Submitted by Pendekar Timur: A 16th century maritime map in a Los Angeles library vault proves that Portuguese adventurers, not British or Dutch, were the first Europeans to discover Australia, says a new book which details the secret discovery of Australia. The book "Beyond Capricorn" says the map, which accurately marks geographical sites along Australia's east coast in Portuguese, proves that Portuguese seafarer Christopher de Mendonca lead a fleet of four ships into Botany Bay in 1522 -- almost 250 years before Britain's Captain James Cook.Australian author Peter Trickett said that when he enlarged the small map he could recognize all the headlands and bays in Botany Bay in Sydney -- the site where Cook claimed Australia for Britain in 1770."It was even so accurate that I found I could draw in the modern airport runways, to scale in the right place, without any problem at all," Trickett told Reuters on Wednesday.Trickett said he stumbled across a copy of the map while browsing through a Canberra book shop eight years ago.He said the shop had a reproduction of the Vallard Atlas, a collection of 15 hand drawn maps completed no later than 1545 in France. The maps represented the known world at the time.Two of the maps called "Terra Java" had a striking similarity to Australia's east coast except at one point the coastline jutted out at right angles for 1,500 km (932 miles)."There was something familiar about them but they were not quite right -- that was the puzzle. How did they come to have all these Portuguese place names?," Trickett said.

Trickett believed the cartographers who drew the Vallard maps had wrongly aligned two Portuguese charts they were copying from.It is commonly accepted that the French cartographers used maps and "portolan" charts acquired illegally from Portugal and Portuguese vessels that had been captured, Trickett said."The original portolan maps would have been drawn on animal hide parchments, usually sheep or goat skin, of limited size," he explained. "For a coastline the length of eastern Australia, some 3,500 kms, they would have been 3 to 4 charts.""The Vallard cartographer has put these individual charts together like a jigsaw puzzle. Without clear compass markings its possible to join the southern chart in two different ways. My theory is it had been wrongly joined."Using a computer Trickett rotated the southern part of the Vallard map 90 degrees to produce a map which accurately depicts Australia's east coast.

View: Full Article | Source: Yahoo! News

Meh. The aborigonies that migrated from Indonesia 70,000 years ago "discovered" Australia. Even before that the contient was inhabited. Those people were wiped out by the aborigonies.

We are talking about Europeans,those aborigenes were Europeans?
How you know that "those" people were wiped out?? The interests of Portugal was only about commerce,business,trade... and not killing to expand the Empire,but defending and wealthing it with trades between different culture and people,and this we call the beginning of Globalization.

"by the aborigonies"

I'm portuguese and I hate "patriot people", I'm glad if portugal got first there than other european countries, which at the time were the only ones with the capability to do it, but what portugal and spain did was nothing else than murdering people in africa and america, and making them they're slaves, it's disgusting what they did in "name of christ", england, or in this case, the future americans, did the same thing when they went to america and killed all the native americans.

Why in this forum I only find portuguese people when the topic is about the country?

NSEQUEIRA,every Empire,every civilization,every hero,every people,killed to survive,killed to defend,killed to evolute,no matter if it was in the name of christ could it be in the name of whatever,this is History,you hate History then.

As I read about Portugal,I dont remember where this Empire killed for pleasure like the others did,spain and england was the worst about killing people.The arabics never liked about India trading with us so they attacked us and we killed some to defend ourself as they killed too,so,its a matter of survive.

It can't be more simple than this.

And Mad Manfred,explain without being ignorante please.
Australia History should be re-written.

Who cares, it's about as important as the Vikings discovering America. It's not about discovering stuff, it's what you do with it. I'm just gutted that Britian sent the convicts there, if only it were the law-abiding citizens maybe I would have grown up in a tropical paradise instead of a rainy miseryland. Ah who am I kidding I love it really, it gives me something to moan about. And there are very few, if any, animals here that can kill you just by looking at you.

Plus I would miss the giving and recieving of Aussie abuse that occurs on an almost daily basis. I swear they will be the rulers of the entire world in a couple of hundred years. They're everywhere you go. Someone once told me it's because they have no concept of distance, with 17 million of them living on a continent as opposed to 60 million Britons packed onto an area the size of a postage stamp.

On a tangent, I believe Portugal are England's oldest allies.


What a stupid post. Why was I on here again?

Ah the thread killer extrodinaire strikes again.

Again, read my post more carefully. The more you post the more you embarass yourself.

Tell me if you can where I embarassed on my post??
This subject dont talks who found Australia,but the europeans who reached to Australia first.
Last year a australian man found a piece of a portuguese boat in the australia coast,for many this isn't important,but for History have to be changed.

Oh, I'm not disputing that Portugal had landed on Australia all those years ago at all, I'm talking about the whole massacre deal.

What massacre?? Was there a massacre?

A disputed one. Between the 'original' aborigonies and the invaders (the current aborigonies) from the north up to 70,000 years ago. Of course it wouldn't have been an over-night thing. It would have taken thousands of years of tribal battles and inter-breeding.

oh yeah,but that kind of battles,happened in every,every nation,country,land or whatever you call.

My brother was taught in primary school (1995) that Australia was discovered by Portugal. The british discovering Australia was mainly taught in the 1950, when everyone was pro-british back then and was made to be part of the school ciricullium ever since. The british really just colonised Australia.

I was taught Captain Cook, and the whole 'New Holland' thing was avoided.

Yep. It would be a terrible thing to take away something for you to winge about. You poms would be devistated without something to whinge about.

But on the topic its not that big a deal. We are generally taught that the Portuguese or the Dutch discovered Australia originally, but it was the English that did something with it.

And besides as Manfred said there were people in Australia for 70,000+ years before europeans arrived. So its foolish to say that England or Portugal discovered Australia just as its silly to say that Columbus discovered america. There were people there long before Columbus or Cook set sail.

hahhaha
see you must understand what hes trying to say is "Those people don't count" He has a mindset of a 17th century noble British/Portuguese, mindset which tells him that only "Europeans" should be counted as people and everyone else is nothing more than property .... lets FACE IT no one discovered anything ... explorers just showed the people things that they were to stupid or ignorant to conclude by themselfs...

P.S. However lets face it, when it comes to Exploration "Portuguese will always have the lead" thanks to Henry

We´ll there are a lot more things that people arround the world doen´t know about Portugal influence in the world.
For an example, the famous Hawaian ukelele (small guitar) and havaian sailor ties are indeed portuguese, the ukelele is known in Portugal has cavaquinho (at least where i live), the sailor ties are world wide known has portuguese ties. A few years ago an american museum scholar visited the portuguese navy museum and said that in the museum there was hawaian itens (those i reported) and she was surprised to learn that they wore in fact portuguese, she had been tought that they wore Hawaiians. When they show up in movies, they are a big error done by the script writters and itens deliverers for the movies.

Another thing was our Empire, we did had an empire for the profit, the "religion factor" was only a subterfuge, although we did spread christianism.
About massacres, don´t compare us with the English or spannish or other Europeans empires, believe me or not (or check history books if you prefer) we wore amateus in massacring compare to these guys!!!! We had a policy of integration with conquered populations, and not superioraty moral or racial like the english. We had problems overseas like the colonial wars because we wore not living under a democratic regime!!!(and not forgetting portuguese colonist that treated locals like sh....t, by other words behaved like ss hols) what are the excuse for the british and french, who wore established democracies.

That is why i laught at british and french when they talk about democracy and fighting opressors

By the way, I am from Portugal