Antarctica: Legends, Lost Civilizations, and Scientific Speculation

Antarctica, an icy desert at the bottom of the Earth, fascinates the human imagination with its harsh beauty and extreme loneliness. Spanning 14 million square kilometres, it stores 60% of Earth's freshwater in its enormous ice sheets, withstanding the Earth's most extreme conditions.

Aside from its scientific mystique, Antarctica is a breeding ground for legends, that lost civilizations, old charts, and subglacial worlds exist beneath the ice. One of the most fascinating legends is that Antarctica, a temperate Eden in the not-so-distant past, supported advanced human civilizations that were buried in ice by cataclysmic events. Mainstream science rejects the ideas, but some speculative lines and geological facts fuel speculation in fringe and scholarly communities. Let's dig into those legends, the scientific rationale for a green Antarctica, and where scientists cautiously venture into whether or not an ancient human presence is possible.