The Pacific Ocean - the largest on Earth, occupies a third of the surface area of our planet. Its dimensions are larger than all land - continents and islands combined. No wonder it is often called the Great Ocean. It seems strange that it was discovered only in the 16th century, and until then its existence was not even suspected.
Who discovered the Pacific
The discovery of the new ocean is associated with the name of the Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa. In the fall of 1512, Balboa, then the governor of the Spanish colony of Darien, set off west of the Atlantic coast, accompanied by 192 men armed with spears and halberds, with a pack of dogs. They managed to cross the isthmus connecting North America with South, breaking through impassable forests, tropical swamps and rocky ridges.
On the way, they met the Indians several times, determined to keep strangers out of their lands. Unlike the indigenous inhabitants of the islands of the West Indies, the locals were not going to kneel before the Europeans, not fearing to attack a large armed detachment in helmets and cuirasses. Therefore, by the end of the expedition, only 28 people remained of him.
But from the top of the next ridge, they saw a vast expanse of water. Entering his chest into the water, Balboa declared the new sea the possession of the Spanish king. It began to be called the South Sea, as it lay south of the isthmus. This name was kept for him until the end of the 18th century.
So, it seems to be clear who discovered the Pacific Ocean. In 1513, Europeans first saw it and named it the South Sea. But this does not mean that they immediately began to explore the coast and make voyages along it.
Magellan's Expedition and the Pacific
Who discovered the Pacific Ocean for European sailors? We owe this to the organizer of the first round-the-world voyage Fernand Magellan. It was his ships in November 1520 that first appeared in an unknown ocean and crossed it. And just Magellan gave him the name El Mare Pacifico - the Pacific Sea.
For a modern person who has heard about storms raging in the Pacific Ocean, about waves the size of a ten-story building, about tropical typhoons, his name sounds somewhat strange. But Magellan during his expedition was just lucky with the weather. After, with great difficulty, the ships passed through a narrow and winding strait, later named after Magellan, they faced a vast body of water, until then unknown to Europeans. At first, the ships sailed under a fair tailwind. And then they found themselves in a zone of almost complete calm.
The ships advanced barely along the boundless surface of the ocean. The supplies are long gone,
fresh water is rotten. And the islands encountered on the way were not suitable for landing on the shore. The team, which was losing people due to hunger and scurvy, cursed the "Pacific Sea" ...
But still the ocean was passed. And on April 21, 1521, Magellan himself died, getting involved in a feud between local tribes. The path home had to be led by his comrade Sebastian Elcano.
So, Magellan with his companions is the one who discovered the Pacific Ocean and gave the reservoir its current name.
Heyerdahl's hypothesis about the settlement of Oceania
When we say who discovered the Pacific Ocean and in what year, we mean when it became known to Europeans. But the islands of Oceania were inhabited a long time ago. For their inhabitants, the Pacific Ocean is the homeland; they did not need to open it. But where did their ancestors come to the islands from? Which of them discovered the Pacific Ocean about forty centuries ago?
There are different opinions on this. The famous Norwegian explorer and traveler Thor Heyerdahl believed that the islands were populated from the east, from South America. He claimed that Indians could travel thousands of miles across the ocean, taking advantage of sea currents and tailwinds. Heyerdahl himself proved the possibility of such trips in 1947, having crossed the Pacific Ocean on the Kon-Tiki balsa raft, modeled on Indian rafts.
Opposite opinion
Frenchman Eric Bishop held a different point of view. He believed that not the Indians sailed to the islands, but the inhabitants of Polynesia traveled to the shores of South America. At the same time, they still remain skilled sailors, and this is not surprising. It was simply impossible to do without long trips, living on pieces of land remote from each other in the Great Ocean. And the language of the locals contains as many marine terms as no other in the world. It was the Polynesians, according to Bishop, who subsequently populated the islands off the west coast of the Pacific Ocean.
Currently, most scientists believe that the development of the now inhabited land in the Pacific Ocean went from the east coast of Asia to the west. And the Chinese junks could be the first not only in the discovery of islands in the ocean, but also in the discovery of America long before Columbus.
For Russians, the Pacific Ocean was discovered by the Cossacks of Ivan Moskvitin, who reached the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk in 1639.