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# Antarctica has appeared on maps of the world since the time of Ptolemy, mostly labelled Terra Australis Incognita
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/antarktida-izvestna-na-kartakh-mira-eshche-so-vremen-ptolemeia-v-osnovnom-ee-oboznachali-kak-terra-avstarlis-inkognita/
- Published: 2023-12-06T12:57:44.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:35:08.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Geography, Maps, Science

Antarctica has appeared on maps of the world since the time of Ptolemy, mostly labelled Terra Australis Incognita. It is there, too, on this world map by Guillaume Le Testu of 1555, drawn in different projections, which records the Strait of Magellan, by then surely well known. From the seventeenth century onwards, however, the Unknown Southern Land vanishes from the maps, and an ocean is drawn in its place.

Neither the expeditions of Cook, which crossed the Antarctic Circle, nor those of Drake, nor of de Lozier, who even put a sub-Antarctic landmass on the charts, nor of de Kerguelen, who discovered an archipelago at 49° S, none of them saw Antarctica, despite the many surveys of the ocean near it. Not even the mountains that can be made out from the Drake Passage. Moreover, Cook, who made three southern polar voyages, wrote in his report that the southern lands would never be discovered by men.

That held until 1819, when not a professional geographer or explorer but a merchant, William Smith, sailed too far south and discovered the South Shetland Islands. After that a dedicated expedition under Bransfield set off southwards and found the land of the Antarctic Peninsula. Even so, they were beaten to it by the Russian expedition under Bellingshausen, which discovered an ice shelf on the coast of Antarctica on 16 January 1820.