Geographers and historians have traditionally held the view that Antarctica was first sighted around 1820, but some sixteenth-century European maps show a body that resembles the polar landmass, even though explorers of the period never saw it
Some scholars, ttherefore, argue that the continent must have been discovered and mapped by the ancients, whose maps are known to have served as models for the European cartographers
The question of who first sighted Antarctica in modern times is still much debated, and no one has been able to present conclusive evidence.