POLAR REGIONS

4 Antarctic Exploration

Defining the Limits T he discovery of Antarctica is a very different story from that of the Arctic. Arctic history starts 20,000 years ago. Antarctica was not even seen until 1820. The Southern Ocean surrounds Antarctica. It is wide and deep. Early humans and many animals could not cross this ocean. This is why Antarctica has remained isolated for so long. Antarctica is the only continent Europeans truly “discovered.” People were living in most countries when the Europeans arrived. However, there were no people living in Antarctica when the first explorers arrived there. The Unknown Land The Greeks thought that there must be a large land in the south to balance the lands they knew in the north. So the idea of a vast southern continent came about. The land at the South Pole was called the “opposite of the Arctic,” or Antarctic. Many of these ideas were forgotten during the Middle Ages . Only the Arabs kept the Greek teachings alive but few Europeans understood Arabic. Latin was the language of teachers and the churches in Europe. It was not until the 15th century that the Greeks’ ideas were translated into Latin. Nothing was known about the southern continent of the Greek teachings. It was called the “unknown land in the south,” which is Terra Australis Incognita in Latin.

T he Greeks thought Terra Australis extended from the Equator to the South Pole. The map above shows the Greek ideas.

T he Portuguese explorer, Magellan, showed that a strait separates South America from Terra Australis .

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