Terra Australis (Latin for South Land) was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. The existence of Terra Australis 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.[1] This theory of balancing land has been documented as early as the 5th century on maps by Macrobius, who uses the term Australis on his maps.[2]
Explanatory text on the reverse of Abraham Ortelius' world map Tabula Orbis Terrarum (1570): ORBIS TERRARUM This Map comprehends and displays an image of the whole Earth and the Ocean surrounding it. The Ancients, (who were as yet surely ignorant of the New World), divided the whole World into three parts, that is, Africa, Europe, and Asia; but our age has added to it America, a fourth part; and a fifth part lying beneath the South Pole, awaits. Gerard Mercator, the Coryphaeus [leader] of the Geographers of our time, in his never sufficiently praised Universal Map, divides the Earth into three Continents: the first of which he so calls, is what we say was for the ancients tripartite, and from whence the human race, according to Holy Writ, took its origin; the second is what we today call America or the West Indies; the third is called Terra Australis, which some call Magellanica, but only a few shores of which has yet been revealed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Australis
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