Four years on and the continent is as enigmatic as ever, its secrets jealously guarded beneath 6,560 ft (2km) of water. "This is an example of how something very obvious can take a while to uncover," says Andy Tulloch, a geologist at the New Zealand Crown Research Institute GNS Science, who was part of the team that discovered Zealandia.īut this is just the beginning. It had been hiding in plain sight all along. The catch is that 94% of it is underwater, with just a handful of islands, such as New Zealand, thrusting out from its oceanic depths. There are eight after all – and the latest addition breaks all the records, as the smallest, thinnest, and youngest in the world. Though the world's encyclopaedias, maps and search engines had been adamant that there are just seven continents for some time, the team confidently informed the world that this was wrong. A vast continent of 1.89 million sq miles (4.9 million sq km) it is around six times the size of Madagascar. In 2017, a group of geologists hit the headlines when they announced their discovery of Zealandia – Te Riu-a-Māui in the Māori language. Little did Tasman know, he was right all along. Later, it was named after Terra Australis when they changed their minds). (By this time, Australia was already known about, but the Europeans thought it was not the legendary continent they were looking for. While he believed that he had indeed discovered the great southern continent, evidently, it was hardly the commercial utopia he had envisaged. Later, the Europeans fired a cannon at 11 more canoes – it’s not known what happened to their targets.Īnd that was the end of his mission – Tasman named the fateful location Moordenaers (Murderers) Bay, with little sense of irony, and sailed home several weeks later without even having set foot on this new land. His first encounter with the local Māori people (who are thought to have settled there several centuries earlier) did not go well: on day two, several paddled out on a canoe, and rammed a small boat that was passing messages between the Dutch ships. The fixation dated back to Ancient Roman times, but only now was it going to be tested.Īnd so, on 14 August, Tasman set sail from his company's base in Jakarta, Indonesia, with two small ships and headed west, then south, then east, eventually ending up at the South Island of New Zealand. The experienced Dutch sailor, who sported a flamboyant moustache, bushy goatee and penchant for rough justice – he later tried to hang some of his crew on a drunken whim – was confident of the existence of a vast continent in the southern hemisphere, and determined to find it.Īt the time, this portion of the globe was still largely mysterious to Europeans, but they had an unshakeable belief that there must be a large land mass there – pre-emptively named Terra Australis – to balance out their own continent in the North.
It was 1642 and Abel Tasman was on a mission. As we head towards the end of another extraordinary year, BBC Future is taking a look back at some of our favourite stories for our “Best of 2021” collection.
0 kommentar(er)
