ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the development up to the point and introduces some of the events and individuals that are closely linked to readers understanding of the Antarctic. Antarctica has been marked out as a continent for science. Antarctica is explored through a consideration of mapping and expeditions from the earliest times, as well as the people behind these activities. Mapping went along with increasing marine mammal hunting activity in Antarctic waters. European and American sealers and whalers, however, economic potential in the waters around the Antarctic from about the 1790s and during the early decades of the nineteenth century, as their traditional hunting grounds in the Arctic became progressively less profitable due to over-exploitation. The "Heroic Age" of Antarctic exploration was, on one hand, marked by these national interests, represented by individuals such as Robert F. Scott and Roald Amundse and on the other, by the desire of scientists for a better understanding of the Antarctic.
