These days it’s hard to find a place on Earth where humans haven’t interfered in some way. Venture to the most remote jungle or the depths of the Mariana Trench and you’ve likely been preceded by some emissary of humanity, whether that’s chemicals carried on the wind or something more tangible.

But there are places where our long shadow has never reached, where the events of the past 100,000 years might as well have never happened. Locked deep below gargantuan sheets of ice thousands of f