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Sailing Towards the Modern World: 1700-1900
James Cook (1728-1779)
In the portolani drawn up before the time of Magellan, we see that European map-makers imagined that the South Pacific was much smaller than in fact it is. Instead the cartographers envisioned a large land mass occupying most of the area. They named it Terra Australis Incognita (the Unknown Southern Land). The great English navigator James Cook would finally destroy this myth.
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