For thousands of years experts and people have pondered upon the existence of the city of Atlantis. Here's another theory suggesting that thousands of years ago the Antarctic may have been home to an ancient and mysterious civilisation(possibly the Atlantis).
The Theory of Crustal Displacement
So it all started with the theory of "Crustal Displacement, put forward by an American History expert, Professor Charles A. Hapgood. According to this theory, Earth's entire crust shifts every 20,000 to 30,000 years, on this basis it is believed that some 12,000 years ago, Northern coast of Antarctica was ice-free and inhabitable by humans.This would allow Atlanteans, a race of half-human, half-divine people spoken of in Plato's writings, to thrive until the time of the last Ice Age.
Piri Reis Map
The map of Piri Reis world map, drawn 500 years ago reconciles this theory with evidence. Piri Reis is one of the most accurate cartographic records. It was drawn up in 1513 and was based on older sources. It is so precise that it includes drawings of Antarctica's northern ridge 300 years before the continent was discovered officially in 1821 by the europeans. But without any satellite technology, how did the cartographers know about it in such details, if no one has set foot there until the 19th century? This indicates clearly that whoever had the technology and ability to survey the continent of Antarctica must have done so thousands of years ago before the continent was frozen. This is where Hapgood's theory play a part, he claims that Antarctica was home to an ancient civilisation, whose citizens fled or perished when the natural disasters hit the are and transformed it into the dangerous icy terrain as seen today. So do the remains of the city still exists under ice?
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Albert Einstein wrote the foreword to Hapgood's 1958 book, The Earth's shifting Crust. Einstein was convinced that the project was worth pursuing and even petitioned the American president, Eisenhower for government funds. Unfortunately, Eisenhower left the office before anything could be agreed upon.
Fingerprints of the Gods
In 1995, Graham Hancock published a study, Fingerprints of the Gods, claiming that crustal displacement in 10,450 BC had destroyed an advanced, ancient civilisation, the remains of which now lie beneath Antarctica. The descendants of said civilisation went on to build the Aztec, Mayan and Egyptian empires.This sounds true when compared to Native American mythology, which traces their ancestors back to, Aztlán, ' a white island in the south' which was destroyed by natural disaster.
Hancock suggests that in 10,450 BC, a major pole shift took place, before which Antarctica lay farther from the South Pole than today, and after which it shifted to its present location. The pole-shift hypothesis connects with the Charles Hapgood's theory of Earth Crustal Displacement. Hapgood had a fascination with the story of Atlantis and suggested that crustal displacement may have caused its destruction. His theories have few supporters in the geological community compared to the more widely accepted model of plate tectonics, but they were adopted by Rose and Rand Flem-Ath's When the Sky Fell: in Search of Atlantis (1995/2009), in which they expand the evidence for Charles Hapgood's theory of earth-crust displacement and propose Antarctica as the site of Atlantis.
