Who discovered Australia? Detailed answer

BIG ENCYCLOPEDIA FOR CHILDREN AND ADULTS
Free library / Directory / Big encyclopedia for children and adults

Who discovered Australia? Detailed answer

Big encyclopedia for children and adults

Directory / Big encyclopedia. Questions for quiz and self-education

Did you know?

Who discovered Australia?

In response to such a question, we still hear only two words: "Captain Cook" (although extremely rarely - in Australia itself).

Let's go in order. Let's start with the fact that Cook was not a "captain" - during the first voyage on the ship "Endever" he was in the rank of lieutenant. He was not the first European to visit the continent (the Dutch were 150 years ahead of him), and even the first Englishman to set foot on Australian soil. It was William Dampier, who in 1697 was the first to record a "great jumping animal".

Dampierre (1652-1715) - navigator, navigator, explorer, cartographer, scientific observer, pirate and corsair. Alexander Kelkirk, the prototype of the famous Robinson Crusoe, was a member of his team. Dampier circled the Earth three times and invented the first wind map. The Oxford English Dictionary lists his last name over 1000 times in articles on avocados, barbecues, breadfruit, cashews, chopsticks, the Settlement, and tortillas.

Recently, the version that the first foreign visitors to the Australian continent were the Chinese has been increasingly exaggerated. There is an archaeological find that tells of the landing of Admiral Zheng He (1371 - 1435) of the great Ming Dynasty near present-day Darwin in 1432.

If we discard the theory "Zeng He discovered the whole world", invented by Gavin Manzies, author of the sensational bestseller "1421: the year China discovered America", then the assumption is that this outstanding XNUMXth-century navigator (by the way, a Muslim and a eunuch) reached the northern shores of Australia , has a good chance of existence.

After all, Indonesian fishermen, not their own when it comes to local sea cucumbers (which they traded quite briskly with the Chinese), did so many years before the first of the Europeans.

Some of the natives living in the northern parts of the continent (in particular, the Yolngu tribe) learned from overseas visitors to fish and sail, at the same time adopting new words, tools and standard bad habits (alcohol and tobacco).

It is the Aborigines who are the "pioneers" who reached Australia more than 50 years ago. Their current generation is already twenty thousandth (compare with only eight in the case of Europeans).

This is more than enough to witness dramatic changes in the world around them. The landscape of the interior of Australia 30 years ago was lush green, filled to the brim with lakes and snow-covered mountains.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

How do plants get their food?

We must not forget that plants are living beings. They eat, they drink, they breathe, and without enough good food they die. With the exception of two classes of plants, all plants produce their own food. Let's see how they do it.

The wonderful substance chlorophyll, found in the cells of the leaves, and sometimes in the trunk and flowers, helps the living tissues of the plant to absorb the energy of sunlight. This energy transforms inanimate (inorganic) elements into life-giving (organic) substances. This truly amazing process is called photosynthesis. But carbon is required for the formation of living matter. The plant gets carbon from the air. (It exists in the air in combination with oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide).

Once the plant receives carbon, it must combine it with other substances in order to build up the various parts of the plant. The most important of these is water, from which the plant obtains hydrogen. The water must also contain certain minerals needed by the plant. These are mainly compounds of nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, potash, calcium, magnesium, sodium and iron.

The plant receives this water and minerals through its roots. One of the reasons the roots have such long tips is that the plant can reach new areas of soil with them in search of water and minerals.

Thousands of small hairs on young root shoots pass through the soil particles and extract the necessary substances from them. Some of the water obtained from the roots is used to make sugar. The rest of the water evaporates from the leaves, and the plant wilts when the water evaporates through the leaves faster than it enters through the roots.

By the way, did you know that no two leaves are exactly the same, even if they have the same shape and color?

Test your knowledge! Did you know...

▪ What did most of Galileo's students learn at the University of Padua?

▪ How does a snake inject its venom?

▪ Who is the song Mishka, Mishka, where is your smile dedicated to?

See other articles Section Big encyclopedia. Questions for quiz and self-education.

Read and write useful comments on this article.

<< Back

Latest news of science and technology, new electronics:

The existence of an entropy rule for quantum entanglement has been proven 09.05.2024

Quantum mechanics continues to amaze us with its mysterious phenomena and unexpected discoveries. Recently, Bartosz Regula from the RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing and Ludovico Lamy from the University of Amsterdam presented a new discovery that concerns quantum entanglement and its relation to entropy. Quantum entanglement plays an important role in modern quantum information science and technology. However, the complexity of its structure makes understanding and managing it challenging. Regulus and Lamy's discovery shows that quantum entanglement follows an entropy rule similar to that for classical systems. This discovery opens new perspectives in the field of quantum information science and technology, deepening our understanding of quantum entanglement and its connection to thermodynamics. The results of the study indicate the possibility of reversibility of entanglement transformations, which could greatly simplify their use in various quantum technologies. Opening a new rule ... >>

Mini air conditioner Sony Reon Pocket 5 09.05.2024

Summer is a time for relaxation and travel, but often the heat can turn this time into an unbearable torment. Meet a new product from Sony - the Reon Pocket 5 mini-air conditioner, which promises to make summer more comfortable for its users. Sony has introduced a unique device - the Reon Pocket 5 mini-conditioner, which provides body cooling on hot days. With it, users can enjoy coolness anytime, anywhere by simply wearing it around their neck. This mini air conditioner is equipped with automatic adjustment of operating modes, as well as temperature and humidity sensors. Thanks to innovative technologies, Reon Pocket 5 adjusts its operation depending on the user's activity and environmental conditions. Users can easily adjust the temperature using a dedicated mobile app connected via Bluetooth. Additionally, specially designed T-shirts and shorts are available for convenience, to which a mini air conditioner can be attached. The device can oh ... >>

Energy from space for Starship 08.05.2024

Producing solar energy in space is becoming more feasible with the advent of new technologies and the development of space programs. The head of the startup Virtus Solis shared his vision of using SpaceX's Starship to create orbital power plants capable of powering the Earth. Startup Virtus Solis has unveiled an ambitious project to create orbital power plants using SpaceX's Starship. This idea could significantly change the field of solar energy production, making it more accessible and cheaper. The core of the startup's plan is to reduce the cost of launching satellites into space using Starship. This technological breakthrough is expected to make solar energy production in space more competitive with traditional energy sources. Virtual Solis plans to build large photovoltaic panels in orbit, using Starship to deliver the necessary equipment. However, one of the key challenges ... >>

Random news from the Archive

Express neurons 30.09.2014

The standard form of a nerve cell is represented as follows: several branched processes-dendrites and one long non-branching process-axon depart from the body of a neuron. Through the dendrites, the neuron receives impulses from neighboring cells, through the axon it transmits impulses further, while the impulses necessarily pass through the cell body - after all, both the axon and the dendrites originate from it. This is the general scheme of the structure for all neurons, and no matter how its processes branch and no matter how numerous they are, the cell body will always be the “staging post” for the electrochemical reaction running along the membrane.

All the more surprising was the discovery of neuroscientists from the universities of Bonn and Heidelberg (Germany), who found neurons with axons growing directly from dendrites. Christian Thome, Alexey Egorov and their colleagues described their discovery in the journal Neuron.

A new type of cell was found in the brain of mice, or rather, in the hippocampus, which is one of the most important centers of memory and orientation in space. Many of the neurons in the hippocampus, called pyramidal cells, are extremely branched: they collect information from many other neurons, so they cannot do without densely branching dendrites.

The researchers decided to analyze the intercellular contacts of pyramidal neurons with their neighbors, and for this they modified neurons by providing them with a fluorescent protein that marked the bases of cell processes. It turned out that in about half of the cells, the axon departs not from the cell body, but from the dendrite, from its lower part, closest to the cell body. The hippocampus is divided into several structural and functional zones, and in each of them the proportion of unusual cells was different, but there is no doubt that there are really many such cells.

Such an unusual structure should somehow affect the functioning of cells. Indeed, it turned out that the dendrites from which the axon grows respond more readily to stimulation - for example, they needed less neurotransmitter to trigger an impulse. In other words, such dendrites had a lower excitation threshold, which means that they could respond to weak signals.

To an external stimulus that would come through such a dendrite, the cell (and the nerve chain connected to it) would respond faster, without waiting for the external stimulus to increase its power. The activity of such neurons is obviously difficult to suppress, and they may be designed to convey information of particular importance. However, the work of abnormal neurons remains to be studied and studied. They have not yet been searched for in the human brain, however, given that the human hippocampus and the mouse hippocampus repeat each other's structure, and, most likely, primates also have such cells.

Other interesting news:

▪ Why does my head hurt after cold water?

▪ Sony discontinues cassette recorders

▪ Elephants on a treadmill

▪ Rescue cuff

▪ White LEDs based on gallium nitride and silicon carbide

News feed of science and technology, new electronics

Interesting materials of the Free Technical Library:

▪ section of the Electrician website. PTE. Article selection

▪ article Is it a wise career? Popular expression

▪ article Has Paris always been a city of dreams? Detailed answer

▪ article bird cherry. Legends, cultivation, methods of application

▪ article Sound Soaps. Simple recipes and tips

▪ article Field strength meter. Encyclopedia of radio electronics and electrical engineering

Leave your comment on this article:

All languages of this page

Home page | Library | Articles | Website map | Site Reviews