Pytheas, the greek who reached the British IslesA 1490 Italian reconstruction of the map of Ptolemy

Pytheas, the greek who reached the British IslesA 1490 Italian reconstruction of the map of Ptolemy of theBritish Isles . The map is a result of a combination of the lines of roads and of the coasting expeditions during the first century of Roman occupation. One great fault, however, is a lopsided Scotland, which in one hypothesis is the result of Ptolemy using Pytheas’ measurements of latitude. Pytheas of Massalia was a navigator, a geographer, and the first Greek to visit and describe the British Isles and the Atlantic coast of Europe. Though his principal work, On the Ocean, is lost, something is known of his ventures through the Greek historian Polybius.Sailing from the Mediterranean Sea into the Atlantic, Pytheas stopped at the Phoenician city of Gades (present-day Cádiz, Spain), probably followed the European shoreline to the tip of Brittany, and eventually reached Belerium (Land’s End, Cornwall), where he visited the tin mines, famous in the ancient world. He claimed to have explored a large part of Britain on foot; he accurately estimated its circumference at 4,000 miles (6,400 km). He also estimated the distance from north Britain to Massalia (Marseille) at 1,050 miles (1,690 km the actual distance is 1,120 miles (1,800 km). He visited some northern European countries and may have reached the mouth of the Vistula River on the Baltic Sea. According to Strabo, Pytheas referred to Britain as Bretannikē and to Ireland as Iérnē. All types of events and strange stories were reported by Pytheas. One such “incredible” story, which he reported, told him by the inhabitants of northern Scotland, was about the presence of a place to the north where there were only two or three hours of night during parts of the year, and another place even further north where the sun shone all night long. Another, was the practice of people living in log and clay houses, storing their grain underground because of the cold, and thrashing their grain in barns or covered structures rather than on the open fields as was common in the warmer lands bordering the Mediterranean. Common knowledge today, these stories were considered fantasy in those years.He also told of Thule, the northernmost inhabited island, six days’ sail from northern Britain and extending at least to the Arctic Circle; the region he visited may have been Iceland or Norway. -- source link

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