Pyramids in Antarctica?

There is something enigmatic about pyramids, how their shape seemed to transcend geographical boundaries and influence cultures extremely distant in time and space. Although it is traditionally said that ancient civilizations preferred them for the solidity provided by their shape, the truth is that other shapes could have provided equally much stability (and, indeed, we find other cultures that dispensed with them, including, for example, much of the Andean cultures).

There is something truly interesting hidden under the heavy rocks used to build them. However, beyond some theories about ancestral beings or extraterrestrial visitors, the construction of pyramids in so many regions of the world seemed to indicate, rather, a kind of shared sacredness, a cosmogonic vision imprinted deep in our psyche and that would have expressed itself, for reasons we do not understand, in some specific societies.

The matter began with a publication a couple of years ago in which it was claimed that three pyramids, similar to the Egyptian ones, had appeared in Antarctic territory. The melting of the glaciers, several sources claimed, had allowed these ancient treasures to come to light.

According to these reports, a team of scientists would have found the three pyramids and would be organizing a future expedition to the territory to analyze what was found there. The matter came to light in 2013 and, since then, nothing has been said about the appearance of the alleged pyramids.

It is difficult to know what happened. It is always possible that the matter was hidden – Antarctica is, after all, the most remote and inaccessible place in the world – but in this case I consider it more likely that the finding was not by archaeologists but by other types of visitors and those who could have shown interest did not do so. They will think, perhaps, that it is not worth it.

The mystery of Google Maps

In any case, one of these “couch archaeologists”, known for their impressive findings from satellite photographs and Google Maps, provided us with the magnificent image that appears at the beginning of the article and that any of you can find by clicking on this link. The image, which appears in the photographs, is located about 30 kilometers inland and clearly shows a four-sided pyramid.

The image joins others like it (also featured in this article) that cast doubt on what we know about Antarctica: Was there a society there, or are these simply pyramid-shaped mountains? If the latter, how natural is it for many such mountains to appear in a relatively small territory?

What if they were pyramids?

The existence of possible archaeological remains in Antarctica evokes, above all, the mythical tales of Lovecraft and the existence of truly ancestral civilizations that occupied the world, coming from other galaxies, when life here was still young.

The interesting thing is that, apparently, it would take something like this to explain these pyramids (assuming they are an artificial creation). Many have seen in them proof that in the recent past Antarctica was ice-free and the ideal home for an ancient society.

I do not believe this is possible. Each year, with the arrival of summer, a thin layer of water is created on the glaciers that separates the ice that accumulated that year from the ice that accumulated the previous year. This microscopic barrier means that, under the microscope, the glaciers are full of small lines: like the rings of a tree, these lines are built up at the rate of one per year and allow us to know a lot about past snowfall and, in general, about the age of the glacier.

And, according to these natural records, the glaciers would be extremely old: several studies have indicated that they are thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands of years old, and there is at least one case where they appear to be the minutiae of 8 million years old. We are talking about a very long time before the oldest civilizations (the pyramids of Egypt were built about 4,500 years ago, although some consider that the figure could be as much as double that): their construction simply does not fit in with the world we know and the history that has been bequeathed to us.

And the fact is that, although glaciers do not go that far back (not that we have seen, at least), the evidence indicates that the last time Antarctica was devoid of ice was about 35 million years ago.

It is a pity that no one has paid a visit to the so-called Antarctic pyramids: if they turned out to be legitimate, they would prove one of two things: either we are dealing with a society built on perpetual snow of which almost no traces remain, or we are dealing with a construction that predates, by far, our humanity.

And in both cases, we would be facing something completely unimaginable.