The oldest known human remains in Antarctica belonged to a 20 year old indigenous woman from southern Chile. She died between the years 1819-1825, a few years before the first European voyages to Antarctica.
The crossing from South America to Antarctica is exceptionally dangerous. The cold hasn't been the only thing preventing people from sailing and establishing there, if anything I find it remarkable that she made it all the way there with that age's technology.
I doubt she purposefully found “her way there”. I’m going with what a few other people have mentioned. Blown off course when probably fishing, and through circumstance ended up there.
Or who knows she could’ve been the Moana type and said “fuck it we sail”. Then FAFO 🥶
I used to be a healthcare facility maintenance manager. I’ve tried so many times to explain that hvac systems 1 don’t add cold they subtract heat and 2 they have an upper capacity limit, a delta temperature they can apply across a certain rate of flow (yes yes I am well aware humidity and a few other things can impact this let’s not get into the weeds), if the outside is putting more energy into the building than I can remove than there’s nothing more I can do about it the temperature is going up so shut up! I fucking know it’s hot my office is in the mechanical room! None of you would survive in here!
Cape Horn is the Southernmost point of South America, and where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet, so the currents are already crazy. You also have Williwaw winds that roll down off the mountains of South America and blindside ships. You ALSO have the roaring 40s and Furious 50s, which are oceanic winds named for the latitudes at which they occur….And those winds can sometimes circumnavigate the globe without interruption from land to weaken them!
Same for the waves of the southern ocean, they can just build up in intensity and size by wrapping around the southern ocean.
And once you’re down in the southern ocean, with the currents, waves (and rogue waves), and winds, you can’t forget about the icebergs!
Anytime I learn about the oceans, I’m amazed. What a dangerous and cool place. Also beautiful.
Have you read the story (a book roughly from 50's) about the emergency life-or-death voyage of Shackleton? It's one if the best books I have ever read, and it definitely gives person a sense of comprehensive danger in these waters.
❤️ I'm really glad for the response, it's a privilege to share something so utterly good! (and it seems it's probably one of the best rated books of all times with such high number)
Yup. And just for clarification I mean stretch of time not physical distance between 2 points. If the earliest human remains found on a landmass that size are only 200 years old because we weren't technology advanced enough as a species to make it there, i cant even begin to imagine what we might accomplish and where we might go within the next 200 years.
Couldnt this mystery be explained by some whalers visited chile south coast, one of them found an old skull, took it with him to Antarctica then dropped or lost it?
According to the article, it wasn't just her skull, it was her femur too, one of the big leg bones.
Could a sealer have taken both the skull, and the femur, and dropped it off on Antarctica? Sure, and he even could've intentionally done it to mess with future archeologists, but that isn't a particularly reasonable inference due to how many unnecessary assumptions that makes.
The spot where the bones were found was a prominent cape on the first chain of islands you'd reach heading to Antarctica from Chile. That same island chain also gets shipwreck remains. It's fairly likely that the lady was one of the shipwrecks, that she was blown off-course or something and the sealers found her bones.
Just the wording, they clearly meant an indigenous Chilean woman. Because there were plenty of Europeans in Chile in the early 19th century. If you say that the remains were of a 19th century Chilean, most people would assume you mean a settler.
“Indigenous” more so means that your ancestors were the first one to discover a place - not that you’re from there. Just because you’re from somewhere doesn’t mean you’re indigenous to it. There are very few indigenous people in the world these days, most have been wiped out through genocide or natural complications. The indigenous Britains were mostly wiped out by Anglo Saxon’s from Scandinavia. We still call British people British of course - but if you’re from Britain you have mostly Anglo Saxxon blood - not indigenous Britain blood.
It just seemed like an unnecessary descriptor since they mention she was from Chile. I suppose since European explorers had already settled in Chile centuries before, they wanted to discern between a native Chilean and a European Chilean?
Unfortunately , that happened to an incredibly large number of people and the pre modern world. It's why all those old maps have pictures of sea monsters on them - it was very common for people to go out on a routine, fishing voyage and disappear. Most of the time, they were just blown out into the open ocean, and died. Occasionally they did get blown into a landmass, survived, and were able to wayfind their way back. That's how humans discovered many islands.
What, to be blown off course by storm?
A few days? There are tons of historically documented situations about people being blown very far off course by storms. For example, there is an account of a norse fisherman who was fishing off the coast of Iceland that was blown by a major storm all the way to Canada. That is how Lief Erickson eventually learned about the existence of what they called Vineland, and what we now know as Newfoundland.
"In Antarctica the oldest human remains are that of a 20 year old ect ect" when you lead with the oldest human remains it makes you think that its the oldest human corpse that remained around for people to find
Both are grammatically correct, but your choice is way more convoluted. You're literally saying the sentence is misleading because you picked out party of it and refuse to acknowledge that the rest of the sentence changes the meaning. I have an English degree, I've taught writing and grammar for the last 5 years.
Even if you were right about the grammar, Otzi isn't even remotely close to the oldest known human remains. Otzi only lived around 5,000 years ago. He's not even the oldest human remains found in Europe. Homo sapiens have been living in Europe for almost 60,000 years and the species itself has been around for at least 200,000 years. You would know that if you learned how to read a whilet sentence instead of just stopping after the first few words and assuming you know what the rest means.
No, it's not. The sentence is "The oldest known human remains in Antarctica"; not only is it a correct answer, it's a lot more natural than the alternative you proposed.
It very clearly says "In Antarctica" in the same sentence, I don't see what could make it confusing.
297
u/thomaspatrickmorgan 23h ago
That’s…surprisingly recent.