[00:07.78]Reading
[00:09.14]THE UNKNOWN SOUTHERN LAND
[00:12.75]The “unknown southern land”was in imaginary continent,
[00:17.11]appearing on European maps from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.
[00:22.13]It was first put there by a Greek map maker in the first century AD.
[00:28.00]He believed that south of the Indian Ocean a continent existed with a mild climate,
[00:35.06]where the people were very wealthy.
[00:37.83]However, he warned that it could not be reached because it was surrounded by a ring of fire.
[00:44.36]In the Middle Ages Western people rejected that theory because they believed that the world was flat,
[00:52.56]so there could not be continent on the other side of the world.
[00:56.61]If you were to sail across the ocean,
[00:59.77]you would fall off the earth.
[01:02.12]Besides, they argued that there could not be people beyond the ring of fire if all people came from Adam and Eve.
[01:11.16]Later European map makers copied this continent onto their maps again although nobody had every seen it.
[01:20.72]Scientists argued for its existence saying that there should be a continent in the south to balance that known continents in the north.
[01:30.04]Usually the land was shown as a continent around the South Pole,
[01:35.01]but much larger than Antarctica, as we know it now.
[01:38.77]Tasman sailed past Australia without seeing the continent,
[01:43.92]but discovered Tasmania and the west coast of New Zealand,
[01:47.76]which he thought was part of the southern continent.
[01:51.10]Around this time, the other European nations lost their interest in the search for “the unknown southern land” and concentrated on the Asian continent instead.
[02:02.88]For some time there were no voyages of to the region.
[02:07.61]The French were very active in the eighteenth century.
[02:12.05]One of the French sea captains reported that he had seen very short people.
[02:17.56]What he needed was a new pair of glasses,
[02:21.11]because what he had seen were not people but penguins.
[02:25.24]Another Frenchman reported that he that discovered paradise,
[02:29.79]but he was hanged for telling lies when he came back home.
[02:33.73]As late as 1767 an English scientist published a survey of all discoveries in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean up till then.
[02:44.68]He was positive about the existence of a large unknown continent,
[02:49.67]and believed its northern coast to be lying somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
[02:54.50]Based on this report the English government decided to ask Captain Cook to go and look for this continent.
[03:02.57]James Cook traveled around the world making maps between 1768 and 1771 on his ship, the Endeavour.
[03:13.33]The English government also gave him secret instructions to search for the mysterious continent.
[03:20.78]After visiting Tahiti, Cook set sail to the south,
[03:24.62]where he expected to find land.
[03:26.97]Unable to find it, he decided to set sail for New Zealand, which had already been discovered by the Dutch.
[03:34.80]Passing between the North and the South Island Cook discovered the east coast of Australia more or less by accident.
[03:43.06]When Cook arrived back in England in 1771,
[03:47.79]he still could not answer the question whether there was an unknown southern continent or not.
[03:54.63]So, in 1772 the British government sent him on a second expedition to solve the problem of the southern continent once and for all.
[04:06.49]Cook sailed as far south as possible.
[04:10.12]On 10 December, 1772 he saw the first iceberg.
[04:16.08]For the next to summers,
[04:18.72]Cook sailed between icebergs searching for land, which he found at last.
[04:24.25]Naturally, he thought it was the southern continent,
[04:28.36]but he was very disappointed when it turned out to be just a small inland covered with snow.
[04:34.99]James Cook did not discover Antarctica,
[04:38.73]but when he came home in 1775 he was sure that there was no great southern continent with a mild climate, as scientists had believed for hundreds of years
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