8] The land (terra in Latin) in this area was Terra Australis. [9] When two-dimensional maps were projected onto the sphere, isthmus theory created the image of the globe. A curious extension of Ptolemy`s strip of land appears on the Mappa mundi de Lopo Homem of 1519, where the continuity of the southern landmass is ensured by the unification of Asia not with Africa (the Portuguese had already bypassed the Cape of Good Hope), but with South America. Terra Australis is therefore the southernmost of all other countries, directly below the Arctic Circle; It extends beyond the Tropic of Capricorn to the west, ends almost at the equator itself and lies through a narrow strait to the east opposite New Guinea, which is known so far only from certain coasts, because this route has been abandoned after one voyage and another, and if sailors are not forced and pushed by the stress of the winds, It is rarely visited. Terra Australis starts two or three degrees below the equator and is considered by some to be of such size that if it is fully discovered at any time, they think it will be the fifth part of the world. Guinea on the right is joined by the many huge Solomon Islands, recently made famous by the voyage of Alvarus Mendanius. [31] Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, another Portuguese navigator who sailed for the Spanish crown, saw a large island south of New Guinea in 1606, which he named La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo. [35] He presented it to the King of Spain under the name of Terra Australis incognita. In his 10th Memorial (1610), Queirós stated: «New Guinea is the upper extremity of the southern country which I deal with [discusses], and that the people and customs, mentioned with everything else, resemble them.» [36] Around 200 AD, Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek cartographer, drew a fictional country on the floor of his world maps. This imaginary land to the south was called Terra Australis, which in Latin means the land of the south (terra = country + australis = south).

He took Magellan`s discovery of Tierra del Fuego in 1520 as further confirmation of its existence, describing it on his globes of 1523 and 1533 as terra australis recenter inventa sed nondum plene cognita («Terra Australis, recently discovered but not yet fully known»). It was taken up by his disciples, the French cosmographer Oronce Fine in his 1531 map of the world and the Flemish cartographers Gerardus Mercator in 1538 and Abraham Ortelius in 1570. Schöner`s concepts influenced the Dieppe school of cartographers, particularly in their depiction of Jave the Great. [24] This so-called «strait» was actually the Rio de la Plata (or Gulf of San Matias). By «vndtere Presill», the Zeytung meant the part of Brazil in the lower latitudes, but Schöner confused it with the land on the south side of the «strait», in the higher latitudes, and thus gave it the opposite meaning. On this slender foundation, he built his circummantarctic continent, to which he gave a ring shape for reasons he does not explain. In an accompanying explanatory treatise, Luculentissima quaedam terrae totius descriptio («A very clear description of all countries»), he explains: Cartographic representations of the southern continent in the 16th and early 17th centuries varied greatly from map to map, as might be expected for a concept based on so much guesswork and minimal data; In general, the continent shrank as potential locations were reinterpreted. The largest was Tierra del Fuego, which was separated from South America by a small strait. New Guinea; and what you would call Australia. In Ortelius` Atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, published in 1570, Terra Australis extends north of the Tropic of Capricorn into the Pacific Ocean. Terra Australis (Latin: «Land of the South») was a hypothetical continent first postulated in antiquity and appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries.