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Terra Australis
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Terra Australis is a Latin term for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere that people imagined existed since ancient times. It mattered because this belief influenced exploration and mapmaking for centuries until modern navigation eventually proved the continent didn't exist.
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Wikidata facts
- Location
- Southern Hemisphere
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- Commons category
- Terra Australis
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Encyclopedic overview
Terra Australis (Latin for 'Southern Land') was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Its existence was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that continental land in the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the Southern Hemisphere.
Names
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Terra Australis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.