Unraveling the Mystery: Are There Really Pyramids in Antarctica?
Published June 19 2023, 12:36 p.m. ET
Man-made pyramids around the world are symbols of the ancient civilizations that once lived here on Earth. There are pyramid structures in Egypt, Sudan, China, India, Peru, and Mexico. And in 2016, satellite images showed what appeared to be pyramids in Antarctica.
The pyramid-like peaks were seen jutting out of the ice in the southern part of Antartica’s Ellsworth Mountain range, Live Science reported in 2016. One of the peaks has a base that is 2 kilometers square in each direction, much like the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.
Pyramids in Giza, Egypt.
Where did the pyramids in Antarctica come from?
It’s hard to believe there could be man-made structures on the frozen continent of Antarctica. The frigid temperatures of the continent make it inhabitable for most humans, with the exception of the scientists who are there to study the area.
However, there is some speculation that thousands of years ago, Antarctica had a climate similar to modern-day Italy. In 2017, scientists found signs of plant life – roots, pollen, and spores – when they drilled through a glacier in west Antarctica, The Guardian reported in 2020.
The scientists found evidence of over 65 different plant species, indicating the Antarctica landscape was covered in a swampy rainforest with an average temperature of about 55 degrees Fahrenheit about 83 million years ago, as per The Guardian.
Also, the ancient Piri Reis map discovered in 1929 reportedly indicates that the climate in Antarctica may have been warm enough to allow humans to live on the continent sometime in the past 6,000 years, around the same time the pyramids were built in other parts of the world,
Others suggest that the Antarctica pyramids may be the work of alien visitors who had colonized the continent years before the ice age.
Are there really pyramids in Antarctica?
Claims that the peaks seen in Antarctica are really pyramids have been disputed for years. The myth-busting website Snopes reports the Antarctica pyramid stories are false. In 2022, a blog post titled “Marines are investigating 3 ancient pyramids discovered in Antarctica” was shared on Facebook but then flagged by the social media company as false news and misinformation, reports PolitiFact.
Skeptics say the Antarctic pyramids are actually just mountains that have eroded into a pyramid-type shape. Others say the Antarctica pyramids are nunataks, which are peaks of rock projecting above a surface of ice and snow.
Skeptics refer to the Occam’s razor principle that the simplest explanation is usually the right one, Live Science reports.
“This is just a mountain that looks like a pyramid,” Eric Rignot, professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, told Live Science in 2016. “Pyramid shapes are not impossible — many peaks partially look like pyramids, but they only have one to two faces like that, rarely four.”
Several other pyramidal-shaped mountains exist in the world, including Mount Búlandstindur in Iceland, Bordoyarnes Mountain on the Faroe Islands, and Visocica Hill in Bosnia. Some people believe that Visocica Hills is also an ancient pyramid.
