Impossible Antarctic Ruins

Well, of course, Antarctica is a nice place to visit, but you sure wouldn't want to build a civilization there. And if you were a temple-building civilization, you sure wouldn't want to put it all the way up on top of a mountain where it would take a lot of effort and resources just to even get there, although there might be some nice mountain springs and streams from which to get fresh water. There's never been any evidence of any relatively advanced societies living there for any length of time that I know of, and the whole idea is pretty stupid.


There's no evidence of anyone attempting to build a civilization there that would be big enough to scrape off a top layer of rock to level out (when it was first built) a walled courtyard, and maybe stick a large temple in it. And even if you did, it wouldn't take long for your constructions to collapse and be reabsorbed into the environment. Depending on how long ago it was, you'd eventually have debris piles instead of temples, and with earthquakes and rockslides and constant bombardment by ice and blistering cold temperatures, it probably wouldn't look like much after a while.


Depending how long ago it was.

Who knows what we had in Antarctica few thousands years ago...

a reply to: Blue Shift

Photos look like they could have been taken on Mars.

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: Blue Shift

Photos look like they could have been taken on Mars.

Antarctica=Mars=the Matrix?

a reply to: Blue Shift

Graham Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods" was published 22 years ago and postulated, with some decent circumstantial evidence, this very thing. Interesting.

a reply to: vinifalou

Ice. Lots of ice. Oldest ice cores date back well over half a million years.

Odds of something surviving to this day given the glaciation and the sheer ungodly weight of the ice itself would seem to mitigate against even signs of something surviving to be discovered...

There is, I suppose, the possibility that that particular area wasn't as ice covered as the rest of the continent. Depending, too, on whether that's even a something, and not a strange sort of photographic artifact... I certainly don't know.

Interesting, though.

a reply to: seagull

As for humans living there even 10 - 12,000 years ago, I highly doubt it. No land to even spring agriculture, it's a desert.
As for people visiting there before our historical records, who knows, maybe. If they did, it wasn't for a long time.

But, to address your post directly, there is tons of life teeming around beneath the glaciers and ice, Antarctica has dozens of 'active' or dormant volcanoes.

originally posted by: strongfp
a reply to: seagull

As for humans living there even 10 - 12,000 years ago, I highly doubt it. No land to even spring agriculture, it's a desert.
As for people visiting there before our historical records, who knows, maybe. If they did, it wasn't for a long time.

But, to address your post directly, there is tons of life teeming around beneath the glaciers and ice, Antarctica has dozens of 'active' or dormant volcanoes.

How about 20,000 years ago?
phys.org...

a reply to: Blue Shift

You are digging into human history that is based off assumptions. Consider, Machu Picchu, and the pyramids of Giza. they took hundreds of years to complete, and further back the civilizations alone took thousands of years to establish (Machu Picchu is built upon generations and forgotten knowledge, the pyramids were an ongoing concentrated effort for generations)
And given the geological records of Antarctica, it's highly doubtful that it harbored an advanced civilization, especially 20,000 years ago when even the Indus valley didn't even create written history yet, let alone massive ships to transport people.

a reply to: Blue Shift

That article says that the Antarctic warms faster than the rest of the planet. It doesn't say that Antarctica was ice free 20,000 year ago. By a long shot. It was still a very cold and icy place.

Ice at the bottom of the borehole was deposited about 70,000 years ago; ice about one-sixth of the way up about 50,000 years ago; and ice about one-third of the way to the surface 20,000 years ago.

phys.org...

originally posted by: Phage
That article says that the Antarctic ice warms faster than the rest of the planet. It doesn't say that Antarctica was ice free 20,000 year ago. By a long shot.

The image I highlighted is essentially ice-free now. I don't know if it was ever covered with ice. Might be something to look into, particularly there and the surrounding areas and the lower sides of the mountains. Get a nice warm current coming from somewhere, a bit of post-Ice Age warming, and maybe it would be possible to grow something useful. There are a couple of nice, warm currents dropping down from Brazil and Eastern Africa into the Prince Astrid Coast. During a period of post-Ice Age warming when the currents might have been disrupted, it might have been significant.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: Phage
That article says that the Antarctic ice warms faster than the rest of the planet. It doesn't say that Antarctica was ice free 20,000 year ago. By a long shot.

The image I highlighted is essentially ice-free now. I don't know if it was ever covered with ice. Might be something to look into, particularly there and the surrounding areas and the lower sides of the mountains. Get a nice warm current coming from somewhere, a bit of post-Ice Age warming, and maybe it would be possible to grow something useful. There are a couple of nice, warm currents dropping down from Brazil and Eastern Africa into the Prince Astrid Coast. During a period of post-Ice Age warming when the currents might have been disrupted, it might have been significant.

Antarctica is cold because of the weather patterns dictated by the ocean currents. Sure, it may have warm periods, but the swirl of ocean water around the continent is what makes it cold. Only tectonic drift would bring it out of it's iced state.

a reply to: Blue Shift
Yes. There are ice free areas in Antarctica. The steep sides of mountains (where your "ruin" is) for example.

But your post seemed to imply that Antarctica was warm 20,000 years ago. It wasn't.

originally posted by: strongfp
Antarctica is cold because of the weather patterns dictated by the ocean currents. Sure, it may have warm periods, but the swirl of ocean water around the continent is what makes it cold. Only tectonic drift would bring it out of it's iced state.

Probably. Although I've read articles about the havoc global warming might eventually have on our old tried and true currents like the Gulf Stream, with them breaking down and pushing warm water into the Arctic. I imagine the same thing could happen in the south. If science has taught us anything, it's that in the long run things on Earth aren't as unchanging as you might think.

Anybody got any good climate readings from this area 20,000 to 10,000 years ago? Not the deep core stuff dug out near the pole.

originally posted by: Phage
But your post seemed to imply that Antarctica was warm 20,000 years ago. It wasn't.

How warm was it?

Warm enough to live for a little while in the summer? Warm enough to get a visit from some ambitious migrating folks like those temple builders who now live in the Peruvian Altiplano? They seem to like building crazy stuff at ridiculous elevations. Maybe their ancestors had a knack and a desire.

Not that something like that happened.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Warm enough to live for a little while in the summer?

No.
Your "ruins", aren't.

originally posted by: Phage
No. Your "ruins", aren't.

Like, how cold? And how about down below on the coastal plain if they were getting hit by some decent stray currents during the warming? There have been large structures created primarily for ritual purposes. Astronomy and so forth. I don't think anybody ever lived full time near the Nazca geographs.

Even if there was a really warm spell for only a few hundred years or so somewhere during that 10,000 year span, that would have been plenty time to build something like that.

To say that the whole idea of an ancient but advanced Antarctic civilization is stupid is pretty closed minded when you consider that nobody knows what's under the ice or how long it's been since the continent had a temperate climate.

Yes there's no evidence currently because how could it be found under all that ice?

Mainstream human history only accounts for roughly the last 10,000 years. That's the blink of an eye for a planet that's 4.5 billion years old.

originally posted by: AgarthaSeed
To say that the whole idea of an ancient but advanced Antarctic civilization is stupid is pretty closed minded when you consider that nobody knows what's under the ice or how long it's been since the continent had a temperate climate.

Yes there's no evidence currently because how could it be found under all that ice?

Mainstream human history only accounts for roughly the last 10,000 years. That's the blink of an eye for a planet that's 4.5 billion years old.

Ice cores drilled into said ice shows how long its been there.

For a time line of this: www.antarcticglaciers.org...

Other studies have been done concerning the sediments and what they show

cat.inist.fr...

Ice started forming over Antarctica about 45 million years ago and may have come and gone. The present antarctic ice cap is about 800,000 years old

Another study shows that ice first formed completely over the antarctic around 35 million years ago

Davies, B.J., Hambrey, M.J., Smellie, J.L., Carrivick, J.L., Glasser, N.F., 2012. Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet evolution during the Cenozoic Era. Quaternary Science Reviews 31, 30-66.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Blue Shift

Warm enough to live for a little while in the summer?

No.
Your "ruins", aren't.

Howdy Phage long time no read