V. Recently discovered peoples listed; whether the West Indies were known to the ancients; Fathers denied antipodes

V. The recent and newly discovered, such as the Guineans, Chinese, Peruvians, Mexicans, Guianans, Tupinamba, Brazilians, and Virginians.

I call these newly discovered. Yet it is not a curious question whether those regions which we now mark with the title of the West Indies were known to the ancient Greeks, Romans, and other nations. The holy Fathers once denied antipodes — Lactantius, Divine Institutes book 3, chapter 24; Augustine, City of God book 16, chapter 9. Indeed the constant opinion of those who asserted antipodes was that their region was wholly unknown to us — in Cicero, On the Republic book 6, and Pomponius Mela book 1, chapter 1 — and that it had still lain hidden in the secret of the divine mind, as Salmuth thought in his notes on Panciroli's New Discoveries, chapter 1; Jacob Martin, professor of Wittenberg, Miscellaneous Disputations, folio 599; Joseph Acosta, book 1, chapter 1.