Hundreds of people may be buried forever beneath layers of snow and ice on the world’s coldest continent. Martha Henriques looks into their stories.
You’ll learn about everything from the world’s greatest space mission to whether our cats truly love us, as well as the epic hunt to bring illegal fishermen to justice and the small team that brings long-buried World War II tanks back to life. What you will not find is any mention of, well, you know what. Enjoy.
There are the frozen remains of human bodies in the bleak, almost pristine land at the world’s edge, and each one tells a story about humanity’s relationship with this inhospitable continent.
Even with all of our technology and knowledge of Antarctica’s dangers, going there can be deadly. Temperatures can drop to nearly -90 degrees Celsius inland (-130F). Winds can reach 200mph (322km/h) in some places. And the weather isn’t the only danger.
Many bodies of scientists and explorers who died in this harsh environment are unreachable. Some are discovered decades or even centuries later. However, many of those who were lost will never be found. They are either buried so deeply in ice sheets or crevasses that they will never emerge, or they are on their way to the sea within creeping glaciers and calving ice.
These deaths’ stories range from unsolved mysteries to freak accidents. BBC Future investigated what these events reveal about life on the planet’s most inhospitable landmass in the second episode of our new series Frozen Continent.
1800s: Mystery of the Chilean bones
A human skull and femur have been lying near the shore of Livingston Island, among the South Shetlands off the Antarctic Peninsula, for 175 years. They are the most ancient human remains ever discovered in Antarctica.
In the 1980s, the bones were discovered on the beach. Chilean researchers discovered that they belonged to a woman who died at the age of 21. She was an indigenous woman from southern Chile, some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) away.
According to the analysis of her bones, she died between 1819 and 1825. At the lower end of that range, she would have been among the very first people to visit Antarctica. How did she get there is the question. The indigenous Chileans’ traditional canoes could not have supported her on such a long journey through what can be extremely rough seas.
Analysis of the bones suggested that she died between 1819 and 1825
“There is no evidence for an independent Amerindian presence in the South Shetlands,” says Michael Pearson, an independent researcher and Antarctic heritage consultant. “This isn’t a trip you’d take in a bark canoe.”
The Chilean researchers originally thought she was an indigenous guide for sealers travelling from the northern hemisphere to the newly discovered Antarctic islands by William Smith in 1819. Women taking part in expeditions to the far south, on the other hand, was virtually unheard of in those early days.
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According to Melisa Salerno, an archaeologist with the Argentine Scientific and Technical Research Council, sealers had a close relationship with the indigenous people of southern Chile (Conicet). They would occasionally trade seal skins with one another. It’s not impossible that they traded expertise and knowledge as well. However, interactions between the two cultures were not always pleasant.
“It was sometimes a violent situation,” Salerno says. “The sealers could simply take a woman from one beach and then abandon her on another.”
The lack of surviving logs and journals from the early ships sailing south to Antarctica makes tracing this woman’s history even more difficult.
Hers is a unique story of early human presence in Antarctica. A lady who, By all accounts, she shouldn’t have been there – but she was. Her skeleton represents the beginning of human activity on Antarctica, as well as the unavoidable loss of life that comes with attempting to occupy this inhospitable continent.
29 March 1912: Scott’s South Pole expedition crew
The Falcon, Robert Scott’s team of British explorers arrived at the South Pole on January 17, 1912, only three weeks after the Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen left from the same location.
When the British group discovered that they had not arrived first, their morale was crushed. Things would quickly deteriorate.
Attaining the pole was a test of human endurance, and Scott had been put under a lot of pressure. In addition to dealing with the immediate challenges of the harsh climate and a lack of natural resources such as wood for building, he had to lead a crew of more than 60 men. The high hopes of his colleagues back home added to the pressure.
“It’s do or die for them – “That is the spirit in which they are going to the Antarctic,” Leonard Darwin, president of the Royal Geographical Society and Charles Darwin’s son, said at the time in a speech.
“Captain Scott will demonstrate once more that the nation’s manhood is not dead… Such adventures certainly boost the self-esteem of the entire nation,” he said.
Scott was not immune to the pressures. “He was a very rounded, human character,” says Max Jones, a polar exploration historian at the University of Manchester. “In his journals, you can see that he’s filled with doubts and anxieties about whether he’s up to the task, which makes him more appealing. He, too, had flaws and weaknesses.”
Despite his fears and doubts, the team’s “do or die” mentality drove them to take risks that may seem foreign to us now.
Edgar Evans died first, in February, on the team’s return from the pole. Then there was Lawrence Oates. He considered himself a burden, believing that the team could not return home with him impeding their progress. “I’m just going outside and it might be some time,” he said on March 17.
