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Q&A

What could be a valid reason for an entire section of a continent to remain unexplored and undiscovered, by the rest of the world in medieval times?

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How can a part of a continent (super or other) remain unexplored by the apparently civilized majority? The undiscovered part must be habitable but inaccessible, by land or sea, so that the rest of the world is completely in the dark about their methods of war, culture and the flora and fauna. The technologies used by the rest of the world for exploration are no more than ships and scouts.

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/78565. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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People do discover it. They just never report back.

It's one thing to sail all the way to a new continent. It's quite another to land there, chart the territory, and then sail back home again to tell people what you've found. Perhaps the coastal waters are exceedingly treacherous and the ships keep getting dashed to pieces. Perhaps that continent is inhabited by deadly predators that kill anyone who lands there. Perhaps the locals view the explorers as "invaders" or "demons" or whatever, and kill them on sight. Alternately, maybe it's such a wonderful place (at least on the surface) that none of the explorers ever want to go back home.

Whatever the reason, nobody has ever returned from that place to be able to tell other people that it exists. From a world-building perspective, I like this idea better than just "it's really remote", because it opens up so many other possibilities. For example, it could have spawned in-universe myths or legends about this region that people sail to, never to return, rather like the Bermuda Triangle.

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