Who Discovered Australia?

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rdhopkins2

rdhopkins2

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Oct 1, 2002
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Who discovered Australia?

Was it a band of people from PNG or Indonesia or surrounds who are now known as aboriginals?

Was it a band of people from when Australia was pre island?

Was it the Dutch?

Was it the Portugese?

Was it the Spanish?

Was it the French?

We all know the history books at school taught us it was Cook in 1788. In my opinion though he produced the best cartography and proclaimed "terra nullius" on the land (or invasion of you take the aboriginal perspective).

So, who discovered the great southern land we call home?

Whom should we call the first native settlers?

Let's have a good discussion on this and not denigrate the thread in to a troll fest or native title debate.
 
Dutchman Willem Janz/Janssen/Janzoon found the Western Australian coast in 1606. Assuming the Aboriginal people are indigenous having been here for 40,000 plus years then credit goes to him. Cook was remarkable but its a complete joke that he got credited with "discovering" Australia and that was all I was taught at school.

OP- Cook hit he east coast in 1770 and the first fleet arrived in 1788.
 

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We were taught at school about the Portuguese and the Dutch finding Australia before the British (or parts of Australia at least). From memory, the Portguese came first followed by the Dutch and then the British? Depends on your definition of "discovered" I guess.
 
The first indisputably documented European visit to Australian shores, that seems to be agreed upon by most historians was in 1606. The first English landings on any part of what is now Australia were in 1622. William Dampier was documented as the first Englishman to set foot on the Australian mainland in 1688.

The theory that the Portuguese may have visited Australia as early as the 1520s doesn't have a great deal of evidence to support it.
 
People tens of thousands of years ago from what's now generally Asia, when the distance between was two was smaller or were still connected above water (can't remember, I wasn't there). Their names long lost to time obviously.

Willem Janszoon and his crew the first Europeans in the 1600s. Documented anyway.

That so many Australians think James Cook did it says something about Australian cultural history from both ends of the spectrum.

[This reminds me of a joke I heard about Christopher Columbus. To paraphrase, "Columbus must've been super smart. He discovered a continent that already had millions of people living there!"]
 
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This is the age of information, ignorance is a choice.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4211835.htm

I didn't expect the carbon dates to be anything like that. I thought they were going to be very modern. And the carbon dates suggest no, it's 700 years old. That means that there are weapons being used by people in western New South Wales that are creating signatures that look like, you know, sword wounds
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little graham said:
This is the age of information, ignorance is a choice.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4211835.htm
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It's also the age of misinformation. Not all published information is necessarily correct.

"It would now seem that traditional Aboriginal weapons, such as Li-lils, which are made from hardwood, have sharp cutting edges and are documented by early European settlers as being used in conflict, were the style of weapon used to kill “Kaakutja”, which means “older brother” and was the name the Traditional Owners gave to this man,” said Dr. Michael Westaway from Griffith University's Environmental Futures Research Institute.
 
Roylion said:
The first indisputably documented European visit to Australian shores, that seems to be agreed upon by most historians was in 1606..
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I hope you're not relying on the British for your version of history concerning Australia? The british is all lies and propaganda. Ignorance is a choice.
 
little graham said:
I hope you're not relying on the British for your version of history concerning Australia?
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I look forward to reading who you believe was the first verifiable documented European visit to Australia.

little graham said:
The british is all lies and propaganda.
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:rolleyes: Of course it is. Don't want those nasty British getting anything right.

little graham said:
Ignorance is a choice.
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So is readily believing and disseminating misinformation to support a particular agenda.
 

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Procrastinator35 said:
Technically speaking, No one ' Discovered Australia'.

Because it wasn't called Australia until Finders suggested the name, & it was agreed upon in the early 19th Century.
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Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, a Roman living in the fifth century AD posited the term "Australis" for a supposed southern continent. Since then, other names for this hypothetical southern landmass have included Terra Australis Incognita ("The unknown land of the South") or Terra Australis Nondum Cognita ("The Southern Land Not Yet Known"). Other names for the hypothetical continent have included La Australia del Espíritu Santo (Spanish for "the southern land of the Holy Spirit)

The Flemish geographer and cartographer, Cornelius Wytfliet, wrote concerning the Terra Australis in his 1597 book, Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum,:

"The terra Australis is therefore the southernmost of all other lands, directly beneath the antarctic circle; extending beyond the tropic of Capricorn to the West, it ends almost at the equator itself, and separated by a narrow strait lies on the East opposite to New Guinea, only known so far by a few shores because after one voyage and another that route has been given up and unless sailors are forced and driven by stress of winds it is seldom visited. The terra Australis begins at two or three degrees below the equator and it is said by some to be of such magnitude that if at any time it is fully discovered they think it will be the fifth part of the world. Adjoining Guinea on the right are the numerous and vast Solomon Islands which lately became famous by the voyage of Alvarus Mendanius."

Dutch father and son Isaac and Jacob le Maire established the Australische Compagnie (Australian Company) in 1615 to trade with Terra Australis, which they called "Australia".

The Dutch adjectival form Australische (“Australian,”) was used by Dutch officials in Batavia to refer to the newly discovered land to the south as early as 1638. The first English language writer to use the word “Australia” was Alexander Dalrymple in An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean, published in 1771.
 
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Roylion said:
Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, a Roman living in the fifth century AD posited the term "Australis" for a supposed southern continent.
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Latin for Southern? Likely Terra Australis....I guess that's more the point. 'Discovered' by whom?....English history is so departmentalized & partisan.

Then, of course, there's the question of ontology....It's always been here, a bit like oxygen....But the bloke who identifies it, claims & publishes it, gets the kudos.
 
Procrastinator35 said:
Latin for Southern? Likely Terra Australis....I guess that's more the point. 'Discovered' by whom?....English history is so departmentalized & partisan.
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I didn't say "discover". I said "visited".

To repeat. "The first indisputably documented European visit to Australian shores, that seems to be agreed upon by most historians was in 1606."
 
Tayl0r said:
If Newton can be said to have discovered gravity then Australia can be discovered by the current dominant cultural group
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Newton 'identified' gravity as a singular force via the movement of the planets.

What we lived & depended upon via common-sense, he extrapolated & explicated via his mathematical formula.

He proved the phenomenon & made sense of it conceptually, but it always existed independent of that knowledge.

I'm not so sure that 'the poms' did the same so far as identifying & naming this land though....It's conceptualization - even by name - is not independent to them.... Perhaps on the point of the explication of it's existence & being so far as mapping goes. But that was thanks to Flinders, not Cook.
 
Procrastinator35 said:
A fair point of distinction.

So we ought no longer to say 'discovered'' as it's quite clearly inaccurate in every context.....When what we mean is 'lay claim to'.
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We don't know for sure who discovered (i.e. confirmed) the existence of the long speculated Great South Land (Terra Australis) for Europeans. More correctly the term Terra Australis should be applied to Antarctica.

Antarctica comes from the Greek word “antarktike,” which literally means "opposite to the north." John George Bartholomew, a Scottish cartographer, is believed to be the first person to use "Antartica" (1890) to refer to the continent.

However the first indisputably documented European visit to Australian shores, that seems to be agreed upon by most historians was in 1606. Whether this actually confirmed the existence (i.e. the discovery) of Terra Australis for Europeans is disputed. The first English landings on any part of what is now Australia were in 1622. William Dampier was documented as the first Englishman to set foot on the Australian mainland in 1688. He called the land new Holland which has been cocooned by Abel Tasman.

What James Cook did do was to confirm for Europeans that the area making up the modern country of New Zealand was in fact two islands and his expedition became the first recorded Europeans to have encountered the eastern coastline of what is now known as Australia, which he then charted for the first time, showing that this southern landmass was continental in size. He also named the land he had charted (discovered?) New South Wales and in a subsequent voyage confirmed Abel Tasman's earlier discovery that the landmass known as New Holland did not extend all the way to the South Pole as had been commonly believed. Many geographers and cartographers in England still believed that the Terra Australis was believed to lie further south.
 
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