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Antarctic Territory
Fact Sheet
 The name
Antarctica is derived from the Greek word "Antarktikos" meaning "opposite
the bear". "Arktos", "The Great Bear" (or Big Dipper) is the constellation
above the North Pole. The ancient Greeks felt that the earth was a sphere and that it was
logical that a southern landmass would be present to balance the known,
northern world. Early mapmakers named the assumed continent "Terra Australis
Incognita" - "The Unknown Southern Land."
Antarctic Maps were drawn three
centuries before its "discovery" in 1818. Piri
Reis' map,
painted on a gazelle skin in 1513, was rediscovered in the Old Imperial
Palace's library in
Constantinople in 1929. Reis, in his own writing on the chart, noted
he was not the originator of
the map, but he copied from ancient
sources. The Oronteus
Finacus map of 1531 was included in Mercator's Atlas of 1569. In 1737,
Philipp Buache published a map showing dimensions beneath the ice not verified until 1958, when a comprehensive seismic
survey was completed
during the International Geophysical Year.
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