Antarctica is by far the most mysterious continent, and since its bigger than both Australia and Europe its a surprise how little we know about it. One thing we do know is that at some point in history the continent wasn’t a frozen wasteland, but instead would have existed like any other continent, complete with its own plants and animals and possible its own civilisations.
The only parts of land on Antarctica we can see today are the very tops of mountain ranges that have been pushed up through the ice as the land changed. The actual “ground” part of the continent is hidden beneath up to 3000 feet of ice, making it impossible to know what, or who was ever down there.
Here’s 5 of the weirdest things we have found so far in the continent.
1) Blood Falls
This creepy looking water fall may seem like the stuff of nightmares, but the red colour of the water is actually caused by rust. There is a huge iron deposit somewhere under the earth that the falls flow past, picking up tons of corroded iron oxide and spewing it out on the surface in a display unlike any other on earth.
2) The Pyramid
The continent just wouldn’t be complete without its own pyramid now would it? but even though this may look rather out of place, there’s a very rational explanation for it. It was simply formed by nature, being shaped over countless years by movement in the earth and freezing winds.
This one has been featured on the show “Ancient Aliens” were it talks about it being built or used by some mysterious advanced race, a claim that has quite a following behind it. The main problem with this is that the pyramid wasn’t built, and has no signs of individual blocks or any other kind of building materials. Even though the shape is quite suspicious, this one is simply just a mountain.
3) Billions in resources
Since no one has been able to get to the land part of the continent, no one has been able to exploit its natural resources. Every single country on earth has billions worth of something, be it gold, oil or some kind of metal, and all of those untouched deposits are just sitting there, waiting for someone to start a war over who owns them.
4) An epidemic waiting to happen
Most regions of the world are home to specific diseases, and throughout history when a group of people are exposed to a new disease for the first time, it normally ends very, very badly. So far scientists have found microbes and bacteria within the ice with some samples being as old as 420,000 years.
Some of the bacteria seems to be living in their own little hubs and haven’t spread and mixed with other groups. Cold normally stops germs from spreading as they die quickly and go dormant if its cold enough, but upon the melting of the ice from global warming, could we be opening a whole new world of germs. There’s the very real possibility that some of the bacteria could become active upon thawing out and may even hold a new type of something that humans have built up no resistance to.
5) Underground structures
This one is only a theory based on probability, and some very sketchy historical documents. There’s a suggestions that the continent wasn’t covered in ice as recently as 5000 BC, with some claims suggesting an even closer time. One of the things that has led to this idea is the Piri Reis map, which is a map made several hundred years ago that was made by using a collection of even older maps.
On this map it shows the continent not only being free of ice, but there’s several markers on it which could indicate the locations of possible settlements and ports. Another reason that people think there’s something down there is simply because at one point it wasn’t frozen, and due to its size its almost impossible that something didn’t live down there.
The chances of this being some kind of secret Nazi base, or Atlantis type city is to far fetched to be true, but there would surely be the remains of a Neanderthal type human relative, along with their structures and tools.
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