in the world until now, there are disputes about who discovered Australia.Some argue that this is James Cook, navigator from England.Others are convinced that the Danes were the discoverers of the continent, to find a way to their colony in Java.
general, the first people came here long before the Europeans.More than forty thousand years ago, this continent was chosen by immigrants from southern Asia.Mysterious avstralius terra incognita (unknown southern land) - is it still knew the ancient geographers.Already in the fifteenth century on the cards they signified the mysterious continent.However, the outlines of them this vast land area nothing like the real Australia.
The dispute about who discovered Australia, come and Portuguese, claiming that information on a new continent, Portuguese sailors got back in the sixteenth century by Aboriginal Malay islands that sea cucumbers caught in the coastal waters of the unknown continent.But the first leg of a European set foot on Australian soil only in the seventeenth century.
history of the discovery of Australia has long been associated with the name Cook, but still the first inhabitants of Europe, which visited the continent green (sometimes referred to as Australia), according to the Dutch.No wonder the western part of this amazing continent later became known as New Holland.
In 1605 Willem Janszoon from Holland, who crossed the Torres Strait, sailed along the Cape York Peninsula.A year later, Torres from Spain discovered the strait that separates the island of New Guinea from the continent.In 1642, the Dane Abel Tasman visited the south-western part of Tasmania, considering it part of Australia.And Yanszon and Tasman met on the mainland with the natives.
and Dutch, and Spanish, and the Danes were not publicly announce the opening of a new continent.It is because of the issue of secrecy pioneers who discovered Australia, and is now contested by the British, who came to this land 150 years after the first Europeans.
In 1770, the east coast of Australia moored ships of James Cook, who immediately declared the new British land holdings.Soon there created a royal "penal colony" for criminals, and later for the British political exiles.
In 1788, the British, who arrived with the "First Fleet" on the Australian land based the city of Sydney, which later became the center of the British colony.With the "second Fleet" arrived first free settlers who began vigorously develop the green expanse of the continent.
Mainland originally bore the name "New Holland", the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries, with a light hand of the English hydrographer Flinders became known as "Australia".Aborigines by this time were brutally massacred by the colonialists.Aboriginal people raiding, hunting, Aboriginal poisoned poisons and pays a premium for those killed.Within a hundred years after the appearance on the British mainland most of the local residents were cut off, and the survivors herded into the central regions of the continent, deserted and lifeless.
Relatively recently learned new facts.So, even before James Cook in this southern continent visited another Briton - William Dampier.And in 1432 Australia visited the Chinese navigator Zheng He.
Yet none of the modern world powers can not be considered as a country open to the world the green continent.The first, long before the Europeans, it was visited by the ancient Egyptians.They were used for mummification eucalyptus - a tree that grew only in the northeast of Australia.And on the rocks of this continent can find ancient scarabs pictures - sacred beetles of ancient Egypt.
So, the question of who discovered Australia - a very controversial issue that is still struggling historians.
