Why did countries want Antarctica even though it cannot support human life?
Answers
Answer:
Seven countries have laid claim to parts of Antarctica and many more have a presence there - why do they all want a piece of this frozen wasteland?
I pick a path between rock pools and settle my bottom on a boulder. A spectacular, silent view unfolds across a mountain-fringed bay.
Then there is a flash in the shallows by my feet - an arrow of white and black.
What on earth fish is that? My slow brain ponders, as before my eyes a gentoo penguin slips out of the water, steadies itself on a rock, eyes me cheekily, squawks and patters off into the snow.
Antarctica is the hardest place I know to write about. Whenever you try to pin down the experience of being there, words dissolve under your fingers.
There are no points of reference. In the most literal sense, Antarctica is inhuman.
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Other deserts, from Arabia to Arizona, are peopled: humans live in or around them, find sustenance in them, shape them with their imagination and their ingenuity. No people shape Antarctica.
It is the driest, coldest, windiest place in the world. So why, then, have Britain, France, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina drawn lines on Antarctica's map, carving up the empty ice with territorial claims?
Antarctica is not a country: it has no government and no indigenous population. Instead, the entire continent is set aside as a scientific preserve.
Explanation: