Posted on 05/23/2002 4:59:38 PM PDT by blam
Mystery shrouds undersea structures
Years of study haven’t solved a puzzle found off Cuba’s coast
Russian offshore engineer Paulina Zelitsky speaks on a radiophone aboard her ship docked at Havana. Zelitsky is trying to determine whether megalithic structures beneath the ocean's surface were left behind by a vanished civilization.
By Anita Snow
ASSOCIATED PRESS
HAVANA, May 21 — 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.(BTW, these were found recently)
“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 (700 meters) 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 (190 kilometers) away.
DETECTED BY SONAR
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.
Russian offshore engineer Paulina Zelitsky points to a map of North America aboard her ship. She conjectures that an island or stretch of land may have joined the archipelago of Cuba with Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula thousands of years ago.
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 Zelitsky’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 (12 meters) 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 (6 meters) 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.
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
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 (82-meter-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.”
COMPARISONS TO ATLANTIS
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.”
Funny what a small world it is. I first went to Bimini and Chub Cay as a teenager in 1962.
I still go to both places when I can. After all these years, the fishing is still great.
I wanted my kids to know their beauty too, and took them there often as they were growing up.
Is the meaning here that it's probable that the builders erected the structures under water? 
I've seen more 'creditable' reports about The Bimini Road being a natural formation than I've seen otherwise. The key word is 'creditable.' I spent a little time in the region in the '62-'64 time frame myself.
Aha! Enter my theory: The Gulf Of Mexico was blocked off (from the world's oceans) through Florida, Cuba and the Yucatan during the Ice Age. Over thousands of years, the Gulf partially dried out and eventually created a stable but reduced water level in the Gulf. The builders of this 'city' built on the shoreline of the 'reduced water level Gulf.'
When the Ice Age began to end and the world's oceans began to rise, the 'dam' broke and re-flooded the Gulf, submerging these structures. (just like the flood that broke through at the Bosporus and flooded the Black Sea, "Noah's Flood.")
Some are saying that The Bimini Road is associated with the civilization that built the underwater 'city' and was all part of a massive complex in that region. (Throw in a few earthquakes, some volcanic activity and maybe even a meteorite.)
I'm of the opinion that there is more to ancient histroy than we know.
I was remembering from a radio interview from last year.That may very well be true.(A fine interview among others can be found at this link below ) under 'Science and Medicine' from Dec of 2001,w/ an intersting Pic on her computer.Take a look.Like I said before,it appears she's doing this on HER TIME, no one elses.And if I found something like this,I'd probably tell people to back off too! LOL
http://www.earthfiles.com/earth310.htm
Sonar image of underwater site.
The Cactus Hill site and other sites suggest humans came to the Americas earlier than previously thought.
The sea level was still very low in 12,000.
So any human-built structures at then-sea-level would have to be at least 100 feet down.
With much of Eastern Carribean being shallow, could that have left places like the Cayman depths cut off from the Atlantic?
Blam's huge underwater terrain map of the entire planet swamped my PC, but it is mind-expanding and answers a lot of questions about prehistoric migrations.
With much of Eastern Carribean being shallow, could that have left places like the Cayman depths cut off from the Atlantic?"
Now you have your thinking cap on. The reduced ocean level range that I have seen the most mentioned is 300-500ft with most accepting 400ft. Somewhere I have an underwater map of the world with the ocean levels reduced by 300ft. It gets real interesting in the Caribbean and others areas show the Persian Gulf dried up, the Red Sea landlocked, Japan and Korea connected and etc. I'll see if I can find it again and post it. Also, don't forget the early American, Topper Site.
This is the general location of what Edgar Cayce said was the continent of Atlantis ... Cayce was a "psychic", but he nailed an amazing number of things in the teens, 20's and 30's ... He also nailed the structures off the coast of Bimini including the year they were discovered.
I've read most of Cayce's "readings". I don't recall the specific nails you refer to, but I do recall:
Cayce predicted that Atlantis would "rise" and to "expect it in 1968 and 1969". [See 958-3, Par. R5.]
As for the location, Cayce placed Atlantis; "between the Gulf of Mexico on the one hand - and the Mediterranean upon the other... the Pyrenees and Morocco on the one hand, British Honduras, Yucatan and America upon the other ... The British West Indies or the Bahamas ... Bimini and in the Gulf Stream through this vicinity..." [See 364-3, Par. R2]
Imho, that covers quite a chunk of territory, hardly a "nail".
USA Today Published Nov. 27, 2000
The road to Atlantis?...The Bimini Road part of the debate dates back to the 1930s, when Cayce went into a hypnotic trance and predicted evidence would be found near the island in the 1960s.
As the date neared, so did the searches for Atlantis, and several private pilots reported seeing what appeared to be a man-made anomaly in the waters off Bimini.
In the 1970s, David Zink, an amateur geologist who was formerly an English professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, took samples of the stones to a Houston psychic, who concluded they were part of fallen pillars from a sacred temple built around 28,000 B.C. The temple was built primarily by Atlanteans, Zink concluded, and their subcontractors were aliens from the star cluster Pleiades.
More scientific expeditions have been conducted in the area with inconclusive results. Skeptics say the Bimini Road is a natural formation of native beachrock and, indeed, seemingly similar formations can be found along the shorelines of North and South Bimini.
Others have suggested the rocks are ballast dumped from sailing ships...
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