The world has 7 continents. Among them 6 are habituated. That makes one continent inhabited. Now, I'm pretty sure even a 5 year old pre school kid could guess which continent would that be. So I wouldn't build up a suspense to waste words, just say it's Antarctica. Now those of you who have seen a plain map of the world have seen a white crinkly portion in the bottom of the map which supposedly is the southern most part of the world. The south pole. Now, these maps drawn on a paper don't depict the actual dimensions of Antarctica so I'd advise you to check out a globe Atlas. But we're not here to talk about the dimensions or landmass of Antarctica, rather let's unfold that in this age of conquering lands and imperialism and capitalism and take overs here and there, who actually owns Antarctica? Have you ever asked this question to yourself? Not that Antarctica is home to humans so it can't be owned by any arctic people.
Well, turns out many have actually tried to conquer Antarctica. And they did, and the whole situation is an elaborate joke compared to all the wars and treaties and parleys we have seen regarding other takeovers.
So it's the 1900s. The world map seems to be complete. Hundreds of years of expeditions since mankind was forced onto the sea after the ottomans put a big "no no" on the famous silk road, humans have discovered and conquered new lands which they never before knew existed. Finding the north pole wasn't too hard because of all the people living in nearby areas and the area widely known as Scandinavia for thousands of years. But the South pole was very distant and hard to reach because it was so far away. Driven by the greed to own the most land, European countries sanctioned expeditions across the Pacific and the Atlantic sea, they found new straits and discovered waters which were unknown to them. Which was later named the arctic ocean.
These expeditions would basically just drive as south the south goes. First to reach Antarctica was a Norwegian group of explorers. Who would post a flag of theirs before leaving. This was just the start. As owning more land meant more chances of owning earthly minerals such as gold zinc or uranium. Actually these are the three most found minerals in Antarctica. After that came the very usual people of Britain. A number of Britain's expeditionary explorers reached different sides of Antarctica and all claimed bits of land on their own. France also had a little peace of the pie too. They all claimed different parts of the arctic coastline. And those territories would taper down to the south pole like a pizza slice.
That's how the initial borders were decided. Until many years after when New Zealand and Australia gained independence from the British, they claimed bits of Antarctica as they were effectively taking care of those lands for them. So Britain loses ground here. Not just any ground but more than 50 percent of what they initially held. In 1939 Germany was no head over heels that they issued a decree of having a German Antarctic sector but Antarctica was never really settled by humans back then. So after they lost the war this German Antarctic sector became so unimportant that you might be hearing it for the first time today.
But after the war, there has been new developments regarding this arctic piece of land. The professional people have signed treaties about which Antarctica doesn't know about, having borders which have no real significance. And many unusual and unnecessary stuff pushed by the ever so power hungry human race. I will explain all these in a future story. Till then, have a good one.