Pytheas Claimed Arctic Thule

In about 325 B.C., a Greek geographer and explorer from Massalia, a man named Pytheas, sailed north from what is now Marseille into the Atlantic. He wrote some of the earliest surviving descriptions of Britain and the far north, including references that later writers linked to Scotland and other northern regions. Pytheas claimed he reached a place he called Thule and described phenomena like long summer days that sounded like the Arctic to later readers. When he returned, many ancient writers dismissed or doubted his account, and his original book did not survive.

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