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The sea bottom in that area is an undulating sand plain, Zelitsky said. What they were seeing should not have been there. "We were shocked, and frankly we were a little frightened," said Zelitsky. "It was as though we should not be seeing what we were seeing. Our first thought was maybe we found some kind of secret military installation."... "Then one day, in our office, I looked up and saw pictures of ancient Mexican ruins on a calendar, and I made a mental...This site, perhaps built by a culture that far pre-dates [perhaps 6000 years old] the famous Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula, might have been the victim of a vast, mysterious cataclysm that somehow dropped it 2,000 feet beneath the surface of the sea. "Nothing is known for certain now," Weinzweig said, "but oral tradition in early Mexico speaks of an advanced civilization of tall white people who came from the East, and of an island that sank in a great natural disaster." In the ancient language of some early Central American Indians, he said, "the word Atlanticu means 'our good father,' or, 'the place where our good father rests."... Then again, maybe not. Maybe the intriguing shapes found by the sonar are just that -- intriguing shapes, carved over the centuries by whimsical Mother Nature... |
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Peering through her glasses, ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky spent months studying the grainy, black and white sonar images on her computer screen, searching for a scientific explanation for the fantastic geometric patterns she found beneath 2,000 feet of water...they have found about 20 shipwrecks, including the USS Maine, and vast oil fields in deep waters around the island. But they're stumped by the strange formations across an 8-square-mile area off Cuba's western tip. At her home in eastern Havana, Russian-born Zelitsky traced the sonar image with a pen to outline what she says could be an urban settlement with corridors and buildings. Videotape from a remotely operated, couch-sized mini-submarine deployed last summer shows cube and pyramid shapes behind a thin veil of silt and plankton. Experts on both sides of the Florida Straits agree the formations are highly unusual but say there is not enough evidence to conclude they are manmade...Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde of Havana's National Museum of Natural History has analyzed the video, sonar images and rock samples from the site. While he has never seen anything like the repetitive patterns, Iturralde wants to see more samples before making any conclusions. "We have some figures which are extremely unusual," Iturralde said. "But nature is much richer than we think."... |
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Images of Massive Stones 2,000 Feet Below Surface Fuel Scientific Speculation The images appear slowly on the video screen, like ghosts from the ocean floor. The videotape, made by an unmanned submarine, shows massive stones in oddly symmetrical square and pyramid shapes in the deep-sea darkness. Sonar images taken from a research ship 2,000 feet above are even more puzzling. They show that the smooth, white stones are laid out in a geometric pattern. The images look like fragments of a city, in a place where nothing man-made should exist, spanning nearly eight square miles of a deep-ocean plain off Cuba's western tip. "What we have here is a mystery," said Paul Weinzweig, of Advanced Digital Communications (ADC)... "Nature couldn't have built anything so symmetrical," Weinzweig said, running his finger over sonar printouts aboard his ship, tied up at a wharf in Havana harbor. "This isn't natural, but we don't know what it is." "Nature couldn't have built anything so symmetrical," Weinzweig said, running his finger over sonar printouts aboard his ship, tied up at a wharf in Havana harbor. "This isn't natural, but we don't know what it is."... |
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Morien Institute interview with - Dr Paul Weinzweig Morien Institute: Are there any indigenous myths and legends in the Cuba area regarding ancient cataclysms, and if so, do they point to any specific locations or time frames? Dr Paul Weinzweig: "We have discovered relevant myths and legends not in Cuba but in Mexico's Yucatan and Vera Cruz Province. Paulina Zelitsky was invited a few months ago to the University of Vera Cruz by the Director of the Anthropology Department, Dr. Roberto Ramirez Rodriguez, who had heard about our project and introduced us to his recently published book called "Atlanticu" (The Origin of El Tajin). This book, based upon Mesoamerican Amerindian legends, is about the origins of the advanced forms of Central American ancient civilization (e.g., Architechture, Mathematics, Astronomy) which came from, according to oral history, a race of tall white people from an island to the east which sank in a cataclysmic earthquake. (Our geologist has determined that our site is on a separate island surrounded by active tectonic faults just a few miles to the west of Cuba). Atlanticu means "The place from where our Good Father rests"... Morien Institute: Similarly, do you have any thoughts about the underwater megalithic structures found off several of the Japanese islands, particularly the discovery at Yonaguni-Jima?" Dr Paul Weinzweig: "The marine structures at Yonaguni, as I understand them, bear close resemblance to the terraced terrestrial geology. Perhaps human settlements were carved out of local geology. In our Cuban site the granite monolithic stones are foriegn to the local marine and terrestrial geology."... Morien Institute: Are the structures ADC has found off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula in western Cuba identical to ruins of the Mesoamerican 'Pre-Classic Period', or have you detected any unique features from the video footage ADC has acquired so far? Dr Paul Weinzweig: "At this stage in the investigations, we can only speculate that some features (such as temple foundations layouts) seem to be reproduced at our site. Since the ancients built their new structures on old structural sites, we really don't know their true antiquity...These megalithic granite stones are located miles from the nearest quarries. There is nothing in our understanding of ancient engineering and construction or in our present rational imagination to explain the logistics of such megalithic construction. There is much mystery here."... |
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by Andrew Collins Readers will be aware of the discovery deep beneath the Yucatan Channel, off the coast of Guanahacabibes in western Cuba, of what is purportedly a lost city. Hi-tech sonar equipment aboard the 'Ulises', a vessel owned by Canadian firm Advanced Digital Communications (ADC), detected a several- kilometre square area of what appear to be roads, pyramids and other building structures at a depth of 2,200 feet. Yet it was not until July 2001 that Paulina Zelitsky, the Russian-born leader of the expedition, got a chance to view the site first-hand. A remote operated video (ROV), dispatched to the ocean floor, sent back frustratingly poor quality footage of linear stone features and large stone blocks, their sides and edges worn away by the actions of the sea. What had ADC found, and was it connected in some way with the legend of lost Atlantis, as described by the Athenian philosopher Plato more than 2,350 years ago?... |
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..."Samples that we recovered from the ocean bottom have justified our structures that we call megalithic structures. The samples are granite stone, completely polished, with some incrustations of fossils. Fossils of organic creatures that normally live on the surface, not on the ocean bottom. This is very interesting because this is evidence that the whole surface sank to the depth of 700 meters (2,297 feet, or about a half mile down). The area has been seismically active for thousands of years. And what we find on the ocean bottom are fractures from which the magma and volcanic ash came out. From these structures we were able to delineate a configuration of the land that sank because you can see them clearly. The land that sank is very obvious from our image of the ocean bottom. And you can see bays, like harbors, and it's all at the depths of 900 and 700 meters...We think there was a series of islands between Cuba and the Yucatan. There could have been sinking 15,000 years ago... The stone we recovered from ocean bottom is very polished granite. All of the peninsula of northwast part of Cuba, all of this peninsula is limestone, very fractured limestone. So, geologically, it (megalithic granite structures) is totally foreign to Cuba. But it's also not known in Yucatan because Yucatan is also limestone, not granite... |
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Pictures, maps, backgroundstories, explanations and interviews about the strange underwater structures located near Cuba... In depths among 600 and 750 meters under the level of the sea, the investigators of EXPLORAMAR found a joint one megalitíco of structures inusuales that called MEGA. As of the revelation of the find to the press, diverse opinions upon their origin have unchained themselves, that have captivated the popular imagination. It has been spoken of a "city submerged", of the remainders of the "Atlántida", and many other similar ideas... |
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A team of Cuban scientists and experts from the Canadian exploration firm Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) are trying to determine if a strange rocky formation discovered in the depths of the Caribbean facing Cuba could indeed be a strange sunken city, belonging to a hitherto unknown civilization. "We are in fact dealing with some highly peculiar structures...which have captured all of our imaginations," said Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde in a conference, after having researched the site for a week. "I would be hard pressed to find a geological explanation for this," he added. Analysis of the rock samples in coming months shall shed more light on the formation, located facing the Guanahuacabibes Peninsula in Cuba's western end...The rocks are of polished, geometrical granite. The structures -- reminiscent of pyramids, roads and other edifices, lie at a depth of over 600 meters in a 20 square kilometer area... |
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Scientific investigators said on Friday they hope to better determine later this year if an unusual rock formation deep off Cuba's coast could be a sunken city from a previously unknown ancient civilization. ''These are extremely peculiar structures ... They have captured all our imagination,'' Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde said at a conference after a week on a boat over the site. ''If I had to explain this geologically, I would have a hard time,'' he told reporters later, saying examination of rock samples due to be collected in a few months should shed further light on the formation off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on Cuba's western tip... |
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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 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,''... |
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The story about a possible megalithic site half a mile down off the western tip of Cuba first broke this past May when a Reuters News Service reporter interviewed the deep ocean engineer who first reported unusual sidescan sonar of the discovery. Her name is Paulina Zelitsky...Ms. Zelitsky reports that about 2,200 feet off Cuba's western tip she has found "a huge land plateau with clear images of what appears to be manmade large-size architectural designs partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resemble pyramids, roads and buildings."... In addition to the sonar images, this late summer they were able to get some light and a videotape camera down to the underwater site in a Robotic Ocean Vehicle known as an ROV...the Center for Marine Archaeology and Anthropology at the Cuban Academy of Sciences is currently analyzing video data which we have from the perimeter of the site from megalithic stones. They are working on inscriptions that they have detected on these stones and they are analyzing them at this time... stones - they are roughly about two by five meters...the same kind of stone that you see on Eastern Island and in Stonehenge...
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The ruins are megalithic and bear a remarkable resemblance to ancient sites in Egypt. So called "quarry marks" found in the Aswan quarries and also on the Great Pyramid, itself, appear to be identical matches with those found on the Bimini temple stones. One major difference, however, between the Egyptian sites and these stones is that on The Bimini stones you find a great number of sky maps which have recorded the paths of various heavenly bodies. The major concern of the mysterious ancient civilization that produced these heavenly maps seems to have been Saturn and Jupiter - with the oldest records reflecting an emphasis in Saturn... One of the unique features of the ancient temple ruins, built near Bimini by an unknown advanced civilization which apparently was thriving while most of the rest of the world was plodding through the Stone Ages, is that these stones may be far more likely to yield an accurate account of their true age than most of the famous megalithic sites around the world. There are also instances in which lava has flowed in between some of the temple stones which may give scientists an approximate date when submitted to testing. The antiquity of the stones almost leaps out at you upon first glance. There are hollows which have been left in certain broken stones which have undergone such an extensive amount of crystal growth upon their inner surfaces that they now look like the inside of a geode... |
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Press Releases from June and July of 1997 The Egyptology Society, an affiliate fo the Miami Museum of Science, is pleased to announce the discovery of tangible archaeological evidence which points to the former existence of an advanced civilization that built temples near Bimini which can be geologically dated as being more than twelve thousand years old. Prelimenary analysis has revealed that the original structures, although smaller in size, appear to have been more advanced than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Casing stones have been measured which are of the same unique angle as those at the Great Pyramid. There are exact orbital plots of the planets and what seem to have been intricate star shafts, metal-coated walls, and intermingled stones of various colors (including red, white, and black). Other characteristics either closely match or are identical to features at megalithic sites in Peru, Mexico, the Yucatan, Ireland, and Scandinavia... |
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A Canadian underwater exploration company using sonar has found what looks like an ancient lost city at the bottom of the Caribbean off Cuba. The company, Advanced Digital Communications, based in British Columbia, says an area of 20 sq km (8 sq miles) 650m below sea-level might have been a large "urban centre" 6,000 years ago. The submerged landscape has shapes resembling pyramids, roads and buildings, with blocks of rocks measuring between 2m and 5m long, some stacked one on top of another. Archaeologists, however, believe that it is more likely that the explorers have found a relatively common phenomenon... |
