Some social media users claim that a photo shows ‘military camps in Antarctica’ built on top of a ‘giant tree stump’. This is false. The image shows the SANAE IV station, a South African research base in Antarctica, built on top of a rocky mountain.
A Facebook user shared the message (here) in a group called ‘Ancient Giant Tree Truth’ with over 34,000 members and the headline ‘Frozen stump’. Other posts with the claim can be seen here, here, here
A similar image to that used in these posts can be seen in an art portal identifying the place as ‘South African Base SANAE IV’.
SANAE IV is one of the three research stations of the South African National Antarctic Program (SANAP), which is managed by the country’s department of environment, fisheries and forestry (www.sanap.ac.za/about). The Department emphasizes at www.sanap.ac.za/about#history that scientific data collected on their expeditions ‘is critical to understanding, inter alia, the effects of climate change and weather information related to extreme events’. ‘
This research station is located on the west side of Ahlmann Ridge in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica (here, on.doi.gov/3kEl523) on top of the Veleskarvet cliff, a rocky depression known by glacial erosion as a ‘ nunatak ‘. (here).
More footage of the station and the nunatak can be seen on SANAP’s website here (here, here) and the YouTube page here. Large-angle shots show that the cliff is not like a stump, as the angle on social media indicates.
Reuters found no public evidence to confirm the allegation that the research base was a ‘military camp’. The country’s Department of Defense and Military Veterans (DODMV) assists SANAP in providing rescue services, as well as ‘medical, food and driver services’ (here, see page 11).
As explained earlier here by the Reuters Fact Check team, allegations of alleged giant tree stumps claim the belief among Flat Earthers, conspiracy theorists who claim that our planet is not a globe, but a flat surface (here), that ‘real ‘trees are no more. exist.
As explained here in Quartz by arborist and environmentalist William Thompson in 2019, many platitudes believe that ‘the trees we see now are small replacement versions of giant 20-mile-high trees that once existed on earth in ancient times. It. In short, the things we think of as trees today are actually … bushes. ‘
According to Thompson, this idea came to the fore in a 2016 YouTube video called “There are no wous on Flat Earth Wake Up” which has since been removed (here). A next version of the video is still available here.
VERDICT
Untrue. The photo shows a South African research center in Antarctica, built on top of a rocky mountain, not a giant tree stump; the posts are linked to conspiracy claims.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check Team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.