What if Antarctica wasn't completely frozen?

[Maudlandia]

By that I mean what if Antarctica was more like this? Still having a major ice cap and glaciers.

That being shown, if Antarctica was like that would it be possible for indigenous people to live there and somehow get there by accident by being swept off course from either New Zealand, Tasmania, or the tip of South America? And also if Antarctica was like this, who would eventually come around to colonize it? Would nations also exist in his alternate Antarctica?

[Wallenburg]

We would be dead.

[Nordrgard]

Settlement of Antarctica would probably have started in the 18th or 19th century.

[Staythefout]

i'm kind of surprised we don't already have settlements there...there are towns in northern alaska and siberia where the temperatures are well below zero midday. Take a city called yakutsk as an example, it is home to tens of thousands of people.

[Maudlandia]

i'm kind of surprised we don't already have settlements there...there are towns in northern alaska and siberia where the temperatures are well below zero midday. Take a city called yakutsk as an example, it is home to tens of thousands of people.

I couldn't agree more.

[Lunatic Goofballs]

It isn't completely frozen.

[Korhal IVV]

i'm kind of surprised we don't already have settlements there...there are towns in northern alaska and siberia where the temperatures are well below zero midday. Take a city called yakutsk as an example, it is home to tens of thousands of people.

Because governments are focusing on other stuff.

[Reutoa]

There are Labs there, and Whaling Stations too!

[Korhal IVV]

There are Labs there, and Whaling Stations too!

They aren't really permanent settlements...

[Wallenburg]

There are Labs there, and Whaling Stations too!

They aren't really permanent settlements...

They're permanent stations, but the people there aren't permanent residents.

[Valrifell]

i'm kind of surprised we don't already have settlements there...there are towns in northern alaska and siberia where the temperatures are well below zero midday. Take a city called yakutsk as an example, it is home to tens of thousands of people.

Key difference: those places have drinkable water. This is more comparable to a city existing in the middle of the Sahara.

[Gauthier]

Defrost Antarctica? And thaw out the walk-in fridge full of alien lifeforms?

[Tsaraine]

Your map is inaccurate because it appears to be just a map of the shoreline as it currently is underneath the ice; it fails to take into account isostatic rebound. Basically, the weight of all that ice depresses the land beneath it, and when the ice is removed, the land springs back up. This is still going on in Scandinavia today; IIRC there's an island in the Baltic which has the cheerful task of divvying up new land every couple of years. So we can say what Antarctica's shores might look like if the ice disappeared tomorrow (factoring in sea level rise from the sudden addition of all that ice and such), but give it a couple thousand years - or have the ice cap never exist to such an extent - and who knows what it would look like?

The other problem is, what exactly causes Antarctica to be ice-free in this scenario? If it's higher global temperatures, that makes everywhere else look different too. Antarctica is currently kept cooler than it should be by the circumpolar current - basically, since there's nothing in the way of the water down there, it just swirls perpetually around and around, keeping the cold air in and warm air out. To change that you'd need to alter the geography of the continent, perhaps by making the Antarctic Peninsula extend further north (which it does, it's just most of it is underwater). Except that would also substantially alter the global currents.

If we go with "the global environment is just warmer" then who knows who'd settle it, global climates would be different and the development of civilization would head in different routes. The "Antarctic Peninsula gets bigger" route means that the first colonizers would probably be Patagonian Indians around 10,000 years ago. You might get Polynesian settlers around 1,000 years ago - we know they visited New Zealand's subantarctic islands - but it's way off the beaten path and Polynesian crops wouldn't survive there.

As far as flora and fauna go, I think you're looking at something similar to the subantarctic islands - essentially tundra characterized by flowering shrubs, with lots of birds and seals. Sea life would remain very fertile, probably still the richest part of the continent's ecosystem.

The interesting thing is that Antarctica would provide another haven for relict Gondwanan wildlife; you're looking at probably ratites and marsupials, similar to Australia or South America prior to that continent's collision with North America. Rhinoceros-sized, shaggy wombats, cold-adapted koalas, antarctic emus. No reptiles or amphibians - since those can't handle the cold - and everything would have to either migrate or hibernate to cope with the half-year-long nights.

Your natives would be nomadic hunters, pursuing the herds of mammoth wombats around the circumference of the continent. You might have some permanent settlements on the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, but not many.

In the real world, the sub-antarctic islands were home to a major boom in sealing and whaling in the 19th century, which would certainly happen here. The natives would be ravaged by alcoholism and disease, the seals would be driven to the brink of extinction, and eventually the place would end up as a territory of some European power. Probably Britain or France (the Russians were among the first to discover Antarctica IRL, but never really pushed their influence south to take land in the South Pacific; whereas France and Britain were in something of an island-hopping land-grab race throughout the area). My money is on Britain, simply because Australia and New Zealand are fairly close.

New Zealand was declared a territory of the Crown in part to combat lawlessness among the whalers, sealers, and such like setting up camp there, and probably something similar would happen to Antarctica. It'd be the least attractive of the British south seas colonies, a good place to exile dissidents, criminals, and other troublemakers. A place with low life expectancy, poor prospects for the young, and the sort of gloomy outlook on life that you'd expect of somewhere that's dark half the year. The discovery and exploitation of oil beginning in the 1940s would bring it some wealth, but it would still be the sort of place where the local youth leave for the beaches of Australia and never come back.

Basically, it'd be a colder, less hospitable Alaska. I wouldn't want to live there.

[Reutoa]

There are Labs there, and Whaling Stations too!

They aren't really permanent settlements...

Yes, they are actually, it's just the Guys that are not.

[The Wolven League]

Then we'd have to let it go.

[Allet Klar Chefs]

Be worth mining.

[Costa Fierro]

There are Labs there, and Whaling Stations too!

They aren't really permanent settlements...

Not really "permanent" in the traditional sense but there are stations that are manned year round. There is also a town in the Chilean claim which has a school, medical clinic and a post office.

[Avrellon]

The Alternate History wiki has an interesting timeline based around this premise, if anyone's interested:

http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/Great_White_South

[Stoic Melancholics]

We could say goodbye to Holland.

[Stoic Melancholics]

i'm kind of surprised we don't already have settlements there...there are towns in northern alaska and siberia where the temperatures are well below zero midday. Take a city called yakutsk as an example, it is home to tens of thousands of people.

The city of Yatutsk has mining possibilities, and has summers and early falls with bearable temperatures. Antarctica, for the most part, is permanently frozen.

That, and the location is a bitch, only allowing for certain settlements.

[USS Monitor]

i'm kind of surprised we don't already have settlements there...there are towns in northern alaska and siberia where the temperatures are well below zero midday. Take a city called yakutsk as an example, it is home to tens of thousands of people.

There are settlements in Antarctica, though I am not sure if they are inhabited year-round. They do have permanent buildings, though.

[Ifreann]

i'm kind of surprised we don't already have settlements there...there are towns in northern alaska and siberia where the temperatures are well below zero midday. Take a city called yakutsk as an example, it is home to tens of thousands of people.

There are settlements in Antarctica, though I am not sure if they are inhabited year-round. They do have permanent buildings, though.

I think there's at least one research station that's inhabited all year, but not permanently. That is to say, there's always people there, but they're always there temporarily.

[Esternial]

Once you set up a stable Wi-Fi connection you can always find some willing settlers.

[Praetorianus]

You know what pisses me off? Nations who have claimed pieces of Antarctica are hardly using it. And people are complaining about overpopulation, when they have a big-ass continent to live on.

[Valrifell]

You know what pisses me off? Nations who have claimed pieces of Antarctica are hardly using it. And people are complaining about overpopulation, when they have a big-ass continent to live on.

Probably something to do with the fact it's a cold wasteland where nothing grows and, you know, is the largest desert on the planet.