Pytheas

Pytheas set out from the Greek colony of Massalia around 325 BC and pushed north into waters no Mediterranean scholar had charted. He circumnavigated much of the British Isles, became the first Greek to witness and document the Arctic, and recorded observations of Celtic and Germanic peoples along the way. He described the midnight sun, connected the moon to the tides, and introduced the idea of Thule — a distant northern land that would haunt maps for two thousand years. The phenomena he reported, like frigid zones and summers with almost no darkness, had been theorized but never seen. His ac…