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Are there places on Earth where humans haven’t been? And if so, why? Aaron Jones, New York

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Readers reply

Under my sons’ beds. It’s Indiana Jones territory … Airbomb

No human has been to the molten core of the planet. We’ve barely even been down a few kilometres from the surface. There’s a lot more to the planet than the thin smear of atmosphere, dirt, water and organics sitting on top of its solid parts.

Going outwards, you can make an argument that all the way out to our L1 and L2 Lagrange points is part of the Earth, as our gravity dominates out to there, even if there is no atmosphere. No human has been remotely close to that far out yet. KillerMuppett

The bottom of my garden. hojoger

Any ice, even snowfalls in your garden, are a new surface. It’s an untouched and unseen place right to the point when you step outside your door.

In reverse, rocks erode. Years of attrition, freeze and thaw cycles, small particles washed away with rain or dramatic changes such as cliff falls. All erosion exposes new rock surfaces. Rocks that were laid down, perhaps thousands of millions of years ago; once thrust higher than Everest, but are now eroded close to sea level. Formed before there were animals, let alone humans, to see or touch the place they now rest in. At a molecular level, the whole surface of the Earth is a new “place” nobody has been before every time you pass. leadballoon

I’ve just had a new toilet bowl installed and the plumber assures me (boldly) that no one has gone there before. EddieChorepost
If it’s a quality brand, they’d have tested it before it left the toilet factory. salamandertome
It’s bog standard. EddieChorepost
But once the first person goes, there’ll be a chain reaction. maiki

Lots of the Arctic and Antarctic. The few humans who have been there have concentrated in specific areas or on direct routes to the poles or other targets. So lots left untrodden. Same with mountains – even the ones that have been climbed will have parts which are just not accessible. Apart from that and the ocean floor, then probably not much. Even the “wilderness” regions (deserts and rainforests) have been inhabited and traversed for a very long time. bucket

I flew hang gliders for over 35 years. Many times, wrestling my glider while spiralling in tight thermals just a couple of hundred feet above incredible rocky spires in the Sierra Nevadamountains, I would look down at these wild inaccessible promontories and feel pretty sure no human had ever set foot there. Leo Jones, Santa Rosa, California, by email

The American sweet shops in central London. On a more whimsical note, About 25 years ago on Radio 4’s Home Truths, John Peel did a lovely series on finding the most boring Ordnance Survey 1km square in the UK. When the winner was announced, a reporter very specifically went there and found it rather charming, if devoid of specific human constructions. RandomPresudonym

Probably, in the heart of the extremes. The arctic regions, the deserts, the rainforests, deep, deep ocean. Veltatecla

If you look at a field of cows, no human has been inside any of them. salamandertome
I have been in a field with a Hereford bull. Very quietly around the edge of it. Seferli_Oda

Yes, there are places earth humans haven’t been; namely the molten lava meniscus in the Kīlauea Volcano, at Hawaii’s National Park, United States. John Thornton, by email

Gangkhar Puensum, Bhutan. At 7,570 metres (24,836 ft) it’s both the highest mountain in Bhutan and the highest unclimbed mountain in the world. There were four attempts to reach the summit in the 1980s, but Bhutan subsequently banned all climbing of mountains higher than 6,000 metres in 1994, and then banned all mountaineering in the country in 2003 in deference to local beliefs. So long as Bhutan remains the last remaining Tibetan Buddhist kingdom, this is unlikely to change.

I’m visiting Bhutan in September; I won’t be going anywhere near Gangkhar Puensum, though if I’m fortunate I might be able to see it on a clear day. SunnyMelbourne

A great example is the highest peak in south-east Asia. It is Hkakabo, based in Myanmar’s far north. The one and only ascent by a Japanese climber in the 2000s is debatable. Nicholas Richardson, by email

Surely Arctic Canada, Alaska’s extreme North and Arctic Russia. The heart of the Sahara as well. The barren lands mostly. What about the hundreds of islands in Norway? EdComics
There isn’t a place in the Sahara that has not been explored, at the very least by those tireless nomads, the Fulanis. And when you add the Tuaregs, Berbers, and Bedouins of north Africa you can bet every part of it has been visited. Objectivite
The Fulanis are not, and never were, a Saharan people. Their influence covered the southern Sahara and west Africa. They never crossed the Tademaït or the great sand seas, or reached the Libyan desert.

In the Sahara itself, the Hoggar covers 550,000 sq km, and while it can’t be described as “unexplored” (ask anyone trekking to Assekrem), it’s so vast that there are certainly large areas that have never been walked on, and peaks that have never been climbed, simply because the Tuareg don’t have a tradition of climbing mountains and European visitors have concentrated on looking for rock art rather than, for example, finding the source of the ancient Tamanrasset river.

And there are huge areas of the Sahara that have never been physically visited because the traditional caravan trails and raiding routes avoided the more hostile areas, and even modern mechanical transport can’t go everywhere … Have you ever been there? I have, often. BritinNormandy

The Great Pyramid is like a museum model explaining how inaccessible places can exist. Inside it, using sophisticated muon detectors, voids have been identified. One is at least 30 metres long. Since the pyramid was built no human has been inside. Indeed no sophisticated probe has managed to explore its secrets. Perhaps the void is a metaphor for reminding us that some things are unachievable. Bensbloke
True, but it doesn’t count for the purposes of this question. Somebody must have been there once, in order to build it. SpoilheapSurfer

I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me. rab1827

Ogof New Park cave in Gower has not been fully mapped. I am sure many caves exist like this. riveness

Yes and the “Go to places no one has ever been to” cruise, leaves Southampton dock on Friday. It’s a one time offer. woodworm20

I am sure I’ve read there are unexplored parts deep in Papua New Guinea. CroneRanger

Hopefully there are and will always be places on Earth where humans have not been and can never ever go. SparkySpark
Yeah, that’s just as ridiculous as the people who once said we’d never go to the moon or never sail around the world or never fly, etc. Even if it’s in 500 years time, there will come a point where everywhere on Earth has been fully explored and there’s nothing left except out there in space. Never is a long time for anything, nothing ever lasts that long. KultharDrax

Almost everywhere. It’s an always-available thrill when travelling or when standing still to pick out a single tree or remote slope which one can be sure no one has ever touched. As I write, at just after 3am, I hear a fox cough in its hole in the wood at the edge of the garden. So near, and yet so far. Christoph Warrack, Sussex, by email

Nigel Farage’s constituency office? CD Mole, by email

Steve Backshall did a BBC series called Undiscovered Worlds which involved visiting places that fitted the title. On more than one occasion he came near to death trying to reach them despite having world class survival experts on hand. The world is full of places which are untouched by man and the romantic in me finds that immensely comforting. jazzual
Just started watching this series and it’s fascinating! Can’t drag myself away from the screen. ReluctantRed

Any telecom company call centre. FirmlyDirac
Twenty years ago I worked in a call centre contracted to O2. We were always there. Seferli_Oda

The places where I left my car keys/glasses/comb/pen/… etc. FirmlyDirac

Coming across an antiquarian book whose pages are still uncut always causes a slightly strange, sad feeling. alisoncowe

Among the caving community, a widely used estimate is that only about 10% of Earth’s explorable caves are known, implying that roughly 90% remain undiscovered or unexplored. Whether the extent of what we do not know and have never visited is accurate or not, discoveries of new, apparently unvisited cave systems are still reasonably common even in densely populated regions. Practical experience suggests that a significant amount of the underground/speleological environment remains unvisited by humans. Keith_Lawder

There are still many unclimbed peaks and an almost uncountable number of unclimbed routes. Philustrate2

I find it more reassuring to think that our ancestors probably went most places, at some point. Humanity in our modern form has been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and someone probably visited everywhere long before European colonial explorers stamped their names on things (or are yet to). Porthos

Behind their mirrors? kunsthand

Southampton. No self respecting human would go there. Markear
I used to work onboard P&O ferries going out of Southampton to France and Spain. We lived on board for three weeks and came off for two weeks. The best commute to work ever, from London at the start of the three weeks and back to London at the end of the three weeks.

We had a day off once in Southampton, something broke in the boat, I wandered around Southampton for the first time. Um! A windswept desert of no interest.
But! I see your Southampton and I’ll raise you Kidderminster. 16 miles from Birmingham, ex carpet town, buried in boredom, a corridor town. Southampton at least has places you can sit and imagine the rest of the world and maybe get the boat to go see the world. Veltatecla

I’ve lived in this house for 12 years. It was new, so quite pristine. I’ve never touched the bathroom tiles above head height, never touched any of the ceilings, never been in the loft.

I’ve had my car for 13 years and the other day I found a hidden storage nook I didn’t know about. A few weeks ago I discovered that if I’m using cruise control on the motorway I can adjust the speed by pressing up or down on the cruise control switch. (But the car quirks are due to, who bothers to read a 150-page manual? Not me, obviously.) Goldgreen

There is a sea stack just off Handa Island off the north-west coast of Scotland, on which fewer people have stood than have stood on the moon. Allegedly. ArthurOPodd

Easier to list places where humans HAVE been. IDNumNoLongerWorks
Eh – there’s millions of those. PeteTheBeat

Most of it. We live on the thin skin of the planet. Our very deepest mining counts as a rounding error. The vast bulk of the planet is only known to us by inference. unclestinky

Great point, which got me thinking. Apparently the deepest mine is 4km deep, which means that if the earth were the size of a basketball, the deepest mine wouldn’t even be the thickness of a postage stamp on the surface. RamblingMan82

Yes, loads of places, mostly to do with not fitting, or being a bit uncomfortable. Domestic water pipes. Under piano keys, and I’ve yet to see anyone getting themselves inside a set of bagpipes, or a saxophone, well, one above sub-contrabass that is.

On account of dizziness, inside tractor tyres, and washing machines when they’re running. Snowboarding down pyroclastic flows.

And no urban explorer has ever made it to the top of the SpaceX Corporation as there’s not enough room up there for more than one. bricklayersoption

You can’t step in the same river twice, so yes, the Ribble, the Wensum and all the rest. The ocean bottom under water, Antarctica under ice, unknown and unexplored caves under ground. But I won’t give any coordinates, lest tour companies try to go there. jno50

Quite a lot of mountains haven’t yet been climbed, for cultural and technical reasons, among other limitations. Mount Siple in Antarctica is an example. NickEM

The deepest parts of the bottom of the oceans. Arguably we’ve seen it from bathyspheres and on film etc, but certainly there’s no way anyone’s physically touched any of it. HistoricalArtefact

There’s the Arctic ice: most of this now melts in summer, and some of it refreezes in winter, so a lot of the solid ice that exists in any given winter was water six months earlier, and probably hasn’t had a human walk across it in the time since it froze. 1AngryMan