Guillaume Le Testu

Guillaume Le Testu (* 1508, † 1572) was a French cartographer and visionary who was also called " seer of Dieppe " and also was a player.

His cartographic life's work bears the name of Universal Cosmography selon le Navigateurs tant que Ancien Modern ( Universal cosmography after the [ reports ] sailors - past and modern ). Puzzling is that he in this world atlas of 1555 for the first time the exact coastline of Western Australia is - 43 years before the then -hypothetical southern continent Terra Australis Incognita was officially associated in a printed book at the University of Leuven with the Fifth Continent.

His cosmography created Le Testu for the Admiral Gaspard II de Coligny (1519-1572), who was only Huguenot leader and a follower of Sir Francis Drake. At the left edge of the card put the visionary cartographer a scale bar, which was not common at the time. Ins mouth of the Fitzroy River he put the name " Terra Australis " and was thus the findings of the then leading navigators and cartographers of the Netherlands by half a century ahead.

Where did he get his exact knowledge - or whether they arose partly his imagination - is to clarify not quite. The Iles des Crifors prior to the current Joseph Bonaparte Gulf are indeed nowhere to be found, but the realistic mapped Fitzroy Delta and the notches of the rivers and the Cape Londonderry speak for solid sources or possibly our own eyes. For whence would have otherwise known in 1555 on the French Channel coast even armadillos and dingoes that have been discovered, according to official reports until the 1660s, with which the card is but decorated? A visionary should such animals can not guess. The following sailors - for example, 1577 still working as a pirate Francis Drake or around 1595 Alvaro de Mendana or his navigator Pedro de Quiros - so did not have detailed information; only by Willem Jansz, who landed in northern Australia in 1606, it gave similar good coastal sketches.

His life was the end of Le Testu 1572 in Panama, where he allegedly fell as a pirate in the hands of the Spaniards and " Nombre de Dio " (in the name of God) is decapitated. His head is turned to the deterrence - also all talented players - on the marketplace on display.