Antarctic Prehistory: Evidence of Human Occupation?

[leijen]

Does anyone think there is a possibility of the Antarctic continent
having once been occupied by mankind and that beneath the ice are stone structures similar to what is seen in Central and south America and in the middle east?

 

[phi1978]

Almost certainly not.

There has been life on Antarctica but you have to go back many, many millions of years (long before anything resembling man appeared) to find it.

 

[leijen]

Thanks Phil
Are you implying that
1. The Antarctic continent has been iced up for millions of years
2. That the Antarctic continent was geographically in a different position to have actually supported life of any kind.

personally I like number 2.

The Antartic continent may have been at a different geographical position as close as 15000 (fifteen Thousand) years.

 

[Andre]

The Antarctic continent has been iced up for millions of years

Well let's say that the East Antarctic Ice sheet is probably about 500,000 - 1,000,000 years old, dated at Vostok. The west Antarctic Ice Sheet has not been dated accurately but it seems to have been ice free very recently:

http://www.discover.com/issues/nov-98/departments/willantarcticame1536/

The debate over whether the ice sheet is at risk hinges partly on its past history. Scherer has found the first direct evidence that the ice sheet has collapsed before. In soil samples recovered from nearly two-thirds of a mile below the ice, he found fossils of tiny marine plants called diatoms. Some of the fossils were less than 650,000 years old, and Scherer says they were deposited the last time an open ocean, not ice, covered this part of Antarctica.

"Until now, there has been no direct evidence that it's happened before," says Scherer. Although he couldn't precisely determine the age of the diatoms, he suggests that they formed 400,000 years ago, a time when geologists believe that sea-surface temperatures were about 9 to 12 degrees warmer than today and sea levels possibly 65 feet higher. If he's right, the diatoms mark the ice sheet's last collapse.

So I would not exclude it completely that hominids have strolled around in the past.

 

[Chemicalsuperfreak]

Originally posted by leijen
Thanks Phil
Are you implying that
1. The Antarctic continent has been iced up for millions of years
2. That the Antarctic continent was geographically in a different position to have actually supported life of any kind.

personally I like number 2.

The Antartic continent may have been at a different geographical position as close as 15000 (fifteen Thousand) years.

Antartica was certainly at a different position in the past to support more warm suited life (it actually supports life of many kinds now, btw), there pleny of fossils to prove that, in addition to a mountain of other evidence. But it happened much longer than 15,000 years ago.