As The Ice Melts

As the great ice cap over Antarctica goes into slow melt-down, stories are beginning to emerge on the Internet about amazing things that are appearing. The stories suggest that the Antarctic continent was once inhabited by an advanced ancient civilization that built great cities and even pyramids. But are the stories true?

We take a look at some of the more spectacular stories and note that, as far as we know, none of them have been reported by the mainstream media.

The remains of a large stone building and other artifacts were reportedly uncovered in February by geologist Scott Amundsen and a team of students from Wyoming State University.

Amundsen said one of the students literally tripped over a block of cut stone while the team was hiking near Doubleday Glacier. This led to the discovery of rubble of what was once a stone structure he believes may have been about the size of Rome’s ancient amphitheater.

He said the university team worked well into March, chipping into the ice as more and more pieces of the ancient structure were found. February and March are the summer months in that part of the world. The story said Doubleday Glacier has been receding at an estimated three meters per year as the world slowly warms.

Among the things uncovered: the foundation of a massive columned structure that may have stood 30 meters high, coins with the image of penguins and an unknown reptile, sticks that look like ball bats and seal-hide balls, suggesting that the auditorium may have been used for athletic events. The team has nick-named the site “Doubleday Stadium.”

Sounds like an amazing discovery, but why didn’t it make the conventional news? Notice that Amundsen is the same last name of Norwegian Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911. A check of Wyoming State University shows nobody by this name on the faculty staff. And there is no glacier bearing the name Doubleday on Antarctica.

There are numerous blog reports of three Antarctic pyramids, complete with photographs of the tops of what appear to be great pyramids jutting up out of a range of ice and snow.

The stories, which appear to copy one another, say the pyramids were discovered "by a team of American and European scientists." The members of the team are not named.

The story says two pyramids are located about 16 kilometers inland while a third one is located close to the coastline. It suggests that an expedition is planned to learn more about these structures and determine if they were man-made or simply natural rock formations.

One story says: "Little is known about the pyramids and the team continues to keep silent about the discovery."

One of the pyramid articles quoted from a story we published in 2006, drawn from The Twelve Pyramids of Thoth, a piece that appeared in the Crystal Links website. Thoth, identified as an Egyptian moon god, claims to be the overseer of the great pyramid of Egypt. In the story he said the Egyptian pyramids were the last of 12 great pyramids to exist in the world. One of them, the story said, is located under the ice in Antarctica.

Without knowing the names of the "scientists" who found the pyramids, when the discovery was made, or where the photographs were taken, we have to question the existence of the Antarctica pyramids. With all of the research flights now being made over Antarctica on NASA's DC-8 flying science laboratory, mapping ice surfaces, one would think unusual pyramid shapes protruding out of the ice would have been easily spotted by now.

A video allegedly shot by a crew for Atlantis TV Production was found in an abandoned supply dump 100 miles west of Vokstok Station by a team of U.S. Navy SEALS searching for the television crew that went missing in November, 2002.

According to Jonathan Gray, author, archaeologist and adventurer who appeared on Coast-to-Coast Radio, the video appears to show evidence of an archaeological dig going on about two miles under the Antarctic ice.

There has been a reported debate over whether the contents of the video will be made public. The television station claims ownership but the video is allegedly in the hands of the military.

According to Gray, two Navy officers reviewed the tape when they arrived at the Amundsen-Scott Station, an elaborate research facility recently opened on Antarctica. "They said it showed spectacular ruins and other things they couldn't go into," one story said.

Officials at the U.S. Naval Support Task Force in Antarctica have denied the story. They say they are not in possession of a video shot by the missing television crew.

Gray maintains a website crammed with stories about shocking archaeological discoveries all over the world that have been carefully kept secret because they defy the established historical record accepted by religious belief systems. He also has written several books.

Richard C. Hoagland, author of Monuments Of Mars and other controversial books suggesting that humans have not only been on Mars but the Moon in the ancient past, and left evidence to prove it, now writes on his website, Enterprise Mission, that a huge magnetic anomaly under the frozen Lake Vostok on Antarctica suggests the ruins of an ancient city lies there.

Hoagland writes that the low-altitude aerial surveys were made in 2001 by scientists from Columbia University.

While he admits that an anomaly like this could be caused by various natural things, it also could be caused "by an accumulation of metals -- the kind you would get if you found the ruins of an ancient buried city.

"An 'ancient city under the ice?' Such a discovery would be absolutely dazzling, sending shock waves through our world as profound as the discovery of 'artifacts on Mars' or 'ruins on the Moon.' And the notion is not as improbable as you may think," Hoagland wrote.