Philippe Buache's frozen southern sea
In 1739 the French geographer Philippe Buache drew the south polar region as two landmasses split by a frozen inland sea, a map that 'ancient knowledge' writers later claimed shows Antarctica's land beneath the ice.
1739 CE · -72.00, 10.00 · status: explained
The account
Buache built his chart around the giant icebergs reported by Jean-Baptiste Bouvet de Lozier in 1739, reasoning that they needed a large frozen sea fed by mountains and rivers; he labelled that sea as conjecture. The map is often misdated to 1737. Because surveys from 1958 on showed parts of West Antarctica would be sea without the ice, some authors call the map evidence of a pre-glacial survey.
The sceptical view
Buache said plainly his sea was a hypothesis built from explorers' reports; the outline does not match the real bedrock beneath the ice.
Connections in the atlas
- The lifeboat on Bouvet Island
- Oronce Finé's world map and the 'ice-free Antarctica' claim
- The Piri Reis map 'shows Antarctica'
- Terra Australis, the southern continent drawn before it was seen