A GIANT fort-like structure has just revealed itself in deepest Antarctica, sparking claims of an ancient civilisation once roaming the polar region.

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What apperars to be the remains oval shaped “building” is 400ft across and appears to have all the hallmarks of being a sizeable, man-made construction - similar to a mediaeval motte and bailey castle. If true, it would reshape everything scientists thought they knew about humanity’s past as it would prove people inhabited what was previously thought to be a desolate region.

Satellite imagery clearly shows the structure, which closely resembles the ruins of a once giant building.It is so symmetrical it has raised questions as to whether nature alone could have designed it.

Scientists initially thought the discovery could be a sastrugi – a natural phenomenon formed by years of being battered by strong, freezing winds and heavy snowfall.But sastrugies always form a distinctive shape based on the direction of the wind and rarely appear as a distinct oval, such as the mystery formation in the satellite image.Ancient civilisations in Antarctica have long been rumoured to have existed, with people pointing to a map drawn in 1513 by Turkish admiral Piri Reis as a clear sign of historic life.

Leading archeologist, Ashoka Tripathi, of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Calcutta, believes the images show clear evidence of an ancient human settlement beneath the ice sheet.He said: “These are clearly features of some sort of human-made structure, resembling some sort of pyramidal structure. The patterns clearly show nothing we should expect from natural geomorphological formations found in nature. We clearly have here evidence of human engineering. “The only problem is that these photographs were taken in Antarctica under 2km of ice. That is clearly the puzzling part, we do not have any explanation for this at the moment.“These pictures just reflect a small portion of Antarctica’s total land mass. There are possibly many other additional sites that are covered over with ice. It just shows us how easy it is to underestimate both the size and scale of past human settlements.