Antarctica

Location of Antarctica

Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent and is 98% covered in ice. Antarctica has no native people or government. However, several nations maintain year-round or seasonal research stations. Also, some nations have territorial claims that predate the establishment of the Antarctic Treaty System.

The first confirmed sightings of the continent are commonly accepted to have occurred in 1820.

Antarctica in 1632

When Grantville arrived in 1631, the existence of Antarctica was not yet known. The existence of an unknown southern land – often referred to as Terra Australis, or a term similar in effect – was first hypothesized by Ptolemy (c. 90 AD – c. 168 AD) to act as a balance to the then known landmasses. While European maps of the 16th and early 17th centuries often included speculative – and varying – depictions of Terra Australis, its existence had not been proven before the arrival of Grantville. Also, before Grantville's atlases and globes showed its true extent, geographers and cartographers had tended to believe that Terra Australis was much larger than the actual continent of Antarctica, and that parts of it extended well into the southern temperate zone. (In the OTL, that idea had persisted, at least to some degree, until James Cook's second voyage in the early 1770s.)

Note

To date, Antarctica does not appear to have played a direct role in the series. However, information about its size, shape, location, and nature would have been readily available, and likely would have spread with the general spread of up-time geographical information.

It is not known, and is probably too early to tell, what effect up-time information about Antarctica will have on Antarctic exploration.