February 1 – Happy Birthday, Jacob Roggeveen

nPostednon February 1, 2015

Hendidn’t find Terra Australis…but he found Easter Island!

nWhennI think of explorers—even Dutch explorers in the early 1700s—Inthink of rugged young-to-middle-age sorts who are hardy and daringnand thirst to see new lands.

nButnJacob Roggeveen, who was born in what is now the Netherlands on thisndate in 1659, set off on his big exploratory expedition when he wasn62 years old!

nBeforenbecoming an explorer, Roggeveen had studied law, had been a notary innthe Netherlands, and had served as the “Council Lord of Justice”nin what is now Indonesia. n

nInbet a big part of the reason Roggeveen went on his exploratorynjourney was because his father, a mathematician with a passion forngeography, studied the mythical Terra Australis—the huge continentnin the Southern Hemisphere that so many scholars were sure mustnexist.

Younsee, many people living in the 16^thnand 17^thnCenturies were sure that all the landmasses in the NorthernnHemisphere mustnbe balanced by much more land in the south than was known. But it’snjust not so. The landmasses of the Earth are not spread aroundnevenly—and right now, at least, there is far more land in thenNorth. (You probably already know that the land masses have beennmoving around on huge tectonic plates, forming and reformingndifferent continents over the course of the past several millionsnyears.)

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The Northern Hemisphere above;
the Southern Hemisphere below.

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nThencontinent we know as Australia was first discovered by Europeans inn1606—half a century before Roggeveen was even born!—but it wasn’tnuntil 1820 when explorers first spotted the ice shelves ofnAntarctica, although James Cook did spot some islands in thenAntarctic Circle in 1773. During Roggeveen’s time, people stillnthought that they must have missed a much larger land mass in thenSouth than Australia, which is roughly the size of the “lower 48”nstates of the United States.

nInnhis efforts to find that mythical land, Roggeveen became the firstnEuropean to have landed on Easter Island (so named because the Dutchnships landed on the island on Easter Sunday of 1722). Roggeveennestimated that there were 2,000 to 3,000 people living on the island.

nThisnis what Easter Island is famous for:

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Some of the moai appear to be
just heads but are actually
partially buried.

nThere are 887 monumental statues, called moai, which were carved by early Rapa Nui people between the years 1250 and 1500.
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This moai is on the sea floor off the coast of
Easter Island. However, it’s a fake.
Some Hollywood movie makers created it and
sank if for the filming of a movie.