Antarctica takes its name from the Greek Anti Arktos, which means opposite the Arctic. It first entered the Atlantis debate as far back as 1923 when René-Maurice Gattefossé maintained that Atlantis had been located in the Atlantic and culturally influenced by an even earlier civilisation that had existed on Antarctica. In the same year another Frenchman, Dominique Sévriat, published a 
novel with the backdrop of an Atlantean Antarctic.
However the earliest suggestion of Antarctica as the home of Atlantis seems to have come from a Chilean professor, Roberto Rengifo, who also proposed, in 1920, that Antarctica was the original home of modern man until a catastrophic pole shift forced a migration northward into the Americas and eventually worldwide!
Half a century was to pass before Antarctica itself was again promoted as the probable site of Atlantis by Flavio Barbiero in his book[061] published in Italian.
Twenty years later Rand & Rose Flem-Ath[062], supported by a well designed website(a), published a similar theory that received widespread exposure in the English-speaking world. Subsequently, Rand Flem-Ath co-authored with Colin Wilson a second book[063] that added further background to the theory. Colin Wilson has more recently abandoned his support for Antarctica, as he eventually found the idea of Atlantis based here waging war against Athens, 5,000 miles away, untenable and now supports Robert Sarmast’s idea of Cyprus as the location of Atlantis. Andrew Collins is another writer who was initially attracted to the Antarctica hypothesis, but eventually opted for Cuba as the location of Atlantis. In 2007, David Stewart Jnr., a prominent Mormon writer, offered support for Flem-Ath’s theory in an article on his scripture history website.
The Antarctic theory is dependent on the acceptance of a number of hotly debated fundamentals, among which are: earth crust displacement (Pole Shift), a 10,000 BC date for Atlantis, Posnansky’s dating of Tiahuanaco and the interpretation of the Piri Reis Map.
Robert Solàrion has produced his own ‘pole shift’ theory of Polar Axial Displacement that he outlines on his website(b).
An ice core, 3km long, which was recently recovered from Antarctica, has shown a continuous record stretching back 740,000 years. This would appear to indicate that the region was never without ice cover during that period, contradicting the Flem-Ath theory of Plato’s Atlantis being in Antarctica. This argument is tackled in Appendix 6 of The Atlantis Blueprint.
Another author who claims that the Antarctic ice sheet is not more than 6,000 years old is the Australian archaeologist Peter ‘Mungo’ Jupp. He has expanded on his views in a DVD(d). He does not directly enter the Atlantis debate but the evidence he adduces to support his thesis are more usually employed to support the Atlantis in Antarctica viewpoint.
Two German writers Fritz Nestke and Thomas Reimer have also supported the idea of Atlantis in Antarctica with their own 1988 book[064]. Patrick Geryl and Gino Ratinckx have predicted[066] a catastrophic pole reversal in 2012 and are ‘certain’ that an earlier pole change resulted in Atlantis being situated under the ice of the South Pole.
Although not directly connect to the Antarctic-Atlantis debate, the late French mariner Robert Argod has given us a fascinating book[065] that supports the idea that the Polynesians originated in Antarctica and that their influence is to be found further afield.
Arguments against the idea of ‘Atlantis in Antarctica’, by Paul V. Heinrich, can be found on the Internet(c).
(b) http://www.apollonius.net/polarpivot.html
(c) http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/atlantis.html
(d) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA73tcg5yYc
