![]() The ensuing openly imperial Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration segued into the slightly more covert geopolitical jockeying of the mid-20th century. Suddenly the region seemed to hold immense promise for scientific investigation, the claiming of new territories, and perhaps even the exploitation of mineral resources. When the North’s mysteries ceased to hold appeal, the world’s attention turned south to the Antarctic in the 01890s. The simultaneous voyages of Ross (Britain), D’Urville (France), and Wilkes (USA) in 01839 added much to the world’s stock of knowledge of the Antarctic, but after that, investigation did not resume for over 50 years. The southern continent itself was not observed until the 01820s, when adventurous whaling captains spotted it and added it to their charts. The HMS Endurance trapped in pack-ice during the Shackleton Expedition, February 01915. The reports that he brought back probably inspired Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (01798), which launched tropes of the frigid Antarctic into the wider cultural consciousness. The circumnavigations of Captain Cook in the 01770s proved that the area was frozen and uninhabitable, and fringed by seemingly impenetrable pack-ice. While the Arctic, thanks to its relative proximity to seafaring civilizations, was explored beginning in the Age of Discovery in the 01500s, the terra australis incognito at the bottom of the earth remained mysterious for far longer. These sentiments might seem strange, but they're just the latest in a long history of projecting fantasies onto the southern continent. Present-day Antarctica appears as Terra Australis Nondum Cognita at the bottom (“the southern land not yet known”). It’s a locus of conspiratorial thinking from all corners of the political compass, all converging, like lines of longitude, on the ice. ![]() Today’s landscape of Antarctic conspiracies is a tangled web - comprising everything from AI-generated Lovecraftian images purporting to be from turn-of-the-century expeditions, Nazis and UFOs, global warming denial, and flat-earthery. Any post by a scientist or public figure about Antarctica will inevitably rack up comments accusing the original poster of “hiding” something, or of working for the government. Where gaps in public knowledge exist, conspiracies spring into life. They’ll only see pictures, and watch classic films like The Thing (01982) which project an image of peril and isolation onto the public consciousness. It’s far away, it’s unlike anywhere else on the planet, and most people will never go there. As Apsley Cherry-Garrard observed in the introduction to his classic book The Worst Journey In The World (01922): “Even now the Antarctic is to the rest of the earth as the Abode of the Gods was to the ancient Chaldees, a precipitous and mammoth land lying far beyond the seas which encircled man’s habitation.” But despite the hundred-plus years of exploration, habitation, and documentation since then, Antarctica remains utterly Other. Photograph by Christopher Michel.Īt the turn of the 20th century, Antarctica was still largely unknown. The “ice wall,” or the idea that Antarctica is not a continent at the bottom of the globe but really a wall that circumscribes the Flat Earth, is a common refrain as is the concept that “nobody is allowed” to go to Antarctica: that “they” (shady government agents) will prevent anyone from visiting, in order to keep whatever lies behind the ice wall hidden. “They don't really deserve much air in my mind.” “ are more just to show people the reality, rather than actually address the ridiculous conspiracy theories,” Neff told me, calling from McMurdo Station on the tail end of his field season in Antarctica. At the same time, he doesn’t give them too much thought. He responds to many of these comments with humor. He’s a glaciologist and ice scientist, stationed in Antarctica over the summer and conducting vital experiments on Antarctica’s vast ice sheets and glaciers. Peter Neff’s TikToks are filled with this sort of stuff. ![]() ![]() The only continent with no history of human habitation, the vast ice fields of Antarctica have formed a blank slate onto which humanity can project itself: all of itself, from the imperial superego to the conspiratorial id.Īllegra Rosenberg 21, 02023 “Can we see what’s beyond the ice wall?” “Quick question is there land beyond the ice wall?” “Record the ice wall :)”
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