Page 94 - 100 Events That Made History

Tasman’s

voyages

A Dutch seafarer maps a

whole NEW CONTINENT

In two voyages of 1642 and 1644,
Abel Tasman reached Tasmania and
New Zealand and mapped the

northern coast of Australia.

The southern continent
The Greek thinker Aristotle was the
first to say that there must be a
Terra Australis (south land) to
balance out the continents in the
northern hemisphere. The imaginary
continent was drawn on MAPS long
before Dutch sailor Willem Janszoon
became the first recorded European
to set foot in Australia in 1606.
Surprisingly, Aristotle was right! This world map from the
1500s shows the huge
Terra Australis running
along the bottom.

The Dutch East India
Company built warehouses
and shipyards in Amsterdam.

Trading superpower
The Dutch East India Company was What came before…
set up in 1602 so Dutch merchants could
dominate European trade with Asia, Australia’s first peoples, the
especially the moneymaking buying Aboriginal Australians, reached
and selling of SPICES. Its employees the southern continent about
built ships and forts, and explored 50,000 years ago. The MAORI
possible new markets around the globe. arrived in New Zealand about
1250. They were hostile toward
early European explorers.
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