In what sequence the continents were discovered by Europeans, you will learn from this article.

In what centuries were the continents discovered?

The discovery of the continents was consistent and logical. It is known that there are 6 continents on our planet. The largest of them is Eurasia. The second continent in terms of territorial size is Africa. Its shores are washed by two oceans - the Atlantic and Indian. Two subsequent continents, South and North America, are connected by a small isthmus of Panama. The fifth continent is Antarctica, which is covered with a thick shell of ice. This is the only mainland of all 6 continents where there are no permanent residents. A large number of polar stations have been created on it, scientists regularly visit them and conduct observations. Australia is the last and smallest continent on the planet.

How did the continents get their names?

The continents were called by the Europeans who discovered them. There is no exact date for the discovery of Eurasia and Africa. It is only known that even the ancient Greeks knew and distinguished Eurasia into Asia and Europe. Europe is the part of the territory that was located to the west of Greece, and Asia was on the east side. Africa became known to the world after the Romans conquered the southern part of the Mediterranean coast.

At the end of the 15th century - the beginning of the 16th century, namely in 1492 he made a long sea expedition and discovered America.

In the 17th century Dutch navigators discovered the fifth continent, which they called "Terra Australis Incognita". It stands for the Unknown Southern Land. The fifth continent was Australia.

Wake up anyone in the middle of the night with the question: “Who discovered America first?”, And without hesitation, they will immediately give you the correct answer, calling the name of Christopher Columbus. This is for everyone known fact, which, it would seem, no one disputes. But was Columbus the first European to set foot on a new land? Not at all. Question one: "So who?". But Columbus was called for a reason discoverer.

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How did Columbus discover

In what century did such significant changes for the world take place? The official date for the discovery of a new continent called the Americas is 1499, 15th century. At that time, speculation began to appear among the inhabitants of Europe that the earth was round. They began to think about the possibility of navigation on the Atlantic Ocean and the opening of the western route straight to the shores of Asia.

The story of how Columbus discovered America is very funny. It so happened that he randomly stumbled upon the New World, holding the way to distant India.

Christopher was an avid sailor, from a young age who managed to visit all known at that time. Carefully studying a huge number of geographical maps, Columbus planned to sail to India through the Atlantic without passing through Africa.

He, like many scientists of that time, naively believed that, having gone straight from Western Europe to the East, he would reach the shores of such Asian countries as China and India. No one could even imagine what was in his way all of a sudden. new lands will appear.

It is the day when Columbus reached the shores of the new mainland and is considered beginning of American history.

Continents discovered by Columbus

Christopher is considered the one who discovered North America. But in parallel with it, after the news of the New World spread to all countries, in the struggle for the development of the northern territories the British entered.

In total, the navigator made four expeditions. The continents that Columbus discovered: the island of Haiti or, as the traveler himself called it, Lesser Spain, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Antigua and many other territories of North America. From 1498 to 1504, during his last expeditions, the navigator already mastered lands of south america, where he reached the shores of not only Venezuela, but also Brazil. A little later, the expedition reached Central America, where the coastlines of Nicaragua and Honduras were developed, all the way to Panama.

Who else mastered America

Formally, many navigators opened America to the world in different ways. History counts many names associated with the development of the lands of the New World. The Columbus case continued:

• Alexander Mackenzie;
• William Buffin;
• Henry Hudson;
• John Davis.

Thanks to these navigators, the entire continent was explored and mastered, including Pacific coast.

Also, another discoverer of America is considered a no less famous person - Amerigo Vespucci. The Portuguese navigator went on expeditions and explored the coast of Brazil.

It was he who first suggested that Christopher Columbus sailed far not to China and India, but to previously unknown. His conjectures were confirmed by Fernand Magellan, after making the first trip around the world.

It is believed that the mainland was named precisely in honor of Vespucci, contrary to all the logic of what is happening. And today the New World is known to everyone under the name of America, and not in any other way. So who really discovered America?

Pre-Columbian expeditions to the Americas

In the legends and beliefs of the Scandinavian peoples, one can often stumble upon the mention of distant lands called Vinland located near Greenland. Historians believe that it was the Vikings who discovered America and became the first Europeans to set foot on the lands of the New World, and in their legends, Vinland is nothing more than Newfoundland.

Everyone knows how Columbus discovered America, but in fact Christopher was far away not the first navigator who visited this continent. Leif Erickson, who named one of the parts of the new continent as Vinland, cannot be called the discoverer either.

Who is considered first? Historians dare to believe that he was a merchant from distant Scandinavia - Bjarni Herjulfsson, which is mentioned in the Greenlanders' Saga. According to this literary work, in 985. he moved towards Greenland to meet his father, but lost his way due to a strong storm.

Before the discovery of America, the merchant had to sail at random, since he had not seen the lands of Greenland before and did not know a specific course. He soon reached the level shores of an unknown island covered with forests. Such a description did not fit Greenland at all, which surprised him greatly. Bjarni decided not to land and turn back.

Soon he sailed to Greenland, where he told this story to Leif Erickson, the son of the discoverer of Greenland. Exactly he became the first of the vikings who tried their luck to enter to the lands of America before Columbus, which he called Vinland.

Forced search for new lands

Important! Greenland is not the most pleasant country to live in. It is poor in resources, with a harsh climate. The possibility of resettlement at that time seemed like a pipe dream for the Vikings.

Stories about fertile lands covered with dense forests only spurred them on. Erickson gathered a small team for himself and set off on a journey in search of new territories. Leif became the one who discovered North America.

The first uncharted places they stumbled upon were rocky and mountainous. In their description today, historians see nothing more than baffin land. The subsequent coasts turned out to be low-lying, with green forests and long sandy beaches. This historians were very reminded of the description coast of the Labrador Peninsula in Canada.

On the new lands, wood was mined, which is so hard to find in Greenland. Subsequently, the Vikings founded the first two settlements in the New World, and all these territories were called Vinland.

The scientist who was nicknamed the "second Columbus"

The famous German geographer, naturalist and traveler - all this is one great man, whose name is Alexander Humboldt.

This great scientist opened America to others on the scientific side, having spent many years on research, and he was not alone. About what kind of partner he needed, Humbaldt did not hesitate for a long time and immediately made his choice in favor of Bonpland.

Humboldt and French botanist in 1799. went to scientific expedition to South America and Mexico, which lasted for five years. This journey brought scientists worldwide fame, and Humboldt himself was called the "second Columbus".

It's believed that in 1796 The scientist set himself the following tasks:

• explore little-studied areas of the globe;
• systematize all the information received;
• taking into account the results of research by other scientists, a comprehensive description of the structure of the universe.

All tasks, of course, were successfully completed. After the discovery of America as a continent, no one dared to conduct such research. Therefore, he decides to go to the least explored area - the West Indies, which allows him to achieve tremendous results. Humboldt created the first geographical maps discovered America almost simultaneously, but in world history the name of Christopher Columbus will always be the first in the list of those who mastered the territories of the New World.

The assumption of the existence at the South Pole of a mysterious Terra Australis Incognita- Southern unknown land - they spoke out long before the equipment of the first real expeditions there. Ever since scientists realized that the Earth is spherical, they have assumed that the areas of land and sea in the northern and southern hemispheres are about the same. Otherwise, they say, the balance would be disturbed, and our planet would be oriented towards the Sun with a side with a larger mass.

Once again, one has to be surprised at the clairvoyance of M.V. Lomonosov, who in 1763, even before Cook's expeditions, very clearly formulated his idea of ​​​​the Southern land: “In the vicinity of the Strait of Magellan and opposite the Cape of Good Hope, about 53 degrees of midday width, great ice moves, why there should be no doubt that at a great distance the islands and the hardened land are covered with many and non-falling snows, and that a large expanse of the earth's surface near the South Pole is occupied by them, than in the north.

A curious moment: at first, the opinion prevailed that the southern continent was much larger than it really was. And when the Dutchman Willem Janson discovered Australia, he gave it a name, based on the assumption that it is part of the same Terra Australis Incognita…

Off the coast of Antarctica. Photo: Peter Holgate.

The first who managed, albeit not of their own free will, to cross the Antarctic Circle and, in all likelihood, see Antarctica became the Dutch. In 1559, the ship commanded by Dirk Geeritz, in the Strait of Magellan fell into a storm and was carried far to the south. Having reached 64 degrees south latitude, the sailors saw "high land". But besides this mention, history has not preserved other evidence of a possible discovery. As soon as the weather permitted, Geeritz immediately left the inhospitable Antarctic waters.

Dutch galleon of the 16th century.

It is possible that the case with the ship Geeritsa was not the only one. Already in our time, on the coast of the Antarctic islands, wrecks of ships, clothes and kitchen utensils, dating back to the 16th-17th centuries, have been repeatedly found. One of these wrecks, which belonged to an 18th-century Spanish galleon, is kept in the museum of the Chilean city of Valparaiso. True, skeptics believe that all this evidence of shipwrecks could be brought to Antarctica waves and currents.

In the 17th-18th centuries, French navigators distinguished themselves: they discovered the islands of South Georgia, Bouvet and Kerguelen, located in "roaring forties" latitudes. The British, not wanting to lag behind their competitors, in 1768-1775 also equipped two expeditions in a row. It was they who became an important stage in the study of the southern hemisphere.

Both expeditions were led by the famous captain James Cook. He repeatedly crossed the Arctic Circle, was covered with ice, crossed the 71st degree south latitude and was only 75 miles from the coast of the sixth continent, but an insurmountable wall of ice prevented them from reaching.

Cook's expedition ship Endeavor, modern replica.

Despite the failure to find mainland land, on the whole, Cook's expeditions brought impressive results. It was found that New Zealand is an archipelago, and not part of the southern mainland, as previously assumed. In addition, the coasts of Australia, the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean were surveyed, several islands were discovered, astronomical observations were made, etc.

In domestic literature there are allegations that Cook did not believe in the existence of the Southern Land and allegedly openly declared this. Actually it is not. James Cook argued just the opposite: “I will not deny that there may be a continent or a significant land near the pole. On the contrary, I am convinced that such a land exists, and it is possible that we have seen part of it. Great cold, a huge number of icy islands and floating ice - all this proves that the land in the south must be ".

He even wrote a special treatise "Arguments for the existence of land near the South Pole", and named the open South Sandwich Islands in honor of the first Lord of the Admiralty Sandwich Land, mistakenly believing that this was a ledge of the continental land of the southern continent. However, Cook, faced with the extremely harsh Antarctic climate, came to the conclusion that further research was pointless. Because the mainland “Being open and examined, it would still not benefit either navigation, or geography, or other branches of science”. Probably, it was this statement that for a long time discouraged the desire to send new expeditions to the South Land, and for half a century, the harsh Antarctic waters were visited mainly by whaling and hunting ships.

Captain James Cook.

The next and perhaps the most important discovery in history Antarctica was made by Russian sailors. In July 1819, the first Russian Antarctic expedition started as part of two Russian Imperial fleets. Vostok and Mirny. The first of them, and the detachment as a whole, was commanded by a captain of the 2nd rank, the second - by lieutenant Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev. It is curious that the goals of the expedition were exclusively scientific - she was supposed to explore the remote waters of the oceans and find the mysterious southern continent, penetrating "to the farthest latitude that can be reached".

The Russian sailors fulfilled the assigned tasks brilliantly. On January 28 (according to the ship's "mean astronomical" time, ahead of St. Petersburg by 12 hours), 1820, they came close to the ice barrier of the Antarctic continent. According to them, before them was "Ice field dotted with mounds". Lieutenant Lazarev spoke more specifically: “we met hardened ice of extreme height ... it extended as far as vision could only reach ... From here we continued our way to the east, encroaching at every opportunity to the south, but we always met an ice continent”. This day is now considered the opening day. Antarctica. Although, strictly speaking, the Russian sailors did not see the land itself at that time: they were 20 miles from the coast, later called Queen Maud Land, and only an ice shelf appeared to their eyes.

It is curious that just three days later, on the other side of the mainland, an English sailing ship under the command of captain Edward Bransfield approached the Antarctic Peninsula, and the land was supposedly visible from its side. The same was claimed by the captain of the American hunting ship Nathaniel Palmer who visited the same place in November 1820. True, both of these ships were engaged in fishing for whales and seals, and their captains were primarily interested in commercial benefits, and not in the laurels of the discoverers of new lands.

American whalers in Antarctic waters. Artist Roy Cross.

In fairness, we note that, despite a number of controversial issues, recognition and Lazareva pioneers Antarctica deserved and fair. January 28, 1821 - exactly one year after the meeting with "ice continent"- Russian sailors in sunny weather clearly saw and even sketched a mountainous coast. The last doubts disappeared: not just an ice massif stretched to the south, but snow-covered rocks. The open land was mapped as Alexander I Land. It is interesting to note that for a long time Alexander I Land was considered part of the mainland, and only in 1940 it became clear that it was an island: a strait was discovered under a multi-meter thick ice shelf separating it from the continent.

For two years of navigation, the ships of the first Russian Antarctic expedition circled the open mainland, leaving more than 50 thousand miles astern. 29 new islands were discovered, a huge amount of various research was carried out.

Sloops "Vostok" and "Mirny" off the coast of Antarctica. Artist E.V.Voishvillo.

The first person to set foot on the ground - or rather, ice - of the southern continent, in all likelihood, was the American St. John Davis. On February 7, 1821, he landed from a fishing vessel ashore in West Antarctica near Cape Charles. However, this fact is not documented in any way and is given only from the words of a sailor, so many historians do not recognize it. The very first confirmed landing on the ice continent took place 74 years (!) Later - on January 24, 1895. Norwegian

16 (28 NS) January 1820 the sailboats "Vostok" and "Mirny" approached the "covered with hilly ice," as Bellingshausen pointed out in his diary, the coast of Antarctica. So the last continent on Earth was discovered - the era of great geographical discoveries ended successfully.

O. Tikhomirov

Antarctica (Greek ἀνταρκτικός - the opposite of the Arctic) is the sixth, last discovered, mainland in the very south of the Earth, the center of Antarctica approximately coincides with the geographic south pole. Antarctica, together with the Antarctica region that stretches around it, is a world natural reserve.

The other day marks 190 years since the discovery of Antarctica, so we have prepared this publication so that each of us can discover a little interesting and informative about Antarctica and Antarctica.

Satellite view of Antarctica

Treaty, Protocol and Claims

International Antarctic Post

True, the existence of a treaty does not mean that even the states that acceded to it have renounced their territorial claims to the continent and the adjacent space. On the contrary, the territorial claims of some countries are formidable. For example, Norway claims territory ten times its own. Great territories "declared" their Great Britain. Australia considers almost half of Antarctica to be its own, into which, however, the "French" Adélie Land is wedged. Presented territorial claims and New Zealand. Great Britain, Chile and Argentina claim practically the same territory, including the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands.

Territorial claims to Antarctica

Russian research station "Vostok", south geomagnetic pole

Discovery of Antarctica

Land of Alexander I. Drawing from life, made by a member of the Bellingshausen expedition, artist Pavel Nikolaevich Mikhailov in January 1821.

Antarctica is the highest continent of the Earth, the average height of the surface of the continent above sea level is more than 2000 m, and in the center it reaches 4000 meters. Most of this height is the permanent ice sheet of the continent, and only 0.3% of its area is ice-free.

Ice of Antarctica

Map of Antarctica

Weather in Antarctica

In addition to the cold pole, in Antarctica there are points of the lowest relative air humidity, the strongest and most prolonged wind, and the most intense solar radiation.

Another feature of Antarctica is the winds that blow only near the surface. Due to the large amount of ice dust they carry, visibility is almost zero. The strength of the wind is proportional to the steepness of the slopes of the continent and in coastal areas with a high slope towards the sea reaches hurricane values. The maximum wind force is reached in the Antarctic winter. In addition, they blow almost continuously around the clock, and from November to March - throughout the night. Only in summer, during the daytime, due to the slight heating of the near-surface layer of air by the sun, the winds stop.

Winds of Antarctica from the air

Up to 90% of the Earth's fresh water is concentrated in the Antarctic ice. And despite the almost constant strong sub-zero temperatures, there are even lakes in Antarctica, and in the summer, rivers. The food of the rivers is glacial. Due to the intense solar radiation, due to the exceptional transparency of the air, the melting of glaciers occurs even at sub-zero temperatures. With the onset of severe frosts, the melting stops, and the deep channels of the melted streams with steep banks are covered with snow. Sometimes the channels of the streams are blocked even before the current freezes, and then the streams flow in ice tunnels, completely invisible from the surface, gradually forming lakes. They are almost always covered with a thick layer of ice. However, in summer, if the lake is not deep from the surface, along the banks and at the mouths of streams, their banks open.

Blue ice covering Lake Fryxell in the Transantarctic Mountains

In Antarctica there are peculiar glacial "swamps". They form in the summer in the lowlands. The melt water flowing into them forms a snow-water porridge, viscous, like ordinary swamps. The depth of such "bogs" is most often no more than one and a half meters. But from above they are covered with a thin ice crust, and like real swamps, they are sometimes impassable even for caterpillar vehicles: a tractor or all-terrain vehicle that has got into such a place, bogged down in a snow and water porridge, will not get out without outside help.

Dormant volcano Erebus - "Guardian of the gates of the South Pole"

Why is it necessary to study and develop Antarctica