Posted on 12/06/2001 9:37:13 PM PST by spycatcher
HAVANA (Reuters) - Explorers using a miniature submarine to probe the sea floor off the coast of Cuba said on Thursday they had confirmed the discovery of stone structures deep below the ocean surface that may have been built by an unknown human civilization thousands of years ago.
Researchers with a Canadian exploration company said they filmed over the summer ruins of a possible submerged ``lost city'' off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on the Caribbean island's western tip. The researchers cautioned that they did not fully understand the nature of their find and planned to return in January for further analysis, the expedition leader said on Thursday.
The explorers said they believed the mysterious structures, discovered at the astounding depth of around 2,100 feet and laid out like an urban area, could have been built at least 6,000 years ago. That would be about 1,500 years earlier than the great Giza pyramids of Egypt.
``It's a really wonderful structure which looks like it could have been a large urban center,'' said Soviet-born Canadian ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky, from British Columbia-based Advanced Digital Communications (ADC). ``However, it would be totally irresponsible to say what it was before we have evidence,'' Zelitsky told Reuters.
Zelitsky said the structures may have been built by unknown people when the current sea-floor actually was above the surface. She said volcanic activity may explain how the site ended up at great depths below the Caribbean Sea.
In July 2000, ADC researchers using sophisticated side-scan sonar equipment identified a large underwater plateau with clear images of symmetrically organized stone structures that looked like an urban development partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resembled pyramids, roads and buildings, they said.
``ULISES'' ASSISTS UNDERWATER ODYSSEY
This past July, ADC researchers, along with the firm's Cuban partner and experts from the Cuban Academy of Sciences, returned to the site in their ship ``Ulises.'' They said they sent a miniature, unmanned submarine called a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) down to film parts of the 7.7-square-mile area.
Those images confirmed the presence of huge, smooth, cut granite-like blocks in perpendicular and circular formations, some in pyramid shapes, the researchers said. Most of the blocks, measuring between about 6.5 and 16 feet in length, were exposed, some stacked one on another, the researchers said. Others were covered in sediment and the fine, white sand that characterizes the area, the researchers said.
The intriguing discovery provided evidence that Cuba at one time was joined to mainland Latin America via a strip of land from the Yucatan Peninsula, the researchers said.
``There are many new hypotheses about land movement and colonialization, and what we are seeing here should provide very interesting new information,'' Zelitsky said.
ADC's deep-water equipment includes a satellite-integrated ocean bottom positioning system, high-precision side-scan double-frequency sonar, and the ROV. The company currently is commissioning what it calls the world's first custom-designed ocean excavator for marine archeology to begin work both at the Guanahacabibes site and at ship wrecks.
ADC is the deepest operator among four foreign firms working in joint venture with President Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s government to explore Cuban waters containing hundreds of treasure-laden ships from the colonial era. The Canadian company already has discovered several historic sunken Spanish ships.
In an earlier high-profile find, ADC was testing equipment in late 2000 off Havana Bay when it spotted the century-old wreck of the American battleship USS Maine. The ship had not been located since it blew up mysteriously in 1898, killing 260 American sailors and igniting the Spanish-American War.
The rush of interest in Cuba's seas in recent years is due in part to the Castro government's recognition that it does not have the money or technology to carry out systematic exploration by itself, although it does have excellent divers.
American companies are prohibited from operating in Cuba by the long-running U.S. embargo on the Communist-run island.
I beg to differ...from Plato's Republic(376):
"In this education you would include stories, would you not?...These are of two kinds, true stories and fiction. Our education must use both, and start with fiction...
And the first step, as you know, is always what matters most, particularly when dealing with those who are young and tender (Like a lot of Freepers). That is the time when they are easily moulded and when any impression we choose leaves a permanent mark."
Lots of people tell, and have told, lots of stories; people discover things, and wonder what they mean; but no one has yet produced any evidence whatsoever, including on this thread, that Atlantis represented any real place at any real time.
Yep!
http://www.askwhy.co.uk/awmike/ac2/AmericaPhoen01.html
"The percentage of bodies with positive result for nicotine were Egypt:89%; Sudan:90%; China:62.5%; Germany:34%; Austria 100%. After 3000 samples"
2500 hoaxes? Yeah right.
"Early contact between the Old and New Worlds would explain why a ball court in the Mayan city of Chichen Itza, in the Yucatan, has a running motif of lotus blossoms, a flower unknown in the area, but sacred to the ancient Egyptians and a traditional design in Egyptian art. A stone carving discovered at Copan, Honduras, seems to depict an elephant, an animal unknown in the New World at the time.
An Olmec relief carving features a bearded figure, wearing the upturned shoes typical of the eastern Mediterranean, yet the Olmecs and the other native peoples of the Americas had sparse facial hair and usually plucked what little bit they had. An incense burner unearthed in Guatemala is shaped like a bearded face with strikingly Semitic features.
The numerous monumental stone heads left by the Olmec depict helmet-wearing men with unmistakably Negroid lips and noses."
"The one [plant] that absolutely proves trans-Pacific voyaging is the sweet potato. There are also discoveries of peanuts more than 2,000 years ago in western China. There is a temple is southern India that has sculptures of goddesses holding what looks like ears of maize or corn."
Doc
I would add to this partial list but it's late and I'm tired. African bananas that arrived there via the Pacific Ocean wasn't even mentioned....and so on.
Dear Cecil:
What's the story with the cocaine mummies? Researchers have evidently established the presence of cocaine in mummified corpses in Egypt and Sudan that date back to before Columbus landed in America. Since cocaine is only known to have been cultivated in South America at that time, some people speculate that there may have been an ancient transatlantic trade route. How about it, Cecil? Do all the archaeology textbooks in the world need to be rewritten? --Michael Rago, Highland Park, New Jersey
Dear Michael:
You never know. Maybe the international narcotics trade goes back a lot earlier than we thought. But right now the general feeling is that it's not the ancient Egyptians who were on drugs.
The controversy began in the early 1990s, when a team of German researchers published a couple short papers claiming they'd found significant traces of cocaine, nicotine, and "hashish" in several Egyptian mummies, some of which were more than 3,000 years old. The papers offered a provocative insight into the personal habits of the idle rich in ancient times (conclusion: things haven't changed much in 3,000 years). Just one problem: in pre-Columbian times, so far as we know, tobacco and coca grew only in the Americas, and there was no trade between the Old World and New.
As one might expect, the papers were greeted with disbelief, as if they'd announced that in the days of the pharaohs the sun rose in the west but didn't acknowledge that there was anything odd about this. Although the criticisms were politely phrased, the subtext was unmistakable: Listen, you morons, if you're going to present results that fly in the face of everything we know about ancient trade, botany, etc., you're going to need more than seven paragraphs and a chart to convince us. Among the possibilities suggested: (1) The samples were contaminated. (2) The mummies were fakes. (3) The analytical techniques were faulty. (4) Related Old World alkaloids might have been misidentified.
The Germans replied: We have no explanation; further research is needed. You can almost hear the eyeballs roll.
In 1995 another much longer article appeared in a German scholarly journal. (Different set of authors, although one individual, Franz Parsche, was listed as a coauthor for all three pieces.) The article was mostly about evidence of pulmonary bleeding in a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy, but briefly mentioned that an analysis had found significant traces of cocaine, nicotine, and THC. Again, no acknowledgment that there was anything out of the ordinary about this, nor was there any attempt to counter previous criticisms.
From what I can tell, this article drew little scholarly response, and you can imagine why. Other scientists by now had concluded the Germans were out to lunch.
Not so the mass media, however. A British TV studio put together a documentary on the Germans' work, focusing on one of the investigators, a forensic toxicologist named Svetla Balabanova. Balabanova told interviewers that she initially hadn't believed the results either, that she'd had them checked by other labs, and so on. The TV guys also talked to respected British Egyptologist Rosalie David, who vouched for the authenticity of the Egyptian mummies (since the owners refused to show them to her, this wasn't altogether convincing). She also tested some other Egyptian mummies and, to her surprise, found traces of nicotine.
The TV show wasn't a bad piece of work. (You can read the script at www.uiowa.edu/~anthro/webcourse/lost/coctrans.htm.) It gave ample airtime to the skeptics but overall left the impression that Balabanova, Parsche, et al. might be on to something, making a better case for their work than they had bothered to make themselves.
But it was just TV. It's not the kind of thing scientists normally respond to, and they haven't.
There the matter rests. According to Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, the Germans' work has been dismissed by mainstream archaeologists. No discussion of it is to be found in recent surveys of the field. Theories about transoceanic trade in ancient times are considered too outré to warrant serious consideration. To defenders of Balabanova, Parsche, and company, this suggests a pigheaded refusal to reexamine entrenched beliefs. I disagree. If the Germans aren't being taken seriously, it's largely their own fault.
--CECIL ADAMS
I don't hinge my understanding only on those toxicology studies anyhow. The info in The Atlantic and other info posted above should be taken as a whole. The chance that there wasn't *any* contact between east and west is almost zero. The examples may be explained with various theories, but when there's a different reason to explain each "coincidence" it's a weak response to the overall pattern.
My point is that we can ignore Plato's lost city account and just consider the possibility that their is a lot more water on earth than there used to be. In that case "Atlantis" would be a generic term for the civilization that used to be but is now lost under the ocean. Could be several cities that used advanced navigation and building design, etc. -- and that may be where the astromony used in building pyramids on both sides of the ocean came from.
So let's not let Plato be our guide to prove or disprove anything at this early point. But why not scientifially pursue the general notion that his story may have stemmed from an oral tradition that was an account of history.
So also do the quite professional scientists. Like everyone, each have their own set of faults. I'm not disagreeing with you. Only adding a comment.
It would be nice if more people exercised a bit of open mindedness like you. It doesn't mean they have to give up their belief system. It only means that they recognize the possibility of alternate possibilities.
He was right. Atlantis resort rose again on Paradise Isle right next to Nassau in the Bahamas right at the turn of the new century. :^)
I spelled it wrong. It should be "Chachapoya". Do an Alta Vista search on it and there will be a lot of sites pop up. They were fair-shinned and tall. Here's a German site mentioning some were blond. Use your AV translate in your "Tools" menu. A while back, I surfed into an account of a hiking party hiking in Chachapoya country that ran into towns full of blond natives but I can't find it now.
True, but the Chachapoyas predate Viking exploration.
Huh?
Reports came from all over and were so much the same...the implication is that where there is smoke there must be fire. The problem is that naive observers mistake dust for smoke.
?
All references to "Atlantis" originate with Plato. NONE PREDATE his writings.
The Mayan Codex Troano was recorded in 1500 BC tells exactly of an equatorial continent/island sinking beneath the waves in a cataclysm. Did Plato copy from the Maya? :^)
To say that some-one, some-where, told a story about an island that sank, is NOT corroboration of reality, nor is it the same as the Atlantis myth. To picture a lost island off the coast of Cuba is fine, if you want to indulge yourself, but it violates the defining descriptors of Atlantis as FIRST described by Plato.
I don't think it's near Cuba, I think it's just east of the Philippines. Seafloor mapping reveals a continent diamond shape anomoly unlike any other part of the seafloor. It looks like a relief map of a continent. Look here. Zoom in just east of the Philippines. Notice how the diamond is more detailed than the area around it. That tells me that there isn't as much silt build-up. If there isn't as much silt build-up, then maybe it hasn't been on the seafloor as long. Notice how it's completely surrounded by the trenches. If those trenches were very old, they should've filled in with silt too. Those trenches look recent. Notice how it matches Plato's description with respect to size, mountains to the north, plains in the middle, including a 300 mile by 100 mile rectangle that's very smooth (the plain).
It is only a demonstration that much of human imagination is not so unique.
Coincidence is impossible.
I am intending to be good natured about this, but I also am trying to be clear: if you enjoy mythology fine, but DO NOT try to pass ancient BS off as some kind of truth. You will be ripped to shreds by scientists far more rigorous and knowledgable than I am.
The same scientists that said the outer planets would be without winds? They were completely wrong about that when Voyager 2 arrived. The strongest windstorms in the solar system occur on the outer planets.
I know about the discoveries regarding the Black Sea and the Flood myth. They are fascinating ONLY because there is physical evidence. Such evidence is totally lacking for the Atlantis myth, unless you want to say that any destruction story anywhere in the world, no matter how many ways it differs from Plato's first account, refers to Atlantis.
They all mention the same equatorial area though and they're all alike. How do they differ?
And if so, you can believe what you wish, but I just won't buy that sh*t
You don't have to get snippy. If this upsets you, go to an Ashcroft thread. LOL
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.