Discovery
There is no conclusive evidence of the first human activity on Svalbard. Swedish archeologist Hans Christiansson found flint and slate objects he identified as Stone Age tools dating from ca. 3000 BC, but there is little support among his peers as no dwelling place has been found. During the 19th century, Norwegian historians proposed that Norse seamen had found Svalbard in 1194. This is based on annals that found Svalbarði four days sailing from Iceland. Although it forms the basis for the modern name of the archipelago, there is no scientific consensus that supports the hypothesis. Russian historians have proposed that Russian Pomors may have visited the island as early as the 15th century. This line was largely pursued by Soviet scholars, but again, no conclusive evidence has been found.
The first to undisputed have discovered the archipelago is an expedition led by the Dutch mariner Willem Barentsz, who was looking for the Northern Sea Route to China. He first spotted Bjørnøya on 10 June 1596 and the northwestern tip of Spitsbergen on 17 June. The sighting of the archipelago included in the accounts and maps made by the expedition and Spitsbergen was quickly included by cartographers. Henry Hudson explored the islands in 1607.
Read more about this topic: History Of Svalbard
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universal ... that error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)