At the turn of the 20th century, Antarctica remained the only continent untouched by humans. In 1895, the 6th International Geographical Congress declared that Antarctica’s ice-choked seas and frozen peaks were the next frontier for scientific discovery, ushering in what has come to be known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. (...)
At the turn of the 20th century, Antarctica remained the only continent untouched by humans. In 1895, the 6th International Geographical Congress declared that Antarctica’s ice-choked seas and frozen peaks were the next frontier for scientific discovery, ushering in what has come to be known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Dozens of men, including famed expedition leaders Sir Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, and Carsten Borchgrevnik, answered the call and trekked to the bottom of the planet. They erected prefabricated wooden cabins that served both as homes during the coldest months and laboratories for research into the local climate and ecosystem. Using these cabins as bases, the explorers traversed glaciers and scaled Mt. Erebus, the southernmost volcano on Earth. When WWII diverted the world’s attention, Antarctic investigation was abandoned, leaving behind several expedition huts on the continent. The small wooden buildings were built to withstand the drastic weather conditions only for the few short years that the explorers inhabited them, but, remarkably, after more than a century, the structures are still intact.
