Dimensions
145 x 222 x 22mm
The Man Who Discovered Britain.
Some 2,300 or more years ago an amazing expedition, headed by Pytheas, set out from the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseilles) to explore the terrifying, fabled lands of northern Europe: a mysterious, largely conjectural zone which, according to Greek science, was too cold to sustain human life.
Pytheas was the Ancient World's Columbus. He was the first literate man ever to visit the British Isles, the German coast and the Hebrides, even travelling on to Iceland and the edge of the ice-pack. Even more startlingly, there was no follow-up to his journey. Britain remained without further explorers until Julius Caesar and his legions landed there 300 years later.
Like those of a space probe flying past some far distant planet, the signals Pytheas sends back to our own time, however faint and confused, represent the far limit of literate human experience in the northern world. This book allows us to sense some of his dazed astonishment, huddled in his skin-boat, gazing at the geography in which we now live and at the legendary 'Ultima Thule' - The Arctic Ocean.
