It has the closest point of land to the North Pole, and it's the least densely populated political

territory on the planet.

80% of it is covered by an ice mass that is second only to the Antarctic ice sheet.

And beneath that ice, just

might lie the largest collection of untapped natural resources on Earth. Learn more

about Greenland, the island, and the people who live there on this episode of

Everything Everywhere Daily. Greenland is a bit of a paradox. It's big. It's the biggest island on the planet.

However, its size is often exaggerated on Mercator projection maps.

If it were an independent country, it would be the 12th largest country in the world.

The defining thing about Greenland would have to be its ice sheet, which covers the vast majority

of the island.

The size of the ice sheet is a function of the size of the island, its northern latitude, and its unique geology.

Because of the massive weight of the ice cap, it has depressed the land in the

interior of the island to create what is in effect a massive bowl. There is a ridge of mountains

around the island which contains all of the ice. And this is why Greenland has a massive ice sheet

and the islands close by in Canada do not. There have been people

on Greenland for about 4,500 years as far as researchers can tell. The very first

people were known as the Sakhak people. They lived on the southern and

western shores of the island and they're classified as a proto-Inuit culture.

However, these early settlers didn't remain in Greenland. Either they left or

the population died out.

Around the same time, a group simply known as the Independence One culture,

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