Is Atlantis in Antarctica
Some people believe that the lost continent of Atlantis is actually Antarctica or that the city of Atlantis is buried under kilometres of Antarctic ice.
The original story of Atlantis was mentioned by the Greek philosopher Plato in his two dialogues Timaeus and Critias but for Plato Atlantis was a fictional construction that he used to make a point.
Plato described Atlantis as an island in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the ‘Pillars of Hercules’ (the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea). It supposedly existed 9000 years before Plato’s time (427-347BC) and, after attacking Athens and being defeated, the Atlanteans returned to their city which was destroyed by an earthquake and submerged by the ocean.
Later scholars came to believe that Plato was speaking of an historical fact and over time a great deal of pseudo-history, pseudo-science, and pseudo-archaeology arose in conjunction with belief in Atlantis
Atlantis came to represent the technologically advanced proto-civilisation from which all of the known ancient civilizations were descended (the Mayan and Egyptian civilisations, for example).
A number of popular authors like Charles Berlitz, Erich Von Daniken and Flavio Barbiero put forward the idea of Antarctica being the site for Atlantis and it became a popular subject in the 1960s and 1970s and also later with the works of Rose and Rand Flem-Ath and Rand and Wilson, who believed Atlantis was near the coast of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
The idea of Antarctica being the site of Atlantis was reinforced by the Piri Reis map, which supposedly shows Antarctica as it would be ice free, meaning that people were possibly living there relatively recently (10-20,000 years ago) though the map is apparently genuine people seem to have confused Argentina with Antarctica.
Charles Hapgood believed that the Earth’s outer crust could move over the mantle quite quickly up to around 3500 km and his theory became known as the “Earth Crustal Displacement theory”. Because of this movement he placed Atlantis in Antarctica and a number of authors based their theories of an Antarctic Atlantis on his work. Strangely, Albert Einstein supported Hapgood’s theory and even went so far as to write the preface for Hapgood’s book ‘Earth’s Shifting Crust’.
Scientists pretty much dismiss Hapgood’s theory because his timings don’t match up with what is known about Antarctica’s movements through long periods of geological time and crustal displacement would be so fast and catastrophic as to destroy all animal life on Earth.
I for one would love to find a lost civilisation under Antarctica but I won’t hold my breath. It seems that it was only ever a work of fiction and even if it did have some historical truth Atlantis appears to be located somewhere in the northern hemisphere near Europe, not Antarctica. The most current best guess, if it was real, is that Atlantis was the island of Santorini before it was blown apart by a volcanic eruption, but who knows really.
This video sums it all up pretty well.