For thousands of years, humans have been enamored with ideas of discovery and lost worlds.
The Ancient Greeks had their stories about Atlantis, and in the 15th century, Europeans
made their way to the “New World”.
But even today, people still believe that more continents might be out there.
This is Unveiled, and today we’re taking a closer look at the strange theory that Antarctica
(and Earth in general) could be hiding a secret continent.
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For most of human history, Antarctica itself WAS a secret continent.
Its existence was theorized for centuries, described under the name “Terra Australis”
– meaning “Southern Land” – since at least the 16th century when it began showing
up on maps.
The rationale was that the northern hemisphere seemed to have more land than the southern
one - which is actually true; the southern hemisphere is made up of 20% landmass versus
the north’s 40%.
It was thought that Earth must have equal amounts of land in each half, so that there
had to be more land hiding down there somewhere.
So, early modern cartographers accounted for this by adding the totally unknown, undiscovered
landmass “Terra Australis” to their maps.
It took another three centuries, until January 1820, for Antarctica to actually be seen by
human eyes and documented.
Today, we know Antarctica is very real and very large, much larger than the icy realms
in the Arctic Circle.
Many Antarctic explorers have gone there and perished, further adding to its intrigue.
People want to visit and unravel its mysteries, braving the most hostile and dangerous place
on Earth in the name of scientific discovery.
And we’re still discovering plenty about Antarctica even today, including that a hidden
world might be lying beneath its icy surface.
Scientists reported finding a whole new world under the ice back in 2022.
A subsurface river was found in the massive Ross Ice Shelf, and scientists drilled down
to see whether anything was living in the freezing water.
It turned out that, yes, not only were there lifeforms down there, but lots of them, small
crustaceans that all crowded around the camera equipment the scientists sent into the depths.
They’d certainly never seen anything like a camera before, and maybe have never seen
sunlight, living so deep under so many layers of ice.
Scientists didn’t find too many different species, but the shrimp imply that there’s
a much greater ecosystem thriving down there that we know almost nothing about.
Stranger yet, a huge underwater volcano erupted in the Pacific Ocean in early 2022, triggering
a tsunami, and its effects were felt in the under-ice world Antarctic scientists were
studying.
So, this icy ecosystem is clearly connected to the rest of the ocean in a way we may not
have found yet.
This all happened over 1600 feet below the ice’s surface.
Part of the reason scientists knew where to look was because of satellite imagery.
They could see from the air that there was a huge depression in the ice sheet, leading
them to believe there was an underwater river, and they eventually found this groove on the
surface.
It was a remarkable discovery and we can’t wait to see further research conducted; maybe
we could send proper submersible probes down there one day, able to explore far better
than a camera attached to a long wire.
Antarctica is also hiding evidence of continental formation itself.
The continents as they are now formed over billions of years, the entire lifetime of
the Earth, moving and shifting significantly.
But the land underneath the Antarctic ice bears evidence of these other landmasses,
some more similar to Australia and other parts more similar to South America.
Scientists are using new methods, called “gravity images”, to map out what the land under
the ice looks like, which will hopefully help us to reduce further melting – or, at the
very least, understand how melting ice will change Antarctica and the rest of the planet.
Antarctica isn’t the only continent that’s been discovered in the southern hemisphere,
though.
In the 1990s, some researchers suggested that there was evidence to name “Zealandia”
a new continent.
Zealandia is a huge plateau of continental crust.
Earth’s crust is made up of continental crust and oceanic crust, with landmasses being
made of the former.
In Zealandia, this crust is almost entirely submerged underwater, even though it’s not
the oceanic kind.
The few parts that are above sea level are New Zealand itself and its many islands, as
well as New Caledonia and other island territories in the south Pacific.
In 2017, you may have heard it reported that Zealandia had been named a new continent despite
its small size.
This is partly true, as geologists agree that it does meet the criteria.
And you may be surprised to learn that “microcontinents” exist, too, though researchers say Zealandia
would not be one of them.
The biggest microcontinent in the world is Madagascar, which is on a fragment of continental
crust not connected to another, larger piece.
So, here we have a real case of a secret continent hidden and obscured by the ocean, not recognised
as such until very recently.
But while the existence of Antarctica was theorized for years before its discovery,
other mysterious continents have never been found.
The “lost continent” concept in mythology can be traced back to Atlantis, but similar
to Atlantis is the lost continent of Mu.
Mu is supposed to be a vast, missing continent that once existed in the center of the Pacific
Ocean – much like Zealandia.
The story of Mu isn’t thousands of years old, though – it’s not even as old as
the concept of “Terra Australis”.
It appeared in the 19th century after British-American antiquarian Augustus Le Plongeon claimed to
have deciphered Mayan writings.
He said the writings suggested a land called “Mu” had once existed and had, at some
point, been lost, much like Atlantis, which itself has been variously claimed to be either
an island, city, or an entire continent and lost civilization.
Some even claim that the strange Yonaguni Monument in Japan is part of Mu, though geologists
disagree not only with this assessment but the very idea that an entire continent can
sink into the sea so quickly at all.
Changing topography and rising and falling sea levels are to blame for continents like
Zealandia becoming submerged, not a strange, cataclysmic event.
And there’s still another, even weirder continent that people have speculated lies
lost in the southern hemisphere - the missing continent of Lemuria in the Indian Ocean.
The idea is similar to Mu, and in fact, writing about Lemuria may have inspired writings about
Mu.
It all came down to the fact lemurs aren’t found in many places in the world; just in
South Asia and Madagascar.
In the 1860s, zoologist Philip Sclater thought that maybe there was a submerged continent
that had once been home to all the lemurs, who migrated elsewhere.
This is certainly not true and was totally discredited around 50 years later, though
at the time it was developed, it was a genuine scientific idea worthy of further investigation
– after all, lemurs are strange creatures.
But as far as we know, there is no lost land of the lemurs, lost continent of Mu, or sunken
city of Atlantis.
However, as of summer 2022, still only a quarter of the seafloor had been mapped.
Until we have a complete topographical map of the seafloor, the rumors about missing
continents might not die.
And there’s every chance we could make another discovery like Zealandia, or the strange landmasses
under the Antarctic ice.
Do you think lost continents could exist, hidden underneath the ocean?
Let us know in the comments.
Due to the effects of global warming, the Antarctica that could eventually be revealed
by melting sea ice might count as a “secret continent”, too.
Antarctica is rock and land covered in ice, in contrast to the Arctic, which is nearly
entirely composed of ice.
Some artistic and CGI impressions have been created by NASA to show what Antarctica
would look like with no ice at all.
There are some claims that, one day, we could see it in real life.
It’s a dark future, but possibly one we should prepare for.
Iceless Antarctica would be a huge, mountainous region surrounded by the ocean, and rising
sea levels would cut off a lot of the land.
It’s not clear how much warmer it would be without the ice, since the ice on its own
also contributes to keeping temperatures lower, but it would likely still be the coldest place
on Earth - and in a worst case scenario, may therefore become our best chance for survival,
should we ever need to escape the heat.
Of course, in an ideal world, it would never come to this.
Antarctica itself WAS a hidden continent for most of human history, and scientists are
always making new, exciting discoveries about the secret world below.
Meanwhile, there are endless other legends and stories about lost places on Earth’s
surface but beneath the ocean - some more scientifically plausible than others.
And that’s the strange theory that Antarctica (and Earth in general) could be hiding a secret
continent.
What do you think?
Is there anything we missed?
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