(dramatic music)- How did we get this?A map so detailed, so precise,that guys like this wouldhave thought it was magic.An impossibility made manifestby superhumans in the future.One of their fellowexplorers, Ernest Shakletondrew this place on theback of a menu once.Dreaming of someday crossingthis whole continent,and paying a huge price to try.This is a place that haslured explorers from all over,killing many of them.That's because the bottomof the earth is a placethat humans really shouldn't go.It's a place that infact, they couldn't go.(dramatic music)Hey, I'm super excitedfor you to see the rest of this video.First, I need to saythank you to Storyblocksfor sponsoring today's video.I actually used Storyblocksto make this video.I didn't go to Antarctica for this video,I got a lot of thisfootage from Storyblockswhich is a giant repositoryof loads of toolsthat you can use to make your own videos.From over a million 4Kand HD footage clips,animation templates, music, sound effects,images and more, I mean,it's a lot of stuff.It's all searchable, it's all there.You can download as much as you wantfor one monthly subscription.I've been using Storyblocksfor literally a decadebefore they ever came tosponsor me for a YouTube video,and it's kind of adream to work with them.Recently, Storyblocks changed the gameby creating a plug-in forAfter Effects and Premierewhich are the programs we use to editand animate our videos.What this means is you canbe inside of your editorand have access to all of this footage,so you're not like downloading itand moving it to a different folder,you're just grabbing itfrom the Storyblocks panelinside of your software.It's truly amazing, and I just found outthat all of this footagethat I shot from Switzerlandand Greenland is actuallyup on Storyblocks now.You can go and downloadas much as you wantof my beautiful images from these placesin addition to hundreds of thousandsof other amazing visuals.This is an incredible servicethat comes at a very affordable price.It's a set price, there'snot like hidden fees.You can download as much stuff as you wantfor this one set price, my huge fan.So thank you Storyblocks forsponsoring today's video.There's a link in my description,it is storyblocks.com/johnnyharris.Clicking that link helpssupport this channelbut it also lets you learn moreabout how this servicecan help you up your gameas a visual storyteller,whether you are an individual creatoror a big production company,Storyblocks can help you.Let's get back to thisvideo about Antarctica.Our species were able to move and settleacross the whole whole globefrom desolate ice deserts toimpossibly far away islands.Somehow we just showed up, we settled.But even after we had reachedevery corner of the globethousands of years ago,there was still one land massthat no human had ever laid their eyes on,but something had to existdown here they thought,something to balance outall of the land in the northwith land in the south.So explorers and mapmakers continue to search,and on these maps theydrew their imaginary ideas.A giant continent somewhere down here,or maybe this island out in the eastreally extended down, like way down.Maybe there was palm trees and abundance,a new world yet to be discovered.Others mocked the ideaof a southern world.They depicted it as a dystopian landfull of kingdoms rife with immorality.But these were all guesses.It all remained unknowable.Too far away to find out.(dramatic music)By the end of the 1700's,explorers had turned mostof the world's oceansfrom mysteries to fact.And it was only thenthat the vast ocean expanses of the southturned from imaginary musinginto the next frontier of discovery.The newly enlightened map makerswere now drawing precise grided linesto accurately audit the planet.They were done with theirpretend predictions,their monsters in place of knowledge.The map would remain emptyuntil they had evidence to fillin those great blank spaces.Hopefully with earth'slost and last continentfor thousands of yearsconjectured by many,but seen by none.So expeditions were launchedmoving south and they failed.The southern seas were simply too vast.The gaps in our knowledge too bigto take on this uncharted place.But in 1772, one captain wouldbegin to change everything.(dramatic music)He set sail with two ships and 192 men,and with him the latest technology:a new clock, the most preciseclock ever made at the timeand would for the first time allow himto determine his longitude,to map his every move,to give us the lines that wecan now show you on this map.This journey was fundedby the all-consuming greedof an expanding empire, lookingfor new soil to exploit.But him personally, he had bigthings going on in his mind.He was in it for the desire to go south,further south than any man had ever goneand as far south as anyman could possibly go.He wanted to be the oneto find the lost continentat the bottom of our planet.So for three years, he scoured the oceans,yet searching in the temperate latitudesall he found was water.So he decided to cross a linethat no one before him hadcrossed, the Antarctic Circle.(dramatic music)In case it's not clear,we're now looking atthe bottom of the world.And this map is actually a story.It's a story of a doggedlydetermined explorer,spending years of his lifecircling these oceans,dipping more south thanany human had ever traveledthen coming up and then dipping down againjust in case this timehe might find something,but all he found was frozen water,floating ice, sharp and perilous,but he kept on looking for ways in.On a couple of occasionshe reached withinbreathing distance of landbut he never caught sight of it.After years of searching itwas finally time to head home.He didn't find the continent,but what he did do was provethat if this fable land existed,it would not be the bountiful paradisethat people had imagined and hoped for.He had scoured nearly everyinch of those latitudes.Instead, he knew that any land down herewould be a desolate world,"Forever buried in snow and ice."So more explorers goand attempt to do whatCaptain Cook couldn'tand 45 years later they find something.It was the lost continentand humans were laying eyeson it for the first time.No, it was not temperate,but barren and merciless,but it was seen, it existed.For human beings,a moment like this doesn'tmean the end of a goal,it actually just means the very beginning.So they don't stop here,soon more ships are heading south,explorers looking to claimland for their country,seal hunters, whale hunters lookingfor new untouched waters,scientists on boats withmeasuring tools and open mindsrecording everything.The unknown place, a little more known,sketched on paper theshape of a land mass.But these records onlyserved as a new measurementof our ignorance, how much we didn't know.Our discoveries were stillscattered and partial,accrued shape, a ghostof something much bigger.To truly unveil Antarctica's mysteries,we needed to venture inside it.A few years would need to passbefore the people with powerwould turn their attention slightly awayfrom mapping and conqueringthe non-icy worldto supporting the full explorationof this desolate place.But eventually they got on board.They needed to know what existedin the last blank land on the map.By then they had unleashedthe magic of mechanical power.Power that was fed bycarbon from ancient treesturned into black gold,locked deep in the earth.This new power allowed them to navigatethe once impossible ice,unlocking the perilous interior.On board these boats were scientists,explorers ready to askand answer new questions,armed with new methods, newtools, progress, discovery,adventure, and of course,the French being French.Soon it's 1911 and there's a race to seewho can get to the South Pole first.And it's the Norwegian group who does.The British team gets there secondand everyone dies on their way backand the map is shaping up.New goals come to replace old ones,we now need to cross Antarcticathrough the the pole,going through the ominousunexplored region on the map.A guy named Shakleton tried this,but didn't make it very far.But his journey became a tale of courageand the will to live,when he and his crew against all oddsin some of the most hostile circumstancesmanaged to all return home.The expeditions of thatperiod reset the standardsof human limits and bitby bit, line by line,the void on the map wasgradually getting filled in.By 1920, you're seeing maps like this,a red shading on the parts that we knowand yet still so much left unknown.After millennia of dreaming of it,we finally and indisputablyconquered the skies.We were now able to lay oureyes on uncharted territoriesat an unprecedented scale.The first airplane flewover the South Pole in 1928and in the next decade,many more would follow,each flight providing more detailto add to the compendium ofhard fought observations.But as much as it is a partof our nature to exploreand learn,it is also a part of ournature to conquer and dominate.In the aftermath of the mostcatastrophic war humanityhad ever known,humans once again revealedtheir little eternal paradox,that their love for explorationwas often as much aboutconquest and controlas it was about learningand understanding.Petty fights about who ownedthis land came to the surfaceand thus on the maps,more and more we seethese shades of colors,unnaturally straight linesthat indicate who owns what.Scientific research stationsstopped the icy surface,flying national flags,established as much forasserting territorial controlas for science.And now it's a new worldwhere the two superpowershad turned the map into theirchess board for influence.Both were now looking for a shareof what was still earth'slargest unexplored territory.And soon the United Statesis making maps like this,that has a whole shade color dedicatedto land that has been seenexclusively by American eyes.It's a map that says we were here first,creating a paper trailthat they could point tojust in case they needed to stake a claimhere at the bottom of the planet.But then the countries get togetherand they make an agreementthat Antarctica was notmeant to be just a new fieldfor our conflicts,but rather a place for scientific inquiry.So scientists keep comingenabled by better technology.Icebreakers and helicopters areunloaded onto the continent.But despite all the progress,this continent remains unknownand potentially unknowable.That's until humans break aseemingly impossible barrier.By escaping the force ofgravity that kept us boundto our home planet,we're now throwing up spherical machineswith cameras on them into space.Countries use thesesatellites to snap photosof their enemies on giant roles of filmand gold canisters,that would fill upand then be ejected back down into the skyintercepted by an airplane.And now, yes, we have photosof what our enemy is up to,but look, we also justhave photos of the earth,seeing it like never before.(upbeat music)These terrestrial outlinesthat old cartographerswould tediously reconstructwith only the help ofscattered observations, math,and plenty of imagination,now readily available tous, with perfect accuracy.Our maps were no longer educated guesses,they were snapshots of reality,thanks to our satelliteshurling around our planetonce every a hundred or so minutes,taking photos and makingmeasurements while they fly.Humans have outdone themselves now.We have more data than our human brainscould possibly comprehend.It's too much.It's basically worthless due to its scale,its detail, its complexity,until new electronic brains appear,allowing us to collect andsynthesize hundreds of thousandsof images from space,blending them into one map.(dramatic music)A map that explores who brokeinto this desolate placea hundred years earliercould have never imagined.Every nook and crannyof Antarctica is seen.Every hill, every curve, every valley,every cliff, every ledge.But we don't stop there.Now let's measure the radiationemitted from the icy surface.We can measure the chemistryof the atmosphere down here,the temperature of its oceans,the velocity of its icesheets as they move.We can somehow even map what this placewould look like if youremoved all the ice.Ice, that let me remind you,is four kilometers thick in some places.Scientists soon declare that Antarctica,the place that was alwaysinaccessible to humansis now the best mapped continent on earth.This generation's longquest to map Antarcticais ultimately a story ofstruggle and then triumph.A story of exploration and science.And to me it's rock solidproof of something that seemsto be deeply embeddedinto the human experience,the obsession to discover,regardless of the costand despite the lack of anyrational reason to do so,always driven by thesetwin motives of curiosityand conquest.Always willing to do whatever it takesto step foot in a place nomatter how impossible it seems.So yes, we've basicallyentirely mapped Antarcticaand the entire planet at that,but you know we're not gonna stop here.As new frontiers revealtheir mysteries to us,the same story is bound to unfold,and I can say with certaintythat we will continueto do this, not becausewe need to for survival,but because we need tofor some other reason,some deeply human impulsethat pushes us way past what's reasonableinto the impossible,to expand the frontiers of our knowledge,to understand ourselvesand our surroundings a little better,to discover the truths ofour world and our universe.(dramatic music)Hey everyone, thanks for watching.This was a new format, obviously,one I'm really excited about thoughbecause we poured a lotinto making this beautiful and immersive,Tom and I developed this soundtrackin a very, very bespoke, tailor-made way.And my hope is that it really stuck.I know for me,this is one of my favoritevideos we've ever made.I wanna tell you about somethingbecause I'm very excited about this.I made a poster.It is a poster called All Maps Are Wrong,and it features dozens of map projections.We can't accurately mapthe world on a 2D surfacebecause the world is a sphere, right?And so we get all theseweird map projections.And they're beautiful to look at,they're kind of weird to look at.We just launched this right now,it's literally, this is the first timeI'm talking about it to you right now.And what that means isthere is a presale discount.15% off for this week only.Support the channel,we have lots in presets thatwe use to color our videosand our photos, ourmembers of the newsroomare also a major pillar of our community.That's our Patreon.And they get access to anextra video every month,a behind the scenes flog,as well as a bunch of other perksthat you can check out overon patreon.com/johnnyharris.I started a company called Bright Trip,that is all about smart traveland smart travel products,video products.You might love that.And just being here, watchingthese videos, commenting,showing your support reallyactually helps in a big way.So thanks for being here.I'll see you in the next one.Bye everyone.- [Speaker] Okay, that is that.(dramatic music)
