Talk:Pytheas

Completely relevant fact
An editor removed this as "completely irrelevant."

"Icelanders are fairly sure Iceland was not Thule, as Pytheas lived centuries before its colonization by European agriculturalists, and Greenland for the same reason is out of the question."

That was a really strange thing to say. First I list the possibilities. Then I exclude the ones that can be excluded. Greenland and Iceland are out because no one lived there. How is that irrelevant? I'm putting this back in modified form. I think you really wanted to condense. You should say that, not that it is "irrelevant."

Q-Celtic?
''This etymology shows that Pytheas interacted not so much with Irish or Scots, as they used Q-Celtic. Rather, Pytheas brought back the P-Celtic form from more geographically accessible regions where Welsh or Breton are spoken today.'' - There were no Q-Celtic-speaking peoples in Ireland or Britain in 325 BCE. The Goidels arrived much later. The earlier Celtic colonizers of Ireland were P-Celtic speakers, as in Britain. See T. F. O'Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin 1946, 1984) for a detailed study of Pytheas's possible contributions to Ptolemy's Geography. Eroica (talk) 13:03, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

pruning needed?
A lot of the article seems to consist of commentary which is actually derived from classical texts which do not mention Pytheas as the source. In fact, it is often unclear that Pytheas is not mentioned in the source.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:33, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I suspect those are edits by "Dave", ie Botteville, see the archived talk page. Can you point to some specifically? Doug Weller  talk 13:02, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * it would require a bit of time, but for now I wanted to get the reminder up for me or anyone else.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:16, 27 January 2020 (UTC)#
 * I'm right. Note the edit summary saying they've started. There's a lot to prume. Doug Weller  talk 15:53, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Also this 2008 edit, all original research, is still in Pytheas.  Doug Weller  talk 17:41, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

contradictory discussion and unsourced musings
The whole 'Thule' and 'discovery of the Baltic' sections are loaded with contradiction, and completely unsourced presumtions. It's almost like an internal monologue.

The most egrarious is in deciding the location of Thule is mid Norway, and assumptions made from that.

'A reaffirmation that it is on the Arctic Circle. He added that the crossing to Thule started at the island of Berrice, "the largest of all", which may be Lewis in the outer Hebrides. If Berrice was in the outer Hebrides, the crossing would have brought Pytheas to the coast of Møre og Romsdal or Trøndelag, Norway, explaining how he managed to miss the Skagerrak. If this is his route, in all likelihood he did not actually circumnavigate Britain, but returned along the coast of Germany, accounting for his somewhat larger perimeter.'

There is no explanation why leaving from Lewis (on the western side of Scotland) and sailing North, would bring you to Norway (north east) and not Iceland (north west). They are both on the same lattitude at approximately the same distance. there is also no explanation why this means he did not circumnavigate Britain, nor fail to discover the Skagerrak.

This is especially bad because later it is stated it is not known if he went to Iceland or Norway, and then it is stated that he definitely went to the Baltic, which is impossible without discovering the Skagerrak.

It is all so contradictory and unsubstantiated I am tempted to delete large sections of it, but I expect that would just be reverted and achieve nothing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.177.242 (talk) 00:33, 25 January 2022 (UTC)