This story updates this prior story

. - A group of scientists searching for a hypothetical “Mayan Atlantis" found a pyramid of 35 meters under the waters of the Caribbean, but it had to interrupt the mission due to technical problems, as reported by the Mexican newspaper Millenium, today.

After 25 days of work in the sea, near the southwestern end of Cuba, the investigations deeper than 500 meters had to be abandoned due to problems with the mini submarine Deep Worker informs agency DPA.

According to the Russian scientist Paulina Zelitsky, who heads the mission, in April or May a new attempt will be made because there were findings there that would allow one to suppose that in that zone a pre-Hispanic establishment existed that was submerged by some cataclysm in the past.

So far, as previously indicated, it was possible to confirm the existence of a pyramid of 35 meters of height and rocky "unnatural formations", In Addition, the team managed to extract a carved rock, possibly part of another pyramid.

The mission weighed anchor on October 7th of this year from the Mexican port of Progress, in the Eastern Yucatan Peninsula, with an international team of scientists.

According to preliminary reports by Zelitsky, who noted that she will extend her remarks and conclusions in more detail in an exclusive article for National Geographic.

During the expedition’s 25 days there were additional findings. Among them were stone extraction with animal fossils, volcanic sand remainders and a bacterium that can be used in vaccines and that are similar in their properties to microorganisms found previously only at more than 3,000 meters of depth.

The mission failed due to technical problems with the submarine and faults in the illumination system, that was "six teams weaker than expected", the scientist said.

"Because the apparatus could not move, it took photographs from pyramids from a distance of one to three meters, without being able to take photos from a distance from those structures so that one could have the perspective of the buildings", she explained.

"We were only able to make superficial dives . We did not remove what we waited for by lack of properly adapted equipment", she said, thus in the next attempt we will use a robotic unmanned submarine.

EARLIER REPORT...

Underwater Cities; Noah's Flood Proof? ... Page 1

"It is stunning. 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," Zelitsky said.

Evidence of ancient city found in depths off Cuba 1/2 Mile Down

By Michael Posner. The Globe and Mail. Montreal, Canada. December 7, 2001.

A team of Canadian and Cuban researchers have discovered the remains of what may be a 6,000-year-old city submerged in deep ocean waters off the western coast of Cuba.

Using sophisticated sonar and videotape equipment, offshore engineer Paulina Zelitsky, her husband, Paul Weinzweig, and her son, Ernesto Tapanes, have found megaliths "of a kind you'd find at Stonehenge or Easter Island," Mr. Weinzweig said in an interview yesterday.

"Some structures within the complex may be as long as 400 metres wide and as high as 40 metres," he said. "Some are sitting on top of each other. They show very distinct shapes and symmetrical designs of a non-natural kind. We've shown them to scientists in Cuba, the U.S. and elsewhere, and nobody has suggested they are natural."

Moreover, an anthropologist affiliated with the Cuban Academy of Sciences has said that still photos taken from the videotape clearly show "symbols and inscriptions," Mr. Weinzweig said. It is not yet known in what language the inscriptions are written.

The sonar images, he added, bear a remarkable resemblance to the pyramidal design of Mayan and Aztec temples in Mexico. Mr. Weinzweig said it is too early to draw firm conclusions from the evidence collected so far.

The research team plans another foray to the site -- off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on Cuba's western tip -- next month. Next summer, it hopes to return again, this time with the first deep-water mobile excavator, equipped with functions needed for on-site archeological evaluation, including the ability to blow sand off stone.

(Image: Atlantis Site.com--artists' (Dean Clarke, BLS)interpretation of radar image) Click and drag photo to resize. Script from The Java Script Source

Geologists have recently hypothesized that a land bridge once connected Cuba to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. And portions of the Cuban island are believed to have been submerged in the sea on three separate occasions in the distant past.

The structures are on a plateau that forms the bottom of what is thought to be a mud volcano, 650 to 700 metres beneath the surface of the ocean and along what is clearly a geological fault line. "It's well known that ancient civilizations liked to build at the base of volcanoes, because the land is fertile. So that's suggestive," Mr. Weinzweig said.

One tantalizing possibility, entirely speculative for now, is that if the legendary sunken continent of Atlantis is ever proven to have existed, these structures may have been submerged during the same cataclysm.

Mr. Weinzweig simply says that more information is needed. "We'd prefer to stay away from that subject. This is something of great potential scientific interest, but it must involve serious authorities on ancient civilizations."

The precise age of the underwater site is also unknown, although Cuban archeologists in 1966 excavated a land-based megalithic structure on the western coast, close to the new underwater discovery, said to date from 4000 BC.

"Based on that and other geological information, we're speculating that these are 6,000 years old," he explained. "It's not exact, but they're very ancient."

If that dating estimate proves accurate, it would mean that an ancient civilization had designed and erected these vast stone structures in the Americas only 500 years after human settlements first became organized in cities and states.

They would also have been built long before the wheel was invented in Sumeria (3500 BC), or the sundial in Egypt (3000 BC). The three pyramids on Egypt's Giza plateau are thought to have been constructed between 2900 and 2200 BC.

The couple's Havana-based company, Advanced Digital Communications, discovered the site in July of 2000, using side-scan sonar equipment to view what resembled an underwater city, complete with roads, buildings and pyramids.

The team returned this past summer with a 1.3-tonne, unmanned Remotely Operated Vehicle, controlled from the mother ship via fibre-optic cable. Its cameras confirmed the earlier findings, showing vast granite-like blocks, between two and five metres in length, that were cut in perpendicular and circular designs.

But because of technical problems, Mr. Weinzweig said, "we were only able to survey the perimeter of the site.

Based on initial explorations, we think it's much larger than even our sonar projections show. It may extend for several kilometres."

In addition to the archeological site, ADC has been exploring what Mr. Weinzweig calls "the richest underwater cemetery in the world" for sunken Spanish galleons. Hundreds of treasure-bearing ships are said to lie around the island, several hundred to several thousand metres deep.

Last year, off Havana Bay, it found the remains of USS Maine, the battleship that blew up in 1898. That incident, never entirely explained, killed 260 sailors and precipitated the Spanish-American War.

Explorers Return To Study 'City' On Ocean Floor Off Cuba

Las Vegas Sun

5-19-2

HAVANA- Floating aboard the Spanish trawler she chartered to explore the Cuban coast for shipwrecks, Paulina Zelitsky pores over yellowed tomes filled with sketches and tales of lost cities - just like the one she believes she has found deep off the coast of western Cuba.

Zelitsky's eyes grow wide as she runs her small hand over water- stained drawings of Olmec temples in a dog-eared 1928 study of Mexican archaeology. The Russian Canadian explorer compares the shapes with green-tinted sonar images captured in March while studying the megalithic structures she discovered two years ago off Cuba's Guanahabibes Peninsula.

Amid piles of sonar-enhanced maps is a well-worn copy of "Comentarios Reales de las Incas," or "Royal Commentaries of the Incas," a classic of Spanish Renaissance narrative by the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador. Zelitsky is particularly fascinated by Garcilaso Inca de la Vega's account of ancient ruins at the bottom of Lake Titicaca, Peru.

"You would not think that a reasonable woman of my age would fall for an idea like this," chuckled Zelitsky, a 57-year-old offshore engineer who runs the exploration firm Advanced Digital Communications of British Columbia, Canada.

Zelitsky passionately believes the megalithic structures her crew discovered 2,310 feet below the ocean's surface could prove that a civilization lived thousands of years ago on an island or stretch of land joining the archipelago of Cuba with Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, about 120 miles away.

The unusual shapes first appeared on the firm's sophisticated side-scan sonar equipment in the summer of 2000, during shipwreck surveys off Cuba's western coast, where hundreds of vessels are believed to have sunk over the centuries.

The company is among five foreign firms working with Fidel Castro's government to explore the island's coast for shipwrecks of historical and commercial interest. But the mysterious shapes have become the focus of this crew's exploratory efforts.

Puzzled by the shapes with clean lines, the team has repeatedly returned to the site - most recently in March - for more sonar readings, more videotapes of the megaliths with an unmanned submarine. The crew left in mid-May for a month.

Evidence for Zelitzky's hypothesis is far from conclusive, and has been met with skepticism from scientists from other countries who nevertheless decline to comment publicly on the project until scientific findings have been made available. Submerged urban ruins have never been found at so great a depth.

Elsewhere in the Caribbean, the ruins of Jamaica's Port Royal are located at depths ranging from a few inches to 40 feet below the ocean surface. The once raucous seaside community was controlled by English buccaneers before it slid under the waves in earthquakes beginning in 1692.

Located at just 20 feet are the mysterious megalithic structures discovered in the 1960s and 1970s in the sound between the Bahamas islands of North and South Bimini. Scientific expeditions there have produced inconclusive results about the shapes' origins.

Photo: Curved, megalithic sized white rock with line detail visible. Video still © 2002 by ADC International, Inc.

Back in Cuba, a leading scientist recently admitted there is no easy explanation for the megalithic shapes found by Zelitsky's crew. The shapes on the sonar maps look like walls, rectangles, pyramids - rather like a town viewed from the window of an airplane flying overhead.

"We are left with the very questions that prompted this expedition," geologist Manuel A. Iturralde Vincent, research director of Cuba's National Museum of Natural History wrote March 13. At the time he was visiting the area aboard the 270-foot long Ulises, the Spanish trawler Zelitsky outfitted with sophisticated computer and satellite equipment for her surveys.

In his written comments, later delivered at a scholarly conference here, Iturralde concluded it was possible the structures were once at sea level, as Zelitsky theorizes.

Because of the large faults and an underwater volcano nearby, Zelitsky supposes the structures sank because of a dramatic volcanic or seismological event thousands of years ago.

Providing some support for that argument, Iturralde confirmed indications of "significantly strong seismic activity." Zelitsky shies from using the term "Atlantis," but comparisons are inevitable to the legendary sunken civilization that Plato described in his "Dialogues" around 360 B.C.

There have been untold, unsuccessful attempts over the ages to find that lost kingdom. One common theory is that Atlantis was located on the Aegean island of Thera, which was destroyed by a volcanic eruption nearly 3,600 years ago.

Zelitsky does, however, mention known archaeological monuments when discussing her find.

Numerous photographs are scattered throughout a video show of the megaliths, showing well-known ancient sites: the 1st century fortress of Masada high above the Dead Sea, Britain's circular monument of Stonehenge, the Roman fortress of Babylon in Cairo, the walls of Chan Chan, Peru, whose inhabitants were conquered by the Incas.

Perhaps, Zelitsky mused, the megaliths off Cuba are remains of a trading post, or a city built by colonizers from Mesoamerica. Those civilizations were far more advanced than the hunters and gatherers the Spaniards found upon arriving here five centuries ago.

Zelitsky admitted much more investigation is needed to solve the mystery. But that doesn't keep her from believing, or from smiling slyly as she opens her agenda for 2002 to the first page.

Written there are the words Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei uttered under his breath at the height of the Inquisition, right after abjuring his belief that the Earth revolved around the sun.

"E pur si muove," it reads - "Nevertheless, it does move."

Earlier this year, using a submersible, they were able to obtain samples of the underwater objects. "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..."

UPDATE: In search of a Sunken Island Near Cuba: Evidence for Existence of a Flooded Civilization of “Prehistory ..... Page 19

Science and Investigation
by, Hernán Casares Camera

12,000 years ago, a powerful volcanic eruption sank an island between Yucatan and Cuba, where a "prehistoric" civilization bloomed prior to the Mayan Civilization,according to a scientific theory investigators from several countries will try to demonstrate during an underwater expedition this month.

Deep Worker, the submersible that will be used to take video of the "submerged ruins" off Cuba. Click and drag photo to resize.

Before beginning their project, the archaeologists had to raise $2-million (about R13-million). They set sail from the port of Progreso in eastern Mexico on the Yucatan peninsula.

The scientists will be headed by Canadian engineer Paulina Zelitsky, who discovered vestiges of this island in the year 2000, approximately nine kilometers off the coast of Cabo San Antonio, in Cuba, in international waters and about 18 hours from the Yucatan peninsula by boat.

This Newspaper published a report of that finding the 11th of November of last year. According to that story, investigator Paulina Zelitsky, using her sonar equipment found the remains of a city under the sea, with great buildings, avenues and wharves made of granite.

Like Dzibichaltún

The lack of sufficient, conclusive evidence and the lack of visibility at that great depth did not allow the scientists at that time to form a workable theory on the collapse of a city.

Paulina Zelitsky with Diving Equipment

Four years later, that same team of scientists prepares a new expedition to the zone of the discovery, from Port Progress, in Yacatan, Mexico, to prove a theory of the collapse, that could revolutionize modern archaeology.

Speculation is that the new findings in the sea belong to a city very similar to Dzibichaltún, in Yucatan. Paulina Zelitzky, was interviewed by this newspaper in the dining room of the expeditionary ship, shortly before weighing anchor from Port Progress.

The investigator and her team of collaborators were in Progress from Friday, October 1 to last Thursday October 7 to provision the ship, the Akademik Golitsyn and to assemble the international team of scientific researchers. Thereafter, she will direct them to the zone of the discovery.

Volcanos

The collapse of that island happened by the eruption of a volcano. According to the scientist’s theory, 15,000 years ago the Yucatan peninsula and Cuba were united by a land bridge in the form of a mountain range. Paulina Zelitsky and her collaborators discovered that this same mountain range still exists now, but under the sea.

No one pays particular attention or focuses on the importance of under ocean volcanos, even though the Canadian scientist believes in response to our query that they could potentially be even more dangerous than surface volcanos.

The investigation intends to demonstrate that in the past the volcanic activity between Yucatan and Cuba was catastrophic and that in the future such a major event could be repeated.

The studies will also verify the antiquity of Mayan Culture and its presumed origins here and that of other cultures, like the Olmec, as well as provide evidence forcontact between inhabitants of that long sunken island, Cuba and South America.

Atlantis

First in arriving at the coast of the Gulf of Mexico were the Olmecs, who soon founded Sale, in Tabasco. According to the oral tradition of that culture, their predecessors identified their origin in an island that disappeared, called” A tlan you cu ' ".

The tracks of this island were discovered by pure chance, as it may be revealed in the next few weeks, when engineer Zelitsky’s second expedition concludes.

Fortuitous Finding

In 2000 she and a Canadian crew headed an expedition to look for petroleum in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. When they tracked the marine bottom the scientists found an unusual, intriguing image: great constructions of stone, perfectly aligned under the water, on an extension of several thousands of square meters.

These constructions seemed polished, formed by not by limestone as might be expected. The images showed, very great stones, aligned in symmetrical form, very well organized assembly, as if they were the result of city-planning and sitting on a volcanic crystal sediment, very fine, like sand.

The scientists saw, to a side of those constructions, something similar to streets, avenues, bays and structures similar to wharves of some port. They understood that the material of the constructions and the volcanic crystal of the floor could not be formed at this great depth (2,200 feet) under the sea but rather, on the surface, in contact with oxygen.

Something Strange

Paulina Zelitzky remembers now that at first we thought when seeing those images were that we had run into with something strange and highly unusual, but we did not know what it was.

The Akademik Golitsyn. Click and drag photo to resize.

But as the curiosity kills the cat, initially I never thought about finding or looking for another explanation. Six months later, while we reviewed our photographs of the bottom of the sea in my offices, I raised my eyes and happened to see a calendar with photographs of some Mayan ruins. Suddenly, it all fell into place: some of the photos were identical to those we had discovered deep under the sea and, therefore, probably were vestiges of a prehistoric structure.

Cataclysm

I at heart see a great similarity between our findings under the sea and the structure and characteristics of some monuments of the archaeological zone of Dzibichaltún, asserted the scientist.

Our geologist, doctor Manuel Iturralde, an internationally recognized authority in this field, suggested that the recently discovered structures could belong to an island located between Cuba and Yucatan, which was sunk 10,000 or 12,000 years because of a seismic cataclysm.

An indication that this cataclysm did occur and collapsed the entire surface are the stones we extracted from the ocean which showed concentrations of fossilized animals, specifically of escaramujos, a crustacean that lives solely to two meters of depth. How do we explain its presence at 900 meters of depth?

I don’t want to appear to be a fortune teller said the investigator, but I believe there will prove to be sufficient scientific evidence to confirm our theory that there, near Cuba, is a sunken island, containing the remains of a prehistoric civilization?

Source: Merida:Electronic Edition of the Diary of Yucatan, October 9, 2004

LATEST INFO - DATED this month.

Cyprus Update
This story updates this prior story

NICOSIA (Reuters) - An American researcher on the trail of the lost city of Atlantis has discovered evidence of man-made structures submerged in the sea between Cyprus and Syria, a member of his team said Saturday.

Robert Sarmast, who is convinced the fabled city lurks in the watery depths off Cyprus, will give details of his findings Sunday.

"Something has been found to indicate very strongly that there are man-made structures somewhere between Cyprus and Syria," a spokesperson for the mission told Reuters. The mystery of Atlantis, both whether it existed and why it disappeared, has fired the imagination of explorers for decades.

Many believe the ancient civilization was destroyed in a massive flood, a cataclysm which many ancient cultures believe occurred around 9,000 BC.

Greek mythology says Atlantis was a powerful nation whose residents were so corrupted by greed and power that Zeus destroyed it.

Theories place Atlantis either somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, or the Greek island of Santorini, or off the Celtic Ridge of Britain or even further afield in the South China Sea.

Sarmast's theory is that Cyprus is the pinnacle of Atlantis, with the rest of it about a mile below sea level.

His expedition took place some 70 miles off the eastern coast of Cyprus toward Syria.© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

2nd Story: Atlantis Definitely Found

We've definitely found Atlantis, researcher says.

A US researcher says he has "definitely" found the lost civilisation of Atlantis in the watery deep off Cyprus, adding his theory to a mystery which has baffled explorers for centuries.

Robert Sarmast says a Mediterranean basin was flooded in a deluge about 9,000 BC, submerging a rectangular land mass he believes was Atlantis.

The land mass now lies 1.5 kilometres beneath sea level between Cyprus and Syria.

"We have definitely found it," said Mr Sarmast, who led a team of explorers 80 kilometres off the south-east coast of Cyprus this month.

He says deep water sonar scanning has indicated man-made structures - including a three-kilometre-long wall, a walled hill summit and deep trenches - on a submerged hill.

Mr Sarmast says further explorations are needed.

"We cannot yet provide tangible proof in the form of bricks and mortar as the artefacts are still buried under several metres of sediment but the circumstantial and other evidence is irrefutable," he said.

At a news conference in the port city of Limassol, Mr Sarmast provided only animated simulations of the "hill".

Whether and where Atlantis existed has captured imaginations for centuries.

According to ancient Greek philosopher Plato, Atlantis was an island nation where an advanced civilisation developed about 11,500 years ago.

Theories abound as to why it disappeared, from Atlantis being hit by a cataclysmic natural disaster to Greek mythology which describes the civilisation as being so corrupted by greed and power that it was destroyed by God.

Sceptics believe Atlantis was a figment of Plato's imagination.

Mr Sarmast says he was led to Cyprus by clues in Plato's dialogues.

Plato's reference to Atlantis lying opposite the Pillars of Hercules - believed to be the Straits of Gibraltar - have often led explorers to focus on either the Atlantic Ocean, Ireland or the Azores off Portugal.

"People who dismiss this have not really done their homework, sceptics don't really understand," Mr Sarmast said.

"To understand the enigma of Atlantis you have to have good knowledge of ancient history, Biblical references, the Sumerian culture and their tablets and so on."

Although the most prevailing story of a world cataclysm is listed in the Biblical Old Testament, several ancient cultures do list accounts of civilisations being destroyed in floods.

-Reuters

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