Photo by Chris Danals, National Science Foundation

Antarctica Pyramid Conspiracy: Are They Really Just Mountains?

What’s the deal with the Antarctica pyramid conspiracy? And all the other crazy conspiracies about Antartica?

In 2016, viral images emerged purporting to show a cluster of three giant pyramids in Antarctica. Conspiracy theorists suggested that these were built by an unknown ancient civilization that flourished roughly 100,000 million years ago when the frozen continent was located near the equator.

According to one conspiracy website:

Recently, Google Earth satellite imagery discovered a constellation of three snow-covered pyramids in Antarctica. Scientists and researchers are, admittedly, rather taken aback.

Two of the three pyramids are about 10 miles inland, while the third is directly near the coastline.

No research has ever mentioned a civilization in Antarctica, much less one with the technological know-how to construct pyramids. So, how did these pyramids get there? That answer requires a look back in time.

About 100 million years ago, someone was building pyramids on the Antarctica that was then located at the equator. With estimates of human civilization not stretching back even close to far enough to account for this, maybe it’s time we start looking for some different timelines.

The alleged “pyramids” were estimated to be 4,000 feet high—nearly ten times higher than Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza, the pyramid by which all other pyramids are judged.

Antarctica Conspiracies
Elaine Hood / National Science Foundation

Science still hasn’t quite figured out how the Egyptian pyramids, which were built about 4,500 years ago, were constructed. They were obviously a tremendously complicated undertaking, especially in an ancient civilization that was primitive by modern standards.

Therefore, what sort of civilization existed a hundred million years ago that would have been able to build pyramids ten times as tall as the Egyptian pyramids?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS30kAzjAAU

It’s doubtful that any nation on earth could build such structures even today. Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which stands at 2,722 feet, is currently the world’s tallest building, but it’s needle-shaped and would therefore be dwarfed by a pyramidal structure more than a thousand feet taller.

Proponents of the Antarctica Conspiracy Theory say that we’ll have to entirely rewrite human history in order to explain these pyramids. We’ll have to accept that everything we claim to know about anthropology and technology is flat-out wrong. We’d have to ponder that intelligence agencies across the world are aware of these pyramids and are suppressing information about them in order to keep us blind and ignorant.

After all, it’s kinda hard for humans to have built gigantic pyramids 100 million years ago when, according to scientific consensus, the oldest human fossils ever discovered are a mere 300,000 years old.

In other words, that leaves 99,700,000 years that need to be explained. And that’s a lot of explaining. Some people can’t even explain why they got drunk last weekend, so explaining what happened over a 99,700,000-year gap is a tall order for anyone.

As further “evidence” of a conspiracy to cover up the Antartica Pyramids, true believers have pointed to certain areas on Google Maps of Antarctica that for some reason are blurred out—this is wrangled into proof that the government is trying to suppress evidence of the pyramids.

Pyramid-shaped mountains are not rare. They are known as “horns,” and their shape is caused by a natural erosion process. Examples of such horns are the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Mount Bulandstindur in Iceland. Other geological formations, called “nunataks,” result from a mountain that reaches above a glacier. Scientists say that these three apparent “pyramids” are nothing more than normal old horns or nunataks and that everyone just needs to take their medication and calm down.

Antarctica
Greg Neri, NSF

Why The Theory Is Nonsense

According to experts, there are no 100-million-year-old manmade pyramids in Antarctica for the following reasons:

  • The earliest hominids emerged only two million years ago and they could barely walk upright. The idea that a technologically advanced civilization 100 million years ago constructed giant pyramids is not supported by one shred of evidence—unless you believe that dinosaurs are capable of building giant pyramids.
  • One conspiracy site claims that 100 million years ago, Antarctica was located near the Equator rather than the South Pole This is false. Antarctica back then was exactly where it is today. Any evidence of plant life found in fossils on the continent from 100 million years ago is due solely to warmer climate and not the continent’s location.
  • The idea that evidence for these “pyramids” suddenly emerged in 2016 is also false. When British explorers discovered one of the three mountains back in 1912, they made note of it. They even called it “The Pyramid.” There have been pictures taken of this particular mountain ever since.

A concept known as “Occam’s Razor” declares that sometimes, the simplest explanation is the correct one. When you see “pyramids” in the middle of snow that aren’t smooth on each side like pyramids should be and are instead somewhat rough and jagged in their texture like a normal mountain would be, Occam’s Razor would dictate that this is just a mountain that looks a lot like a pyramid.

Antarctica and Other Conspiracy Theories

Being so frigid and dark and unexplored and horrifying, Antarctica is a natural hotbed—or make that coldbed—of conspiracy theories:

  • Flat-earthers claim that Antarctica is a flat plane that surrounds the rest of the earth and it ends in a giant wall that NASA employees guard.
  • In July 2018, UFOlogists claim they found a picture of a crashed UFO in Antarctica which skeptics claim is only evidence of an avalanche.
  • A giant red “X” found on Google Maps scans of Antarctica is a marker for a UFO crash landing.
  • Historical revisionists claim that Nazi scientists set up a mysterious research station in Antarctica’s New Swabia region starting in 1938. There is absolutely no evidence of this claim. According to German Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, the Nazis harbored UFOs at a secret underground facility in Antarctica, from which they conquered the world and even other planets.
  • A 1978 book called The Golden Thread: Esoteric Hitlerism claimed that Adolf Hitler was actually an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu who communicated with other underground gods in the Antarctic region of New Swabia.
  • Although it’s unclear why Nazis get associated with Antarctica so much, but another conspiracy claims that instead of heading to South America to hide out after World War II, Hitler and other top-ranking Nazi officials made their way to Antarctica and set up a secret hideaway.
  • A 2018 conspiracy claims that Google Earth revealed evidence of a mysterious 14-mile-long white mass buried deep underneath Antarctica’s ice shield. True believers speculated that it was yet another UFO. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHbSVhx1AC8