O descobrimento da Australia pelos portuguezes em 1601

An account argues that Portuguese navigators reached Australia in 1601, five years before the previously accepted Dutch discovery, presenting a newly found British Museum document and assembling cartographic, manuscript, and classical evidence. The author reviews medieval and early-modern maps, references to a southern continent in ancient and Chinese sources, and earlier map indications from the sixteenth century, assessing misidentifications such as those in Marco Polo's account. He situates the 1601 claim within broader debates about earlier sightings and compares documentary proof for seventeenth-century Dutch visits with the newly highlighted Portuguese material, concluding that the Portuguese voyage merits re-evaluation of the chronology of southern Pacific exploration.