Lake Vostok, Last Refuge of Prehistoric Civilization.

By now you've all heard about Lake Vostok, a freshwater body of liquid water trapped 4000 meters under the Antarctic ice cap, and the Russian effort to drill down to it. You'll also have heard various theories regarding the lake - that it contains a fragile (or deadly) bacterial ecosystem, that it is the location of a secret Nazi base, etc etc. But few of them come close to the truth.

Have you heard of the Vostok Magnetic Anomaly? On the southeast corner of Lake Vostok is an enormous area of extremely high magnetic readings, running the length of that ancient shoreline and measuring in size about 105km by 75km. This region of heightened magnetism is too powerful to have been caused by geological means, and is twice as powerful as magnetic anomalies caused by volcanism.

This anomaly is, in fact, just the sort of magnetic reading you'd expect to take flying over a heavily built up city like New York or Tokyo. First discovered during the SOAR project (Support Office for Aerogeophysical Research), it is now understood to be the remains of a prehistoric megalopolis, a sophisticated lakeside city constructed mainly from metal in the time before the climate changed and ice covered the lake, some 15 to 25 million years ago. Since SOAR, more sophisticated magnetic and radar surveys have largely mapped the city down to its original street layout.

The city itself has, of course, been largely crushed by the vast weight of the ice cap above it, but patterns in the rubble still stand out, allowing a sense of scale and even architectural design to be interpreted from the data. There are also apparently subterranean voids below its streets, perhaps cellars of bunkers, that remain intact and possibly in pristine condition, even after all these millions of years.


And the beings who built that once wondrous, now ice-entombed city? They are believed to have been a species of advanced marsupial megafauna, somewhat similar to the extant Kangaroo, and even more so the extinct Procoptodon. Very little is known of the species, as it evolved in Antarctica after that continent separated from Australia some 30 million years ago, but traces of its direct evolutionary ancestors are to be found in Australia still. This is, by the way, how I came upon the subject. I've seen the fossils myself, from a dig at Lake Menindee. The creatures I saw, which would have stood about 3 meters tall in life, while looking much like a modern-day red kangaroo skeleton, possessed a large brainpan behind their stubby facial bones (about the size of a chimpanzee's), and front paws with two very long and dexterous fingers that would have acted much like opposable thumbs found in humans. We saw no reason why these creatures couldn't have manipulated tools, or have lacked the mental dexterity to use them.

And remember, this creature was only a distant ancestor of the race that built its cities in Antarctica millions of years later.

So the question is, why aren't the Russians, who maintain a base directly over the site, drilling down to the city itself? Why do they aim for the lake it sits next to? Which brings me to my last point about Lake Vostok. It is known that the late Ian Toskovoi, a Russian scientist, detected the existence of multitudes of "geothermal upboils" clinging to the iced-over roof of the lake. These can be compared to warm air bubbles, many of them several hundred feet in diameter. How exactly these were produced is not quite known, but one theory holds that they might be habitats, similar to the domed cities one envisions someday existing on the moon (though, in this case, upside-down domes) clinging to the ice and drawing on the hyper-oxygenated waters of the lake to maintain their atmospheres. The theory goes that, as their continent froze over, the inhabitants of "Vostok City", rather than abandon their ancestral home, simply retreated to the lake itself, and waited for the ice to solidify over them. How long they persevered in their endeavor, and if their civilisation yet survives within these habitats, is unknown.

It's only speculation on my part, of course, as I'm not privy to the orders given the Russian drilling team. But could it be that they are in fact drilling down towards one of these habitats, hoping to penetrate it and discover what secrets it contains? My gut feeling? Yes, they are. It's the logical move. And while I view it a worthy scientific effort, I remain somewhat discouraged in the knowledge that my country, or even our American or European friends, made no real effort to get there first.