Saturday, June 18, 2011

Where is Old Zealand?

This question occurred to me the other day.  I know where the old York is, where old Mexico is, and Old England...

The first Westerner to discover our landmass was a Dutch man by the name of Abel Tasman.  Much like Columbus thinking that the Caribbean islands were India, Tasman thought that he was visiting a part of what is now Argentina that already happened to belong to Holland.  But later, when the Dutch government realised that he had indeed been in a new territory, they named it Nova Zeeland after the westernmost Dutch province.
 

2 comments:

Mom said...

Now, that is REALLY being lost! And there you have it, the Tasmanian Sea! I've heard of the Zider Zee.....

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeeland_%28disambiguation%29