Ancient civilization in Antarctica? Google Earth image spawns compelling if outlandish theory

The picture was taken by Google Earth and looks like a dome shaped man-made structure

Civilization in Antarctica
The circular structure is believed to be 400 foot across YouTube grab

A Google Earth image of Antarctica, which shows a dome-like structure covered with snow, has made people go nuts as some claim that it is the ruin of a vast civilisation that once thrived in the vast icy desert.

The picture, which has taken the internet by storm, shows a circular structure believed to be 400 foot across and looks like a man–made object in Eastern Antarctica. Following the discovery several theories emerged saying that once humans inhabited the vast landscape which is otherwise considered as inhabitable because of the freezing temperature. However, the theorists have a perfect explanation to validate their claims. They say that the place was ice-free some 12,000 years ago due to the movements in the earth's crust. Moreover, while some people claim that the South Pole housed the lost mythological city of Atlantis, others say that the ice age wiped off the traces of a prosperous ancient civilisation.

'What if, in the distant past, when Earth –and Antarctica— was much different then today, an ancient civilization developed there, creating fascinating structures, monuments and temples there?' said a report by a website called Ancient Code.

Scientists, however, are dismissing the claim, though they are still unable to come up with a concrete explanation about the mysterious structure. Initially, they thought that it is a picture of sastrugi phenomena -- the parallel wave-like ridges after getting battered by wind. However, sastrugi do not form oval shapes.

This is not the first time that something bizarre has been spotted in Antarctica. People claim to have spotted Pyramid in the snow and other bizarre structures which made them believe that humans once inhabited the rough terrains.

According to Daily Mail, Ashoka Tripathi, of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Calcutta, while talking about the pictures released by Nasa from its IceBridge ice-mapping mission, said that he is convinced that ancient humans lived there.

"These are clearly features of some sort of human-made structure, resembling some sort of pyramidal structure...The patterns clearly show nothing we should expect from natural geomorphological formations found in nature," he said, as reported.

"We clearly have here evidence of human engineering. The only problem is that these photographs were taken in Antarctica under 2 kilometers of ice. That is clearly the puzzling part, we do not have any explanation for this at the moment," added Tripathi.

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