As the year draws to a close, BBC Future looks back on some of our favourite stories for their “Best of 2021” collection.
Abel Tasman was on a mission in the year 1642. The seasoned Dutch sailor, with his flamboyant moustache, bushy beard, and predilection for harsh justice (he subsequently tried to hang members of his crew on a drunken whim), was certain of the existence of a massive continent in the southern hemisphere and intended to find it.
Europeans were adamant that there had to be a large land mass there – dubbed Terra Australis ahead of time – to balance out their own continent in the north at the time. The obsession had existed since the time of the Ancient Romans, but it would be put to the test only now.
As a result, on August 14, Tasman set out with two tiny ships from his company’s headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia, heading west, then south, then east, until arriving in New Zealand’s South Island. His first meeting with the indigenous Mori people (who are assumed to have arrived there some centuries earlier) did not go well: on the second day, several paddled out on a canoe and rammed a small boat that was conveying signals between the Dutch ships.
Four Europeans were killed. The Europeans next fired a cannon at 11 more canoes, although it is unknown what happened to them.
And with no sense of irony, Tasman dubbed the tragic spot Moordenaers (Murderers) Bay and sailed home some weeks later without having set foot on this new land. While he thought he’d uncovered the vast southern continent, it wasn’t the business paradise he had imagined. He did not return.
At the time, Australia was already well-known, but Europeans mistook it for the mythical continent they were searching for. It was renamed Terra Australis after they altered their minds.
Tasman had no idea that he had been correct all along. There was a continent that was missing.
A group of geologists made news in 2017 when they revealed the discovery of Zealandia, or Te Riu-a-Mui in Mori. It is roughly six times the size of Madagascar, measuring 1.89 million square miles (4.9 million square kilometres).
The eighth continent discovered? Its size is estimated to be six times that of Madagascar https://t.co/p0PmQOdv6E pic.twitter.com/a47uzrYPKV
— Asia News Today (@asia_newstoday) December 27, 2021
Though encyclopaedias, maps, and search engines around the world had long maintained that there are only seven continents, the team firmly notified the world that this was incorrect. After all, there are eight of them, and the most recent addition is the world’s smallest, thinnest, and youngest. The catch is that 94 percent of it is underwater, with only a few islands protruding from its deep depths, such as New Zealand.
It’d been hiding in plain sight the whole time.
“This is an example of how something that appears to be clear can take a long time to find,” says Andy Tulloch, a geologist of the New Zealand Crown Research Institute GNS Science and a member of the team that discovered Zealandia.
