The Antipodes - A Brief Ancient History

In ancient times, explorers traveled from place to place far from their home looking for new wealth and treasure. Some of them claimed that the earth was flat as they moved around. However, Greek astronomers, later on, concluded that the world is spherical with southern and northern hemispheres.

In 150 AD, a mapmaker and Greek astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy, came up with the idea that the earth is kept balanced by the unknown land in the south. He then drew an imaginary land that represented the unknown land on the map. Over this time, it was referred to as the unknown land in the south. The Antipodes.

During this century, Europeans were certain about this land in the south, but they were yet to figure out how to get there. In 1570, a map was drawn with a vast imaginary land mass located in the south that was proportional to the land on the top of the earth. For about 200 years, European explorers searched for this unknown southern land. Some of them sailed past it while others bumped into it, but they didn't realize as thy expected a lot of wealth to be in this fabled land.

While explorers from Europe still searched for the unknown land, Aborigines had already settled there. The Aborigines were the first people to settle in Australia. They are thought to have arrived on the continent 50,000 years ago. Aborigines' ancestors are believed to have left Africa 60,000 years ago and have wandered through Asia before they stumbled in the ocean between Australia and the other continents. Since there is no evidence of boats and canoes, it is still uncertain how they crossed to Australia.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand the Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriari.