Arctida is a hypothetical continent that supposedly existed for several thousand years in the North Pole region. According to legend, it was inhabited by a highly developed civilization that created a "golden age" of prosperity.
The very concept of "Arctida" was first proposed in the 19th century. I. Eger, German zoogeographer. Eger believed that in ancient times there was a land connecting North America and Eurasia. He proposed to call it Arctida, which is identified by many today with the legendary continent called Hyperborea.
Today, as well as on other similar issues, there are discussions: was there a mysterious continent or was it fiction? Just like the mystery of Atlantis, Arctida is a mystery to researchers. However, in terms of the location of the ancient continent, there is much more clarity here: the study of the bottom of the Arctic Ocean showed that there are clear signs of submerged land on it. This is evidenced, in particular, by the discovered Lomonosov ridge and Mendeleev ridge, which stretched from Eurasia to North America.
The reality of Arctida was actively defended by Yakov Yakovlevich Gakkel, a Soviet oceanographer, head of the geography department of the Research Institute of the Arctic and Antarctic. He believed that Arctida was a complex of archipelagos, which once included Wrangel Island and the New Siberian Islands. According to the scientist, this is confirmed by scientific research in the field of geology, zoogeography, floristry and hydrobiology.
In the mid-30s of the 20th century, the Soviet botanist A. I. Tolmachev analyzed the flora of central Taimyr and the Arctic part of America. The hypothesis of the existence of Arctida was also confirmed by research in the field of geobotany - a science that studies the relationship between plants and soils.
In 1935, the Soviet botanist Alexander Innokentyevich Tolmachev carried out a comparative study of the floras of central Taimyr with those of Arctic America. He investigated the plants of the Taimyr Peninsula, Chukotka in the northern part of Asia, and the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
It turned out that the flora of Taimyr was much more similar to the vegetation of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago than with the flora of Chukotka, located very close. This contradiction could only be explained by the existence in ancient times of some kind of "bridge" that once connected the continents, passing through the Arctic Ocean.
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The second question that arose in connection with this: was Arctida inhabited, all the more, could a highly developed civilization exist there? Doctor of Geographical Sciences S. V. Tormidiaro proposed a hypothesis that confirms the possibility of the existence of favorable conditions in Arctida. According to him, a significant part of the glacier, in which the Arctic Ocean was held captive, was covered with a layer of loess (sedimentary rock brought in from the mainland). Its thickness was sufficient for the growth of grasses, which provided food for herbivores. Thus, musk oxen, mammoths, woolly rhinos and many other animals could live in Arctida. In this case, a person could also live here. In addition, when considering the climatic conditions in the area, scientists usually proceed from modern data. If we take into account,that before the Flood the climate was completely different, which is indicated in particular by the Piri Rice map [Admiral Piri Rice in the 16th century, based on more ancient documents, compiled a map showing Antarctica without an ice sheet. These data were confirmed only recently with the help of satellite photography.], Then nothing is impossible in the existence of civilization at the poles.
In this regard, it is worth mentioning the Sunflower Kingdom from Russian fairy tales, which was located in the area of the modern Kola Peninsula. Some researchers believe that they mean exactly Arctida - Hyperborea.