Does Anyone Live in Antarctica?

Surprisingly, yes. But also, no, they don't.

Does Anyone Live in Antarctica?

Brown Station, an Argentine base and scientific research station in Antarctica — Brown Station — also known as Estación Científica Almirante Brown, Base Brown or Estación Brown — is an Argentine base and scientific research station in Antarctica.

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What's the deal with Antarctica? Do people live there? Is it part of any country? And how is it possible that we’ve only known about this place for the last couple hundred years? Antarctica is the last big unknown piece of land that’s left in the world. And it doesn’t have polar bears.

Quick background: Antarctica is a giant continent. It’s actually bigger than Europe and Australia. It’s also the coldest, driest, and windiest. Unlike its cousin in the north — the Arctic Circle — Antarctica is, for the most part, a freezing, icy, and mountaneous piece of land. The Arctic Circle, on the other hand, is actually mostly frozen ocean.

Antarctica is a different beast. It's much more massive, much more freezing, and much more inhospitable. And again, no polar bears (only the Arctic has polar bears).

So what’s the deal? Do people live there?

The answer is, yes, people live there, but also, no, they don’t.

The Truth About Antarctica

It's a Long Way From the Rest of the World

Signpost at Arctowski Base, a Polish station on Antarctica.

There's a Lot More to Learn About This Place

World map with animals — There are no polar bears in Antarctica.

Today, there can be as many as 5,000 people that reside in Antarctica, some for a year or more, but most experts don’t consider that a permanent population. (Which begs the question, what’s a permanent population? Aren’t we all living somewhere for a specific amount of time?) Here’s how we got to this point.

Even though most other places have been populated for thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands of years, it doesn’t look like any human set foot on Antarctica until about 200 years ago. Compare that with the Artic Circle, which has evidence of humans going back some 50,000 years. That makes Antarctica one of the newest, most unexplored, and most unfamiliar places on the planet.

The first sign of any human there is from 1819 (found so far).That finding was the skull of an Indigenous woman that came from southern Chile. She was probably part of a hunting group. But it’s still a cool mystery because there’s no evidence of women from that area hunting before. Cool mystery. Get it?

Antarctica vs. the Arctic Circle

South Pole and North Pole — It's a tale of two poles.

The idea of Antarctica has been around for a long time though. The name Antarctic — meaning the opposite of the Arctic — has been used since the second century. The Arctic Circle has had settlements since antiquity, so it seemed only logical to the ancient Greeks that there would be an opposite pole on the other end that just has not been found yet (turns out the ancient Greeks were right about a lot of things).

So there’s a long long history of people searching for this "other end." Maps from as early as the fifth century show some kind of land in the southern pole, and by the 1400s, mapmakers were calling it "Terra Australis" (Southern Land) and regularly including it on world maps, even though no one had actually seen it yet.

"Australis" sound familiar? Yeah, it’s what Europeans ended up calling Australia.

Discovery of Antarctica

Map of Ernest Shackleton's polar voyage in 1914 — Map of Ernest Shackleton's incredible voyage of polar exploration in 1914.

Most of the initial discoveries of Antarctica started from ships that got lost, blown off course and landed on some unknown ice sheet in the middle of the ocean. From the 1800s to mid- 1900s, lots of expeditions set out to explore ("The Heroic Age of Exploration" lists major explorations). This includes Norwegians, Brits, Americans, Russians, French, Dutch, Swedish, German and Japanese. It was like a who’s who of colonizers.

The first known built settlement was two buildings built in 1899 by a British expedition (the Southern Cross Expedition). They still exist today and are therefore the only place left in the world where you can still see the first human structure ever built on an entire continent (Borchgrevink's Southern Cross Huts). In fact, a lot of the original explorers' huts and cabins are still standing all over — you could say they are frozen in time.

This includes the infamous Ernest Shackleton "Endurance" expedition, where they got stuck, survived for months on ice, and went 800 miles in a small rowboat to save everyone. If you haven’t heard about it, I highly recommend you look it up.

The oldest continually inhabited place is a weather base built in 1903 and manned year-round since 1904. Which would make it the oldest permanent settlement on the entire continent.

Antarctica Today

Photo layered from a shot of McMurdo Station in Antarctica during the summer of 2015 and a shot taken in the winter of 2016/2017.

Lots of governments and agencies have built bases and research stations and camps all over the continent since then. There are about 70 different settlements operated by about 30 different countries now. Some are pretty big.

The United States' McMurdo Station, usually the largest, fits up to 1,258 people in what basically operates like a small ice city. It has over 85 buildings, a harbor, airport, a store, coffee shop, and two ATMs. There are great documentaries about life living at McMurdo.

Some fun CliffsNotes include:

There’s a disproportionate amount of costume parties and even a concert festival.
Pregnancy is pretty tightly controlled, so apparently, there’s also a disproportionate amount of personal protective equipment.
There are three bars in the summer, but alcohol can get rationed — hey, you never know when you might need it.
And there’s 24 hours of sunlight in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter, so that explains a lot of the facts just mentioned.

In addition to McMurdo, there are lots of other settlements. Most are far from each other, but some you can walk between (show the close ones). Almost everything is for research, but there are at least two that are considered "civilian bases." They house families of workers stationed there, and at least one of them requires that you get an appendectomy before moving there.

All of them operate cooperatively under a treaty made in the 1960s. It’s actually one of the most widely adopted and generally followed international agreements still in existence. Here’s the deal: Antarctica is used for scientific purposes only. There’s no military anything allowed (except for logistical support), and everyone agrees to put aside territorial claims to promote scientific cooperation.

The Only Non-Militarized Continent

Map of Antartica — A lot of countries have a presence in Antarctica.

The treaty currently has 54 signatories, which make up more than 80 percent of the world’s population. That makes Antarctica the only non-militarized continent, the only continent without a war, and the only place where 54 countries can agree not to care about borders.

That said, a lot of countries have staked out their borders in the Antarctic. They’re all gearing up for when it becomes more than just a science mission. Seven nations currently working there have declared portions of the continent to be theirs. It’s mostly cut by longitude lines, so the borders look like an artisanal pie.

None of these claims mean much while the treaty is in effect. But they could have real-world consequences if or when the place becomes valuable land.

Love, Life and International Treaties

Base Orcadas Argentina in Antartica — The research station Base Orcadas Argentina is the longest permanently inhabited research base in Antarctica.

Even though they all cooperate, every nation knows what’s going on under the surface. Argentina actually sent a pregnant woman to their base in 1977. Why? Because they got the first recorded child born on the continent. Not to be outdone, Chile sent a married couple to their base so they could have the first child conceived on the continent. That’s all true. There have been 11 babies born on Antarctica — apparently all of them are either Argentinian or Chilean.

There’s a huge amount that we don’t know about this place, and a huge amount we can learn that’s saved frozen in its ice. There are new discoveries every year, including a recent one in 2021 that found 60 million fish nesting under the ice — by far the largest breeding colony ever found — and they thought barely anything lived there before.

Let's Keep Exploring

Woman standing at the Scientific Station Almirante Brown in Antarctica — A woman standing at the scientific station Almirante Brown in Antarctica.

So does anyone live there? Probably not before a century ago. But we know that up to 5,000 people can be there now, some for years, and some even having babies. There are enough people for bars, a coffee shop, and costume parties. And there’s enough activity for almost 100 distinct settlements and the need for an international treaty to manage it all.

I’m no expert, but to me, it sounds a lot like people live there. What do you think?