With respect to Qoais and her experts, I can see how the above hypothesis can be correct and science wrong (and I state this being a person who does not actually believe in the Antarctica theory, yet have always been intrigued by it).
In the first place, Antarctica is actually a microcosm of the earth. Anyone who looks at the natural state of this planet knows that the earth's natural state is that of ice and snow. We are in an interglacial period now, a warming trend, but eventually the ice will return and the ice will grind most of what we built in the northern hemisphere, skyscrapers, bridges and the like, to nothing.
Second, the reason why we think the ice in Antarctica (apart from the inhospitable climate) comes from dating the ice cores. Well, science has shown it is wrong when it comes to carbon dating, so it is not beyond the realm of possibility that there is an error factor with ice cores dating as well.
This sentence of Essan's intrigues me:
But this study says the waters were ice free from 10,000 years ago - ie 8,000BC. And by implication not ice free prior to then Wink
I am sure if we thought about this, we can see the flaw in this thinking. First off, Antarctica didn't need to be ice free for long, only for a period warm enough for a civilization to flourish there.
(As I said, earth's natural state is one of ice and snow).
Our current civilization is, at best, about five thousand years old, that's including the Sumerians and the Egyptians. Most of history is a blur before them.
The history of the British Isles is about two thousand years old.
America has only lasted for a little over two hundred years.
Plato does not state that Atlantis existed for hundreds of thousands of years, only that it was destroyed around 9600 bc. It could have lasted two thousand years, or even simply two hundred years. Therefore, all Antarctica would have needed is a warm spell just that long for a previously unknown civilization to have flourished there. Ice cores are, of course, are not uniform in their age throughout the whole continent, and I very much doubt that every area of the continent's ice has been tested for age. That, plus the previously mentioned error factor when it comes to dating the ice cores still gives a possibility that a civilization did exist there, we just don't know about it yet. That said, as I stated earlier, my first choice would be an Atlantic based location for the Atlantic.
