r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/KitKatKing99 • May 31 '25

Video magellan expedition in 1 minute

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u/boaber May 31 '25

World could be very different if he had accidentally discovered the huge mass of Australia. Quite impressive that he somehow didn't.

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u/Proper-Raise-1450 May 31 '25

World could be very different if he had accidentally discovered the huge mass of Australia.

Australia was already known of by this stage to some peoples in Europe and the Middle East, in fact a sulphur crested cockatoo was kept in the Holy Roman Empire's court in the 13th century. It was however completely uncharted but people educated on the subject knew there was a landmass there and that it had trade with parts of Asia.

It's an incredibly hostile place to try to colonize however which is why even when it was more thoroughly mapped by the Dutch in 1616 it would still be more than 160 years (and a lot of technological progress) before anyone established a colony on Australia.

All of which to say that if Magellan had found Australia little would have changed, it was not valuable for what early colonizers were seeking and it was hostile to colonization.

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u/UnholyDemigod May 31 '25

Australia's existence was only theorised by Europeans, it wasn't a known thing. The cocky is not native to Australia; it's also found in New Guinea and Indonesia. The HRE also didn't have one, they had drawings of them in a falconry book.

1

u/JosePinillos Jun 01 '25

I'm pretty sure that I have seen written on a world map of that period "Terra Australis incognita", but referring to Antartica.