[ad_1]
In the dark and almost virgin lands of the end of the world, there are remains of frozen human bodies, each telling the relationship of humanity with this inhospitable continent.
Even with all our technology and knowledge of the dangers of the Antarctic, it can remain deadly for anyone who goes there. Inland, temperatures can drop to near -90 ° C (-130 ° F). In some places winds can reach 322 km / h. And time is not the only risk.
Many bodies of scientists and explorers who perished in this difficult place are out of reach. Some are discovered decades or more than a century later. But many of those who have been lost will never be found, buried so deep in the ice sheets or crevices that they will never exist, or they will head to the sea in glaciers and calving ice.
The stories behind these deaths range from unresolved mysteries to monster crashes. In the second of our new Frozen Continent series, BBC Future has explored what these events reveal about life on the most inhospitable land mass on the planet.
1800: Mystery of Chilean bones
On Livingston Island, among the Shetland Islands of the southern Antarctic Peninsula, a human skull and femur have been found near the shore for 175 years. These are the oldest human remains ever found in Antarctica.
The bones were discovered on the beach in the 1980s. Chilean researchers discovered that they belonged to a woman who died at the age of 21 years or so. It was a native of southern Chile, 1,000 km away.
The bone analysis suggests that she died between 1819 and 1825. The end of this period would place her among the very first people to have lived in Antarctica.
The question is, how did she get there? The traditional canoes of the indigenous Chileans could not have supported her during such a long trip across a sea that can be incredibly difficult.
The bone analysis suggests that she died between 1819 and 1825
"There is no evidence of an independent presence of Amerindians in the South Shetland Islands," says Michael Pearson, Antarctic Heritage Consultant and Independent Researcher. "It's not a trip you would make in a bark canoe."
The original interpretation of Chilean researchers was that she was an indigenous guide of seal hunters traveling from the northern hemisphere to the Antarctic Islands recently discovered by William Smith in 1819. But women participating in expeditions in the extreme south days were virtually unknown.
You might also like:
According to Melisa Salerno, an archaeologist with the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (Conicet), seal hunters have close relations with indigenous people in southern Chile. Sometimes they exchanged seal skins with each other. It is not excluded that they also exchange skills and knowledge. But the interactions between the two cultures were not always friendly.
"Sometimes it was a violent situation," says Salerno. "Sealers could simply take a woman from one beach and leave her further on another."
The absence of newspapers and newspapers kept by the first ships sailing south of Antarctica makes it even more difficult to follow the story of this woman.
Its history is unique among the first human presence in Antarctica. A woman who, according to all the usual stories, should not have been there, but it was true. His bones mark the beginning of human activity on the Antarctic and the inevitable loss of human lives trying to occupy this inhospitable continent.
March 29, 1912: Scott's South Pole Expedition Team
Robert Falcon Scott's team of British explorers reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, just three weeks after the departure of the Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen.
The morale of the British group was shattered when they discovered they had not arrived first. Shortly after, things would get worse.
Reaching the pole was a feat to test human endurance, and Scott was under tremendous pressure. In addition to facing the immediate challenges of harsh climate and lack of natural resources like timber for construction, he had a crew of more than 60 men to lead. The hopes of his colleagues in the country exacerbated the pressures.
"They intend to make or die – that is the spirit in which they go to Antarctica," said Leonard Darwin, chairman of the Royal Geographical Society and son of Charles Darwin.
"Captain Scott is going to prove once again that the manhood of the nation is not dead … The self-respect of the entire nation is certainly heightened by such adventures," he said.
Scott was not insensitive to expectations. "It was a very rounded human character," says Max Jones, historian of heroism and polar exploration at the University of Manchester. "In his newspapers, you see that he has doubts and anxieties as to whether he is up to it and that it makes him more attractive. He also had weaknesses and weaknesses.
Despite his concerns and doubts, the "make or die" state of mind has led the team to take risks that may seem foreign to us now.
When the team returned, Edgar Evans died in February. Then Lawrence Oates. He considered himself a burden, thinking that the team could not go home with him by holding them back. "I'm just out and maybe time," he said on March 17th.
Maybe he did not realize how close the rest of the group was to death. The bodies of Oates and Evans were never found, but Scott, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers were discovered by a research group several months after their deaths. They died on March 29, 1912, according to the date of entry in Scott's diary. The research group covered them with snow and left them where they were.
"I do not think humans have gone through a month like we've gone through," Scott wrote in the last pages of his diary. The team knew that they were within 18 km of the last food depot, with supplies that could have saved them. But they were confined in a tent for days, becoming weaker, trapped by a fierce blizzard.
"They were willing to risk their lives and they saw that as legitimate. You can see this as part of the imperial mentality, tied to harsh conditions and harsh environments, "Jones said. "I'm not saying they wanted to die, but I think they were ready to die."
October 14, 1965: Jeremy Bailey, David Wild and John Wilson
Four men were driving a Muskeg tractor and its sleds near the Heimefront Mountains, east of their base at the Halley Research Station, in East Antarctica, near the Weddell Sea. The Muskeg was a heavy vehicle designed to carry people and provisions over long distances on the ice. A team of dogs ran behind.
Three of the men were in the cabin. The fourth, John Ross, sitting behind the sledge at the back, near the huskies. Jeremy (Jerry) Bailey, a scientist measuring the depth of ice under the tractor, was driving. He and David (Dai) Wild, a surveyor, and John Wilson, a doctor, were scanning the ice ahead. The snow obscured a large part of the small flat windshield. The group had traveled all day, taking turns warming themselves in the cab or sitting on the sled.
Ross watched the vast mountains of ice, snow, and the Stella group. Around 8:30, the dogs along the sled stopped running. The sledge was stopped.
Ross, suffocated by a hood and two anoraks, had heard nothing. He turned to see that the Muskeg was gone. Before, the first sled leaned in the ice. Ross ran towards him to find that he was stuck on top of a large crevasse directly crossing their course. The Muskeg itself had fallen about 30 meters (100 feet) into the crevasse. Below, its rails were wedged vertically against a wall of ice and the cabin had been strongly pressed against the other.
Ross shouted. There was no answer from the three men in the taxi. After about 20 minutes of screaming, Ross heard an answer. The exchange, as he recorded it from memory shortly after the event, was brief:
Ross: Dai?
Bailey: Dai's dead. That's me.
Ross: It's John or Jerry?
Bailey: Jerry.
Ross: How's John?
Bailey: He's taller, buddy.
Ross: And you?
Bailey: I'm all broken.
Ross: Can you move or tie a rope around you?
Bailey: I'm all broken.
Ross tried to descend into the crevasse, but the descent was difficult. Bailey told him not to take any chances, but Ross tried anyway. After several attempts, Bailey stopped responding to Ross's calls. Ross heard a cry from the crevasse. After that, Bailey did not answer.
The crevices – deep fissures in the ice extending hundreds of meters – pose serious threats to Antarctic travel. According to reports on the accident in the British Antarctic Survey's archives on 14 October 1965, strong winds raised galleries and scattered snow on the landscape. It hid the top of the chasms and, above all, the thin blue line in the ice in front of every drop that would have warned the men to stop.
"You can imagine – there is a bit of drift, and there are ice chips on the windshield, your fingers are cold, and you think it's time to stop all of way, "says Rod Rhys Jones, a member of the expedition. not gone on a trip with the Muskeg. It shows the cracked area that the Muskeg had crossed, on a map of the continent spread over its coffee table, littered with books on the Antarctic.
"You drive on the ice and bump and bump. You do not see the little blue line.
Jones wonders if the team has received adequate training on the dangers of Antarctic travel. These were young men, mostly graduating from college. Many of them had little experience in difficult physical conditions. Much of their preparation time for life in Antarctica was spent learning how to use the scientific equipment they needed, not training them to avoid accidents on the ice.
Every accident in Antarctica has slowly brought about changes in the way people have traveled and been trained. The post-incident reports recommended several ways to make travel through cracked areas safer, from adapting the vehicle to new ways of connecting them.
August 1982: Ambrose Morgan, Kevin Ockleton and John Coll
The three men left on the ice for an expedition to a nearby island in the heart of the Antarctic winter.
The sea ice was firm and they traveled easily to Petermann Island. The southern aurora was visible in the sky, exceptionally bright and strong enough to erase communications. The team reached the island safely and camped in a hut near the coast.
Shortly after reaching shore, a big storm blew and the next day she completely destroyed the sea ice. The group was stuck, but concern was low in the group. There was enough food in the cabin to last more than three months.
In the days that followed, the sea ice was not reformed by the storms that swept and disturbed the ice in the channel.
There were no books or papers in the hut, and contact with the outside world was limited to radio transmissions programmed to the base. Soon it was two weeks ago. The transmissions remained brief because the batteries of their radios became weaker and weaker. The team became agitated. Gentoo and Adelie penguins surrounded the hut. They might have seemed endearing, but their scent quickly began to disturb men.
Things got worse. The team had diarrhea, as it turned out that some of the food in the hut was much older than it had thought. The stench of the penguins did not do them better. They killed and ate a little to increase their supplies.
Men waited with increasing frustration, complaining of boredom on their radio transmissions at the base. On Friday, August 13, 1982, they were seen through a telescope, returning to the main base. The radio batteries were weak. The sea ice was again reformed, offering a tempting hope of escape.
Two days later, on Sunday, August 15, the group did not record the radio at the scheduled time. Then another big storm broke out.
The men at the base climbed to a high point where they could see the island. All the sea ice was gone, carried away by the storm.
"These guys did something we all did: take a trip to the island," said Pete Salino, who was on the main base at the time. The three men were never seen again.
Even after a thorough search, the bodies have never been found
There were very strong currents around the island. Reliable and thick ice is relatively rare, says Salino. The way they tested if the ice would hold them back was primitive – they would hit it with a wooden stick with a piece of metal to see if it could break.
Even after thorough research, the bodies have never been found. Salino suspects that the men came out on the ice when they reformed and got stuck or could not turn around when the storm erupted.
"It sounds crazy now, sitting in a cozy room in Surrey," says Salino. "When we went out, there was always a risk of falling, but you would always prepare yourself. We always have change of clothes in a sealed bag. We all accepted the risk and felt that it could have been one of us.
Inheritance of death
For those who experience the loss of colleagues and friends in Antarctica, grief can be particularly difficult. When a friend disappears or a body can not be found, the typical human rituals of death – a burial, a last goodbye – escape those who remain.
Clifford Shelley, a British geophysicist based in the Argentine islands off the Antarctic Peninsula in the late 1970s, lost friends climbing the summit of Mount Peary in 1976. It was thought that these men – Geoffrey Hargreaves, Michael Walker and Graham Whitfield in an avalanche. The signs of their camp were found by aerial search, but their bodies were never found.
"You wait and wait, but there is nothing. Then you lose hope, "says Shelley.
You wait and wait, but there is nothing. Then you lose hope
Even when the body is recovered, the demanding nature of life and work in Antarctica can make it a difficult place to experience. Ron Pinder, a radio operator in the South Orkneys in the late 1950s and early 1960s, still cries someone who left a cliff on Signy Island in 1961. The body of his friend Roger Filer was found at the foot of a cliff 20 feet (6 m) below the nests, where he was observed with birds. His body was buried on the island.
"57 years ago now. It's in the distant past. But it touches me more now than at the time. Life was such that you had to go ahead, "says Pinder.
The same sound is true for Shelley. "I do not think we really treated him," he says. "It stays in your mind. But it's certainly a mixed feeling, because Antarctica is beautifully beautiful, both in winter and summer. It's the best place to go and we did what we wanted to do.
These deaths have resulted in changes in the way people work in Antarctica. As a result, today's inhabitants can live more safely in this isolated and dangerous continent. Although terrible incidents continue to occur, much has been drawn from past deaths.
For the friends and families of the dead, there is an ongoing effort to make sure that their loved ones are not forgotten. Outside the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, UK, two strongly curved oak pillars approach each other and gently touch each other at the summit. It is half of a war memorial, erected by the British Antarctic Monument Trust, created by Rod Rhys Jones and Brian Dorsett-Bailey, Jeremy's brother, to recognize and honor those who died in Antarctica. The other half of the monument is a long strip of metal tilted slightly towards the sea in Port Stanley, in the Falkland Islands, where many researchers have traveled to the last leg of their trip to Antarctica.
Seen at one end, they line up, the oak pillars move away from each other, leaving a long tapered gap between them. The shape of this void is perfectly filled by the large steel shard mounted on a pedestal on the other side of the world. It is a physical symbol that crosses the hemispheres, connecting the vast wild continent that attracted these scientists for the last time.
Join more than 900,000 Future fans by loving us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
If you liked this story, sign up for bbc.com's weekly feature newslettercalled "If you only read 6 things this week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.
[ad_2]
Source link
