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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. … Read more

Ptolemaic maps from the fifteenth century, do not even include the Pacific—what Cook would later call “the fourth part” of the globe. Their focus is on the known, inhabited regions of the world, which means, at this stage of history, that there is nothing west of Europe, east of Asia, or south of the Tropic … Read more