Antarctic Societies
How about if we ignore the question of how they got there and how they developed and see if we can figure out a way for a fully developed and adapted culture to survive in the Antarctica with no modern technology. If we can achieve that then maybe we can later find a way for them to get their. If not we are screwed. For people to live they are going to need two things food, shelter and building materials, and a source of heat. Let’s have a look at all three.
Food: At present seals, penguins, a handful of other birds, fish and a few other sea animals are the only animals of note to eat. Blue whales live in the seas which sounds fun. All have apparently been eaten in some quantities in the past. Penguins come in very large numbers- thousands and millions of them if Wikipedia can be believed- and they form huge groups and colonies of thousands. But they move around a lot often migrating with the extending or receding icecap. Seals and fish will require access to the sea which will also mean constantly moving to follow the icecap. Only two flowering plants exist both limited in range to the Antarctic Peninsula and both, far as I can see, of very little use. Various ferns lichens and mosses make up the rest. They are concentrated on the Antarctic Peninsula. Maybe some could be eaten but it seems that the chief diet of these people will be meat. To have a steady supply they may have to either move around to follow the food or get enough to store for long periods of time. Moving around in the Antarctic winter sounds fairly impossible so I'll presume the second.
Shelter and building materials: No wood and as mentioned above No plants of any use. We will have to use the skins and bones of various animals. Various metals do abound if we know how to use them (and since we are ignoring development plausibility we do). But we will need coal to smelt metal which I will discuss later.
A source of heat: For the Inuit apparently animal dung was apparently a primary source of fuel for fires as well as bones, blubber, plant material and what wood they came across. We have no wood considerably smaller bones (no large mammals) and fewer plants. As for lighting a fire with penguin droppings I'm not seeing it. The penguins themselves, however, burn very well, they were used by whalers to boil fat and can apparently be simply thrown alive onto the fire. This does not really seem enough. There also the possibility of coal. It is found in two locations, around the Trans-Antarctic Mountains and Prince Charles Mountains. Neither of these is very close to the Antarctica peninsula (which seems the best place to live as far as climate is concerned) but the Prince Charles Mountains deposits seem to be a little less horribly located. It’s close to the coast. Apparently lots of emperor penguins live around there. Also it has metal deposits.
To make matters generally worse apparently the ecosystems of the Antarctica are so fragile they are threatened by human tourism. There are no land predators- indeed no animals that rely on the land for sustenance in any way. The penguins lay one egg a year and the entire place sounds like humans, if they tried to live there, might well destroy it very easily.
Still after some thought I can come up with two potential societies. The first live on the peninsula. They gather up penguins, seals and fish and make clothes and dwellings from their skins. They burn penguins. They might make canoes and harpoons and occasionally kill a whale. Over the summer they gather as much meat and plant material as possible. During the winter they mainly try not to freeze to death. Sort of like unusually poor and miserable Inuit. I'd hate to be them.
The second are somewhat more farfetched. They live around The Prince Charles Mountains. They mine coal for fuel and have mastered metalworking. They make journeys from there to hunt penguins and fish and return home with their bounty to their homes around the mines. They must be fairly good miners so maybe they also live in caves. The populations of penguins, seals and fish that surround them is delicate and must be managed or the entire society will collapse and everyone is more or less entirely dependent on coal from the mines simply to live day to day so a centralized order is necessary. This society is an absolute Monarchy centred on the largest coal mines in the area. Their tools mix metals with the materials from their prey and they have a relatively advanced system for managing the animal populations that surround them. Whaling is also important. Over the summer the entire society is organised in a all out war like mobilization to gather as much food as possible while over the winter they retreat to their caves and gather round great coal fires for warmth telling tales or participating in ceremonies as well as forging what metal tools they needed and digging. Maybe they also set a penguin or two on fire. A very high degree of efficiency and skill would have to be achieved to gather sufficient food over the summer without killing off the ecosystem. They would undoubtedly use great nets for fishing; learn how to encourage lichen and moss growth, build huge fish traps of rocks both for their own sustenance and also to encourage the penguins. Maybe they even capture and breed seabirds clipping their wings to keep them from flight. All this requires a society with both the power and knowledge to do such things and the wisdom to know just when to stop. If they achieve this they may set up a prosperous if strange life. It’s all doomed in the long run though. The coal will run out and everyone will die.
As for how these two societies could form maybe if you transported some Inuit the Antarctic Peninsula and they got lucky the first would result. It’s unlikely though. The second is flatly impossible as far as I can see. There is no way for it to slowly develop it would either have to form ex-nihilo or not at all (presuming it could exist even then). A shame really, I sort of liked them.