Update on Underwater Megalithic

November 19, 2001 Havana, Cuba - 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 was born in Poland, studied engineering in the Soviet Union, was assigned to work on a secret submarine base in Cuba during the Cold War, and eventually defected to Canada. There she met her current husband, businessman Paul Weinzweig. Now the couple own and operate a company called Advanced Digital Communications, or ADC, with offices in both Victoria, British Columbia, and Havana, Cuba. Their specialty is deep ocean exploration. ADC made news in November 2000 when Paulina Zelitsky found the wreckage of the famous U.S.S. Maine that blew up and sank in 1898. It was three miles off the Havana coast and two-thirds of a mile down. Her team videotaped the battleship which matched old photographs.

Now this year, 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."

This week I talked with both Paulina Zelitsky and Paul Weinzweig and learned that 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. Over the past several months, I have had an agreement with Mr. Weinzweig in which I can discuss their progress with the site, but will only report publicly when I have permission. The following is the portion of our most recent discussion on the record for broadcast that includes the surprise of Paulina Zelitsky joining the interview.

Interview Paul Weinzweig, Partner, Advanced Digital Communications, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: "IS THERE ANYTHING THAT YOU CAN SAY ON THE RECORD THIS MORNING THAT I CAN DO SOME KIND OF AN UPDATE?

For the record you can say that 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.

WHAT ARE THE ESTIMATED SIZES OF THESE STONES? AND YOU MENTIONED POSSIBLY THE SAME KIND OF LOOK AS THE PERIMETER STONES AT STONEHENGE? THAT KIND OF RECTANGULAR LOOKING?

Yes, the same kind of stone that you see on Eastern Island and in Stonehenge. Very large and smooth and light colored that bear no relationship to the surrounding ecology. And also there is evidence of smooth cut and fit, that is one on top of another, as if the basis of a pyramid or large building.

AND ON THOSE STONES, WHERE ARE THE POSSIBLE INSCRIPTIONS? YOU KNOW, LIKE TOP OR BOTTOM OR MIDDLE OR?

They are not anywhere specific on the stones, these inscriptions. They could be in the middle of the stones and various parts of the stones across. One thing we found, the anthropologist found, was an American cross. It's a Central American cross.

IS THAT WHERE TWO LINES ARE CROSSED PERPENDICULAR TO EACH OTHER WITH ANYTHING SPECIAL ON THE ENDS?

Yes, The way a cross crosses, only the shape is not a single line. It is a flattened circle.

DO THESE SO FAR FROM WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN ON THE VIDEO SEEM TO BE INSCRIBED INTO THE STONE LIKE A QUARTER OF AN INCH OR HALF AN INCH?

Yes, we can't tell really the depth. There is limited lighting and limited perspective as well because of the - we had technical problems with the ROV.

That's OK. We have good lighting now and we have a low light camera to add to our two or three other cameras we have there as well. To our zoom camera and we have several cameras that work down there and we have good lighting.

There was a lot of debris in the water at that time, created by a strong current, probably by plankton.

Well, hopefully, if we get all our systems back together within the next two months and we get a break in the weather.

AND THE MUSEUM THAT IS TRYING TO ANALYZE THESE CARVED INSCRIPTIONS YOU HAVE SEEN SO FAR, HAVE YOU HAD ANY INDICATION THAT THEY THINK IT MATCHES ANY KNOWN ANCIENT SCRIPT?

I said the lettering is Greek-like. Hold on just a minute. Why don't you talk to my boss.

Yes, thank you. I was overhearing my husband and I don't want you to make any bad mistakes mixing Greek, because it is not Greek. It has the same tendency, but it is not Greek. We don't know what it is and scientists are trying to decipher it.

RIGHT. IT HAS SOME RESEMBLANCE IN LETTERING TO GREEK, BUT IS NOT GREEK. AND THERE ARE SOME LIKE PICTOGRAPHS THAT WOULD FALL INTO THE HIEROGLYPHIC CATEGORY AS WELL?

Yes, and symbols as well. There are different signs, more like American nature, like they have found in Central America. Pyramids. And strong delineation of the structures which suggest pyramidal type, American pyramidal type, not Egyptian pyramidal type.

AND AN EXAMPLE IS THAT CROSS MADE OF OVALS CROSSING EACH OTHER? Yes. Yes, and other symbology, other cosmic type depictions. And you find this in Cuban caves around the island, not only in the south but in the north. And those caves are underwater caves. One cave I know of is on land and it has this type of symbology as well.

AND WHEN ARCHAEOLOGISTS HAVE STUDIED THE CARVINGS IN THE CAVES ON CUBA, HAVE THEY BEEN ABLE TO MATCH THOSE SYMBOLS AND GLYPHS TO ANY OTHER PRE-EXISTING KNOWN LANGUAGE?

They are trying to match it to Central American, but it is distinctive on its own. It's very difficult to say that ancient American symbology is identical to this. It is not identical. It's similar, but not identical."

After hearing about the symbol of crossed ovals and mysterious lettering, I began searching. I called the Archaeology and Anthropology Department at the University of Pennsylvania which has one of the finest collections of Olmec, Mayan and other Mesoamerican artifacts in the world.

This weekend I spent several hours searching the library's rare books of Mayan and Mesoamerican glyphs. I could not find a single cross of ovals until I opened up a book called The Language of the Sea Peoples. There in a section comparing hieroglyphs from the Minoan island of Crete with hieroglyphs known as 'Linear C Language" used by an ancient Minoan culture called 'Luwian,' I found it.

I SENT BOTH OF THOSE SYMBOLS TO PAULINA ZELITSKY FOR COMMENT. SHE E-MAILED BACK TWO COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS SHE HAD TAKEN INSIDE A CUBAN CAVE THAT INCLUDED YET DIFFERENT CROSSED SYMBOLS WHICH YOU CAN SEE IN MY EARTHFILES.COM REPORT.

Paulina Zelitsky wrote about the crossed oval symbol above and spirals below: "The image is from the Cuban Isle of Youth and restored by archeologists. But there are a number of similar (Cuban) caves: one in Matanzas and one in Quanacabibe which were not restored. The age of these nobody knows. But the scientific community believes they belong to the 'Sea People.'

How would an ancient Minoan symbol end up a half mile down amid other apparent megalithic structures off the western tip of Cuba? I took that question to the Editor-In-chief of Ancient American magazine, Frank Joseph. Frank has studied the end of the Bronze Age around 1200 B. C., which was three thousand two hundred years ago. He is also the author of a 1998 book entitled Atlantis In Wisconsin. He has another new book about to be relased entitled Edgar Cayce's Atlantis and Lemuria. That book will be in stores by the first of December. And a third book to be released in 2002 is called The Destruction of Atlantis. Frank Joseph has devoted more than two decades to studying physical evidence of a global Atlantean culture which he believes was destroyed in a worldwide catastrophe in 1200 B. C. that ended the Bronze Age.

In the September/October issue of Ancient American magazine, there is a brief article entitled 'U. S. Navy Atlantis Cover-up?' It says that on September 7, 2001, a team from Spain and the U. S. looking for oil have been "250 miles southwest of the Azores equipped with bathescape and two submersibles researching a 90-kilometer ledge with a central temple supported by three stands of nine pillars about 3 feet in diameter supporting a flat stone roof about 20 feet wide and 30 feet long. There are the remains of five circular canals and bridges, plus four rings of structures like the temple in between. It is roughly 2,800 feet deep in the Mid-Atlantic Trench and stable at this time." According to the researchers, when they tried to send photographic images from the site, their signals were jammed by a U. S. Naval exercise nearby, perhaps inadvertently.

Frank Joseph and I are still trying to confirm this report, but the depth of 2800 feet is around that half mile depth in the Cuban site. This weekend I asked Frank about the crossed oval symbol in the Linear C language of the Luwian.

Frank Joseph, Editor-In-Chief, Ancient American, Archaeology of the Americas before Columbus, Colfax, Wisconsin: "The Luwians were a peoples who lived about the same time as the Trojans that lived in what is now Turkey. They were either an ally of the Trojans, a close ally during the Trojan War and before. Or else in fact, they were Trojans. Some Luwian script has supposedly been found in Italy and they think that is an important link between the Etruscans and Asia Minor, or what is now Turkey. And the Luwians were maritime people, very proficient at sea.

AND THIS CROSSED OVAL SYMBOL OF THEIRS RELATED TO WHAT IS LETTERED AS 'LU' IS ALSO GOES ACROSS ALL THE COLUMNS IN COMPARISON TO OTHER LANGUAGES WHERE THE SYMBOL APPEARS TO MEAN 'STAR."

A star, yeah. But maybe. That "lu" that is repeated is like they are identifying themselves, the Luwians. They might have called themselves the "lu." It is very interesting. That whole cultural context is Atlantean because the Atlanteans were plugged into the Trojans. The Trojans themselves had a story of Atlantis. Their founder was Dardanus who came from Atlantis. Elektra, when she was sinking into the sea.

The Trojans were a people who built their city around 3,000 B. C. And they chose that spot at the Dardanelles because it was a very valuable place for trade between the East and the West. You had access then to the Black Sea. Whoever controlled the Dardanelles controlled trade. So Troy over time became a very wealthy city.

And the myth of Dardanos is that he was born on an island far away to the West. And his mother was Elektra. Her father was Atlas, the name of the island that Atlantis was on. She was the daughter of Atlas and her mother was Clione. WELL THIS IS VERY SIMILAR TO WHAT PLATO TALKS ABOUT.

And Clione was the sea goddess who produced what is known as the Pleiades. And Pleiades means daughter of Atlas which is Atlantis. That's what Atlantis means, daughter of Atlas.

Pleiades means daughter of Atlas. It is a poetic way of saying this is on Atlantis.

WELL, THE FACT THAT THERE COULD HAVE BEEN AN ATLANTIS THAT HAD BASES THAT SPREAD ALL THE WAY FROM WEST OF THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR THAT MIGHT HAVE INCLUDED THE AZORES, THE CANARY ISLANDS AND DOWN ACROSS THE ATLANTIC IS WHAT BEGINS TO EMERGE AS A GREATER TRUTH.

Absolutely. Right. Now, the relationship between Atlantis and Troy is not the same as the relationship between say Atlantis and the Yucatan, for example, where they had an allied kingdom. They really owned the Yucatan. Or they would own parts of Ireland and Spain. That was really plugged in tight to the Atlantean Empire.

HOW FAR BACK WOULD YOU PUT THIS SINCE PLATO SAYS GOING THROUGH SOLON AND IN THE CRITEAS '9000 YEARS' AND THAT WOULD PLACE IT AT ABOUT 11,500 YEARS AGO?

No, that's another story altogether. My colleagues and I have worked very hard since the 1980s on these dates. And those dates are a mistake, that was a mistake in translation. The Greeks used a calendar that was very similar to ours. They used a solar calendar of about 365 days. A standard solar calendar. The Egyptians used a minimum of five different calendars and their, including a solar calendar. Their priests and holy places where they had the story of Atlantis which was at the holy place called the Temple of Knife in Egypt. They used a lunar calendar.

We concluded that the Egyptian priest, when he said 9,000 years, is talking about lunar years and not solar years. There is abundant evidence to show that is exactly what he was saying. And the Greeks, when they heard this, they thought solar years. So when Plato all of the numerical values in the Criteas and the Timaeus are totally inflated beyond reality. They do not work with the description that Plato gives. Plato describes a late bronze age citadel or city.

There was a huge gap in knowledge between Plato's and Solon's time and what happened in Atlantis. Because we now know that when the Bronze Age stopped suddenly around 1200 B. C., that for the next 400 years at least there was a period of profound Dark Age. There was no more writing. There was no more building of cities. The population of the world had decreased phenomenally. There was widespread burning. The entire Black Forest of Germany was incinerated. Every, not virtually, but every known archaeological site in the Near East and Asia Minor were burned. It is now understood that there was a major catastrophe of which Atlantis was only a small part that whipped around the world in a band literally from about Iceland to oh, say, the middle of North Africa. It affected North America, went right through the Pacific.

There was a symposium of archaeo-astronomers back in 1997, not New Age people at all, in England, in which they found that probably the greatest natural catastrophe human beings ever witnessed was around 1200 B. C. And that was when two or more comets, including Haley's Comet, converged in the skies over earth and showered the world with a barrage of asteroids and meteors that pushed human beings to the brink of extinction.

And Atlantis was especially hard hit because there are two Swedish physicists, Thomas Larsson and Lars Franzen, who established in 1997 that several asteroids - I'm not talking about meteorites - several asteroids! collided in the eastern Atlantic precisely in the location of Atlantis and that is why we can explain why an island the size of Atlantis which was 6,000 square miles - it was not a continent, it was a big island. And it was destroyed. If you have an island out in the middle of the water and it's hit by several nuclear blasts at once, the chances of that thing being around are slim.

AND WHAT YOU MEAN IS THAT THE IMPACT OF THESE BREAKING OR COLLIDING ASTEROIDS WOULD HAVE BEEN EQUIVALENT TO ATOMIC BOMB FORCES HITTING ON THE ISLAND?

Probably H-Bomb forces. And they didn't even have to hit the island itself. The island was part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which is a very unstable part of the planet geologically. You could have an asteroid collision hundreds of miles away, but if it hit the Mid-Atlantic Ridge - that's the end of that island.

SO, THE BRIEF ARTICLE YOU HAVE IN THE SEPTEMBER TO OCTOBER ISSUE OF ANCIENT AMERICAN ABOUT A SPANISH OIL RESEARCH GROUP BEING IN THE AZORES AND FINDING DOWN 2800 FEET NINE COLUMNS SUPPORTING SOME KIND OF STONE SLAB ROOF....

THAT IT MIGHT LITERALLY CONNECT TO THERE HAVING BEEN SOME KIND OF STRUCTURE THERE IN THIS 1200 B. C. TIME FRAME?

Yeah, I think so. It works out real well. Unfortunately, I have not been able to verify that report anymore than you have seen. But I would bet that it was part of the 1200 B. C. destruction because it was so massive at that time. We know for example that many parts of the world like Britain and Germany lost 9/10th of their population all at once. So, we're dealing with a massive, almost an extinction, human extinction, in various parts of the world all at the same time. And I think that's entirely possible.

That would explain also perhaps how this structure now found off Cuba is where it is. We understand that possibly that it was part of a much larger complex. I'm beginning to think that what they are finding there was much larger originally, and what they are finding now is only a small part, a remnant, that was perhaps on a kind of shelf which sank vertically. That is not impossible. Things like that have been known to happen before in the Atlantic and that this part remained upright and that's what they are finding."

One of the most mysterious cultures on earth are known as the Etruscans. Twenty-five hundred years ago they lived in a region of Italy known as Tuscany. No one knew who they were or where they came from. The Etruscans were skilled sailors and craftsmen and they left behind carved in stone blocks, columns and other artifacts a language that no one has ever been able to translate. It resembles Greek, but is not Greek.

Frank Joseph: "I haven't seen what they found down there. It sounds like if it looks Greek, but isn't Greek, that might be that it's Etruscan. I'm not saying the site underwater is an Etruscan site. That's probably unlikely. The Etruscans did not build things that look like Teotihuacan, that's for sure! But the Etruscans, where did they get their written language? It's possible that what we're looking at in Etruscan is a variation of the Atlantean language. We don't know what the Atlantean written language looks like. But it appears to be the precursor, not just of Greek, but other written languages in other parts of the world. So, it's possible that if they look to Etruscan, they might be able to see some similarities. That's not much help though. Even if they identify it as Etruscan, they won't be able to read it because the Etruscan written language as not yet been deciphered. They've gotten some names off it and little snatches of things, but the language itself is really bizarre because it is a Greek type written language, but the language itself is more like Turkish or something. It's really very perplexing.

The Etruscans are far more directly connected to Atlantis because Plato in his discussion of Atlantis mentions the Etruscans specifically as being an outpost of Atlantis, that the Atlanteans came to western Italy and set up their estate there and sort of inter-married with the people and created what became known as the Etruscans.

NOW FROM THE WORK YOU HAVE DONE ON ATLANTIS RESEARCH AND I THINK IT'S FAIR TO SAY YOU ARE CONVINCED THAT PLATO'S DESCRIPTION AND HERODITUS OF THIS ATLANTEAN CIVILIZATION THAT IT REALLY DID EXIST. WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE ATLANTEAN CULTURE IN THAT PERIOD FROM 3,000 TO 1200 B. C. BASED ON WHAT YOU'VE STUDIED?

What I can tell you is that the Atlanteans who developed on an island outside the Straits of Gibralter developed an extremely powerful sea civilization. They were great seafarers. Plato described the Atlanteans as great seafarers and great miners. And that works out extremely well with the copper mining that took place in North America I'm not going to get into that, but there was a major copper mining enterprise that involved a minimum of half a billion tons of raw copper being removed and disappearing during that time period. And I believe the Atlanteans fit the bill for that.

AND THIS WAS THE 5,000 MINES OF THE NORTHERN PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN THAT ARE EACH ABOUT 60 FEET DEEP?

Well, the average depth is probably like 20 feet deep for the pit mines, but there were many pit mines that were excavated through solid rock 60 feet down. So, whoever did that obviously had a technology far beyond anything that was known to the native Americans at that time who were not interested in anything more than float copper, copper they picked up off the ground. But this is one of the great - I hate to use the word conspiracy, but it certainly is suppressed evidence that American scholars have known about for more than 100 years that there was a huge copper mining enterprise in upper Michigan that lasted from 3,000 B. C. to 1,200 B. C. - those magic dates again - in which a minimum of half a billion pounds of the world's highest grade copper was excavated and disappeared.

Meanwhile on the opposite side of the world, the Bronze Age erupts and bronze is only made through high grade copper combined with zinc and tin. So, I think that what Plato was talking about are these ancient copper miners who were able to mine through their tremendous technological development and ship this huge prodigious amount of raw copper to Europe where it became the merchants, the copper barons, of the ancient world and that is what made them so phenomenally wealthy and powerful.

WELL, AN INTERESTING POSSIBLE DISCOVERY IN THIS UNDERWATER MEGALITHIC SITE THAT'S UNDER RESEARCH IS THAT IN SOME OF THE SONAR DATA, NOT THE VIDEOTAPE, BUT THE SONAR DATA, THERE ARE SOME RETURNS THAT SUGGEST THAT THERE MIGHT BE METAL, LIKE METAL ON THE TOPS ON SOME OF THE OBJECTS. WOULD THE USE OF METAL AS SHEETING ON STRUCTURES BE SOMETHING THAT WOULD BE ASSOCIATED WITH THE RESEARCH ON ATLANTIS?

Well, now we are getting really close to the Atlantean realm. Plato tells us that at the height of their prosperity to show off their wealth, would actually sheet their outer walls of the city with great sheets of what he called 'orichalcum.' Orichalcum means nothing more than high grade copper which didn't exist in Europe in large numbers like North America. So, here were people who used a design technique, an architectural technique of including sheets of precious metal in their walls and now we are finding this supposedly at a site underwater off of Cuba. I would say now we are beginning to narrow in on a cultural commonality.

I know exactly where it is headed. Some time this century, the greatest archaeological find in history is going to be made when identifiable remains of Atlantis are going to be found. And the beginnings of that began in 1968 when they found the Bimini road or wall or whatever they refer to it as. It's still highly controversial, but that place has been thoroughly established as artifactual. The structure in Cuba may be part of that. It's very possible it's part of it. they are bread crumbs on the trail and the final discovery of Atlantis is going to be made because the technology now for underwater research is developing at such an extent they are turning the oceans transparent. And what's under the oceans, what's actually hidden under the silt. And I think a lot of Atlantis is not only buried under the water, but under the silt and so on. That discovery is going to be made. That's where it's headed, hopefully in our life time, but I would say definitely in the 21st century Atlantis will be found. I am really confident that is going to happen.

It is stood on its ear because the academic world has been demanding for the last 100 years that anybody who believed in Atlantis believes in fantasy, they don't know what they are talking about, they are very unscientific. And beyond that, they say civilization just began 5,000 years ago very slowly in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates. Well, all of that is going to have to be thrown out! We are going to be looking at something completely different now. In other words, all of the textbooks, our entire concept of where we came from is going to have to be changed."

Shows how little time I get for this sort of thing anymore; I was not even aware that the two gentlemen mentioned in the article had [purportedly] established as fact that asteroids had impacted the mid-Atlantic Ridge (I was aware of a great deal of circumstantial supportive evidence, just not any definitive agreement on dates, numbers, etc.).

I still recall a book on Atlantis which (among the dozen or so avenues of inquiry) showed the remarkable similarity of common word roots among the existing cultures on all land masses ringing the Atlantic in early history. Just that one effort, with the amazing number of identical (or nearly so) words/meanings, was enough to convince me that, not only had there been extensive interrelations among all these peoples, but that they all likely had a common origin - the diaspora of Atlantean refugees.

(I think this is what they're referring to)

Landscape Analysis, Stratigraphical And Geochemical Investigations Of Playa And Alluvial Fan Sediments In Tunisia And Raised Bog Deposits In Sweden: A Possible Correlation Between Extreme Climate Events And Cosmic Activity During The Late Holocene

Lars G. Franzén1 and Thomas B. Larsson2

1 Physical Geography, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Göteborg,
SE-413 81 Göteborg, Sweden, E-mail: lars@gvc.gu.se 2 Department of Archeology, University of Umea, SE-901 87 Umea, Sweden

Geomorphological signatures, and plays and alluvial fan deposits, all point at a severe flooding catastrophe in central Tunisia c. 1000 B.C.
Precipitation must have exceeded 10,000 mm in a very short period. Human activity during this period concentrated around wells, with an increased need of heating as indicated by the very frequent occurrence of unusually large fireplaces with heating stones imbedded in charcoal (Larsson and Franzen, in press).

The sediments deposited indicate severe ground frost in an initial phase, i.e. large balls of loose dune sand, imbedded in the lower part of the stratigraphies, objects which could only have been transported in a frozen form.
In spite of being found in a 5 m thick sediment sequence the fire places have the same apparent age according to 14 C-datings, indicating an extreme rate of sedimentation.
The playa investigated, Chott Nejla, is normally dried out However, after heavy floods, it is a fresh water lake, with a maximum depth of 15 m, if filled up to the thresholds. At the natural playa outlet during pluvial periods, from an archaeological point of view, a very rich site was found with signs of a perhaps continuous settlement from 9000 B.C. to Roman times, uncommon for the Capisien culture (Balout, 1955; Larsson and Franzen, in press).

The sediment sequence at the playa centre shows that the most abrupt transition from aridity to very humid conditions at 1000 B.C., was followed by a very long lake stage.
The lower lake stage sediments of this event contain glassy spherules (5-100 gm dia) with a very varying composition, from pure Fe-types to types with the same basic composition as those found in the K/T-transition (e.g. Koeberl and Sigurdsson, 1992).
Other outstanding wet periods found in the Tunisian material are 900-1000 A.D. and 1600-1700 A.D. In southern Sweden, several raised bog deposits have been investigated for their peat ash composition.
Raised bogs, which receive all nutrients from the atmosphere, is an ideal archive of atmospheric fallout, the rate of peat accumulation being rather constant and the peat being easily dated with 14 C. The investigation indicate strongly increased atmospheric circulation in rhythmically appearing periods with high peaks centred around e.g. c.2200 B.C., 1000 B.C., 400 B.C., 200 A.D., 1000 A.D. and 1600 A.D.

Harmonic analysis points at a periodicity of 570 years or 1140 years. Like in the playa deposits glassy spherules were found, having the same basic composition as the Tunisian material. In conclusion, both playa and alluvial fan deposits in Tunisia, and peat in Sweden points at a very turbulent Holocene with several sudden and dramatic climate event;, with unknown origin and extent The cultural traces indicate periods of extremely cold and humid conditions.

The spherules found could be of volcanic origin but they are not associated with any known major volcanism, and their heterogeneous composition points at other formation mechanisms e.g. cometary impacts in ocean shelf sediments.

Have read the article more leasurely now. As far as the writing is concerned, I believe there are fonts that lend themselves to being carved into wood and stone, and they bear some similarity. Runes come to mind, but some styles of Greek, Latin, and apparently Etruscan would be natural to a woodcarver with a bronze knife or a stone carver with a bronze chisel.

I hope they find Atlantis, but I suspect something else. There is a plan to find the extraterrestrial origins of life on earth --a hypothesis to be tested-- by drilling down to depths that would have been the surface a billion years ago. Most all of that is deeply buried so the present surface is relatively fresh all the time. Micrometeorite dust is still coming in at a rate that would bury everything a foot deep every million years, or something like that. I think they will eventually find completely lost cities and civilizations, very old and scattered all over the planet. I don't know how old they might be, but 50,000 years is not out of the question. Maybe more. I also suspect that technology 6000 years ago was more advanced than it was 1000 years ago. The first books I checked out of the library when I was old enough to go into the adult stacks were Velikovsky's, so I have probably been hopelessly spoiled as far as archaeology is concerned. I have seen the ruins at North Salem personally, they are very much out of place both in location and time, just like Stonehenge and the dolmens. We know people were sailing all over the planet 40,000 years ago, don't we?

An Atlantean Empire? Not likely.

Atlantis? Not likely.

Many prehistoric civilizations? Most likely.

(Let's imagine Europe as a podunk, backwater outpost of the Alantean Empire based in the Americas. They would be the survivors of the disaster that snuffed out Atlantis and they would be greatly stressed themselves. Let's call them The Sea People. How would they react to the catastrophic situation?)

Sea People

The ancient Near East saw monumental changes in the 13th century BCE. The palace cultures of Crete, Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Hattu vanished en mass. Though the reasons for their disappearance remains difficult to pin down, one major factor appears to have been the migrations of the Sea Peoples.
We first hear of the Sea peoples during the reign of Merneptah (1224-1214 BCE) who describes a group of mixed ethnic affiliation attacking his Western frontier by land, and Northern flanks by Sea. The mention of Libyans among the Sea Peoples as arriving in wagon hordes with families suggest that the movements were economically motivated or the result of a large-scale famine.

The Sea Peoples are again mentioned during the reign of Merneptah’s successor Ramesses III (1182-1151 BCE) who in his eight year states:

"The foreign countries formed a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could stand before their armies; they desolated people(s). They came toward Egypt; their confederation included the Philistines, Tjaker, Shekelesh, Danuna, and Weshesh, lands united."

Since several of the groups named do not appear also in Merneptah’s list, scholars have seen this second movement of Sea People as symptomatic of a larger Near Eastern crisis.
The Philistines, who first appear here, emerge later in the biblical record as the archenemies of the Israelites. In any event, the result of the Sea People’s attack was disastrous for Egypt, for Egypt was plunged into a sort of dark age

One of the things that I find interesting is that,apparently,almost every culture has a catastrophe myth. Noah and Ziusudra are only two people in a whole cast of characters that were confronted by a devastating event of world changing proportions. I suspect that something along these lines(i.e. meteor storm,crustal shift,etc.) did indeed happen,and very likely almost wiped out the human race. The conditions those survivors faced must have been unimaginably harsh,and that they lived,bore children,and told the tale is a testament to just how tough and resilient we can be. Humans can certainly be venal and petty,at times,and we've been cursed with way more than our fair share of murderous thugs who've managed to gain enough power to make everyone around them miserable,but we seem to be very difficult to do away with completely.

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.