Bimini Road, Claimed to be a Geologic Feature
|
A lost city may have been found beneath
2,300 feet of water off the coast of Cuba, in an area just recently
opened to exploration by the Cuban government.
Several foreign companies have joined together with the Cuban
government to begin a systematic search of the area. “It’s a new
frontier,” says Paulina Zelitsky, of the Canadian company Advanced
Digital Communications. “We are discovering the influence of
currents on global climate, volcanoes, the history of formation of
Caribbean islands, numerous historic wrecks and even possibly a
sunken city built in the pre-classic period and populated by an
advanced civilization similar to the early Teotihuacan culture of
Yucatan.”
However, because of the depth of the find, it may be far, far
older than would seem possible based on current theories. Unless
there was dramatic and as yet unrecorded geologic activity in the
area, the city may have been submerged for ten thousand years or
more.
This is the same company that recently discovered the remains of
the U.S. battleship “The Maine” that mysteriously blew up in 1898,
killing 260 American sailors and touching off the Spanish-American
war. They have also been exploring a string of underwater volcanoes
about 5,000 feet deep off Cuba’s western tip, where millions of
years ago a strip of land once joined the Island to Mexico’s Yucatan
Peninsula.
Using sonar equipment, researchers have discovered a huge land
plateau at a depth of about 2,200 feet, with clear images of what
appears to be urban development partly covered by sand. From above,
the shapes resemble pyramids, roads and buildings. A joint
investigation with the Cuban Academy of Sciences and the U.S.
National Geographic Society is planned for this summer.
“It is stunning,” says Zelitsky. “What we see in our high-
resolution sonar images are limitless, rolling, white sand plains
and, in the middle of this beautiful, white sand, there are clear
manmade large-size architectural designs. It looks like when you fly
over an urban development in a plane and you see highways, tunnels
and buildings.
“We don’t know what it is and we don’t have videotaped evidence
of this yet, but we do not believe that nature is capable of
producing planned symmetrical architecture, unless it is a miracle.”
They have also located 700 sites where historic wrecks are
thought to lie and have recently videotaped and identified 3 of them
as large, 17th century ships with valuable cargo. Any treasure they
find will help to finance their project. Says Zelitsky, “Our agenda
is much broader. We are very anxious about global environmental
changes. Archaeology is providing us with the means to conduct
broader scientific exploration.”
Due to the U.S. embargo of Cuba, U.S. companies are prohibited
from participating in the exploration. The foreign companies working
with Cuba are Canadian, French and South African. Each has been
assigned an area of water to search and each will share the profits
on any treasure they find with the Cuban government, which does not
have the money or the technology to do the exploration by itself.
“As you know, we have financing problems,” says Eddy Fernandez of
the Cuban company Geomar. “This is a very expensive study. They give
us technology and financing. We provide historical and ocean
expertise. These projects are very important in helping us rescue
things from history, which contribute to our national patrimony.”
The other Canadian company working on the project, Visa Gold, has
already brought up 7,000 artifacts, including jewelry, diamonds and
pistols from a ship called the “Palemon” that sank in 1839 off
Cuba’s northern coast. Their next target is the “Atocha y San Jose,”
which sank in Havana Bay in 1642. Visa Gold combines sea exploration
with research, checking archives in Spain and elsewhere to find out
roughly where ships went down.
“I know of about 1,600 boats from the 16th to the 20th century
that went down here,” says Cuban naval historian Cesar Garcia del
Pino. “Those that came from Europe were full of merchandise and
those leaving from America were carrying the products of the
region—gold, silver and so on. I consider the historical value
greater than the commercial value because a sunken boat is a time
capsule.”
“They say there is 3 trillion dollars worth of treasure lying on
the bottom of the Caribbean, and a good part of that is near to
Cuba, because a good part of the wealth of the world came through
Cuba,” says ADC representative Paul Weinzweig. “But you have to bear
in mind that it is ill-gotten wealth. A lot of it is the result of
rape and pillage of New World colonies.”
Thanks to Wadespage for
Bimini Road photo.
For more information, click here.
