高中三年级英语(人教版)全一册 Unit 2 Integrating Skills 2

　　THE UNKNOWN SOUTHERN LAND

　　The "unknown southern land" was an imaginary continent, appearing on European maps from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. It was first put there by a Greek map maker in the first century AD. He believed that south of the Indian Ocean a continent existed with a mild climate, where the people were very wealthy. However, he warned that it could not be reached because it was surrounded by a ring of fire.

　　In the Middle Ages Western people rejected that theory because they believed that the world was flat, so there could not be a continent on the other side of the world. If you were to sail across the ocean, you would fall off the earth. Besides, they argued that there could not be people beyond the ring of fire if all people came from Adam and Eve.

　　Later European map makers copied this continent onto their maps again although nobody had ever seen it. Scientists argued for its existence saying that there should be a continent in the south to balance the known continents in the north. Usually the land was shown as a continent around the South Pole, but much larger than Antarctica, as we know it now.

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