Academician Answers 1000 Questions on Human Exploration - Academician Answers Young People's Questions

Author: Zhou Kun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: Was Pytheas the earliest Arctic explorer?
Pytheas was an astronomer and geographer from Massalia (now Marseille), a Greek colony. In late spring of 240 BC, Pytheas set sail from the port of Massalia on a merchant ship weighing about 100 tons, beginning his life of maritime exploration and heading toward the oceans of northwest Europe. At that time, the Greeks believed that area to be the edge of the Earth. After a arduous journey, Pytheas successively crossed the islands of Britain, Scotland, and the Shetland Islands, eventually reaching the island of Thule at 60 degrees north latitude. From the islanders, Pytheas learned that far to the north of Scotland was a place called "Thule," locally known as the "resting place of the sun," which was also believed to be the end of the world. Bravely, Pytheas steered his exploration ship further north and, after six days, finally reached Thule, where there were only two or three hours of daylight each day.
According to Pytheas' description in his book On the Ocean, there was a mysterious and unknown land one day's journey north of Thule. It was neither land nor sea but a region between the two: "Neither people could walk on it, nor could ships sail on it." Could this have been the sea near the Arctic Circle, close to the frozen ocean? Later Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen said that what Pytheas saw back then might have been a layer of broken floating ice, not the true Arctic ice cap.
Pytheas was not misled by the Greek misconception about the edge of the Earth. Instead, he was determined to explore and understand, with no maps or compasses, bravely sailing into the unknown world and advancing human knowledge of the Arctic by a great step. Pytheas thus became one of the pioneers of Arctic exploration in human history.
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Whether Pytheas' discovered "Thule" was Iceland or some island in Norway is still undecided. However, later writers and poets called distant places and the end of the Earth "Thule."