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Hello, at the southern extremity of this planet lies an icy, wind-swept and virtually

uninhabitable landmass.

Antarctica is the world's fifth largest continent, a bleak and freezing place almost entirely covered by ice

and plunged into darkness for much of its long winter. The geographer, Marinus of Tyre,

coined the name Antarctica in the second century AD, and many civilizations from the ancient Greeks

onwards believed in the existence of a great undiscovered southern land but it

wasn't until the 1840s that humans laid eyes on the continent. Since the early years of the last century

the Antarctic has provided the scene for some of the greatest triumphs and

tragedies of human exploration, most famously the death of Robert Falcon Scott on his

return from the South Pole in 1912.

Almost 50 years later, an international treaty set aside the entire continent

as a scientific reserve and protected it from territorial claims.

With me to discuss the history of the Antarctic from its... and protected it from territorial claims.

With me to discuss the history of the Antarctic,

from its origins to the Antarctic Treaty of 1959.

And Jane Francis, professor of paleoclamatology at the University of Leeds,

Julian Dardswell, Director of the Scott Polar

Research Institute and Professor of Physical Geography at the University of

Cambridge and David Walton, a Marietist professor at the British Antarctic Survey

and visiting professor at the University of

...