This is a map showing what European explorers expected to find in the Pacific: a large unknown continent called Terra Australis Incognita or the Unknown Southland—and sometimes optimistically referred to as Terra Australis Nondum Cognita, the Southland Not Yet Known. The reality of this continent was an article of faith among European navigators for much of the Great Age of Exploration. All through the 16th, 17th, and much of the 18th centuries they searched for it; until Captain Cook finally demonstrated its nonexistence by sailing through what remained of the region in which it was supposed to lie.