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Ancient Sunken City Discovered Off Shores of Cuba. Maybe
King Africa writes "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.
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. " The BBC has a bit more substantative article on this as well - but I do wonder how they assigned the date "of at least 6000 years ago" to this.
No, that's near Gibraltar.
Would have made a good Slashdot story, as well...
They probably used coral growth to find out how old it was. Coral grows at a steady rate every year, so they can figure out how thick the coral is, they can approximate the amount of time it has been growing there.
Anyone else thinking this might be Atlantis? =P
Zeno
Since carbon dating works by measuring the amount of breakdown of a specific carbon isotope (with a known rate of decay) it should work fine underwater.
Basically, living things take in this carbon isotope as long as they are alive, maintaining a fairly constant level of that carbon isotope. When they die, they no longer take in more of that carbon isotope, and the levels of that isotope diminish at a fixed rate. Carbon dating works by measuring the difference of levels of that carbon isotope in an object against the baseline and then computing the time elapsed based on that difference.
I know of no reason why salt water would change this rate of dimishment of this carbon isotope. But then again, I am neither an archeologist or a physicist.
You can find an interview with Paul Weinzweig from ADC at http://www.earthfiles.com/earth249.htm.
first interview
second interview
This must be a new, unknown civilization. The Aztecs did not formally settle in Mexico until ~1200 AD, the Mayans florished in the Yucatan around ~150 AD, and the Olmec started out around 1000 AD.
Take a look at this time line for more info.
Now my guess is that they have the dates all wrong. There has always been a mystery behind the disappearance of these people. could a previously unknown catastrophic event have caused these people to be wiped out? a lost city at the bottom of the sea seems to point in that direction.
It's not exactly carbon 14 dating; it's analysis of coral structures and related debris. Basically, it has to do with the rate of changes in coral structures over time, as well as sedimentation and things of that nature. Information about coral dating can be found here and here. Uranium/Thorium dating can be used on marine sediment (info here). Actually, the entire "Dating Exibit" site has a simplistic but good explanation of various relative and absolute dating techniques.
but it will make it hard to find organic material that is from the same period of time. C14 method does not work on stone.
I wonder if this is a repeat of the oft-"discoved" bimini roads off bermuda. They are a naturally occuring formation that appears to be man made, it has fooled psuedoarchealogists off and on for the last 20 years or so (maybe longer, I don't recall exactly when they were found).
At anyrate here is a link from Paul Heinrich's Wild Side Geoarcheology entry on the Bimini roads:
Bimini Roads And Atlantis
Bimini Columns And Atlantis
Bimini Granite Stones and Atlantis
Just wondering....
Myddrin
I never actually said he was right. I just said that they were interesting, and despite his lack of scientific rigor and the fact that he generally writes like a creationist (mentions something obscurely at the beginning and then presents stuff and then re-mentions the point as if it is correct), the star correlation theory is pretty much accepted for Giza. Some of the other stuff is still on seriously shaky ground too. It's a good read and opens your mind to an alternative viewpoint, which makes you think. Which is the whole point really.
Here's a site where a guy claims that Cuba is Atlantis, and that the sunken city off the Cuban coast, which he claims was discovered back in May 2001, is that very city which according to legend was submerged. (LINK) .
I am not a lawyer. Do not take my words as legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult an attorney.
The BBC story specifically mentions that this is a followup on last year's discovery. The following quote is from the BBC story (second link in the original story):
So, it's the images brought back by the robot which are the news.
On to the good stuff:
In the Reuters story (first link in the original post), they address (sort of) the really interesting questions:
Volcanic activity?? I'm no geologist, but I suspect that someone who is could shred that effectively. I've lived on rising and falling coastlines, and I've never seen volcanic action blamed for the rise/fall in either of the physical geology books I read. Subduction of the ocean floor can cause volcanic activity, but I find it hard to imagine it running the other way.
As for how to date it, a rough-and-ready way to establish a bound on the date would be via geology: when was that area last above water? In order to fall 2100 feet below sealevel in 6000 years, it would have to sink at an average of 0.35 feet per year. Four point two inches per year seems a bit fast to me. Is the Cuban coast actually sinking, even? Is there a geologist in the house?
You could also get a fairly good clue by checking the amount of coral growth on the blocks. Coral needs to be near the surface to grow, so they could only have accumulated coral in the initial centuries after their submersion. No coral would suggest either that the coral has somehow been eroded away, or that those blocks were never near the surface.
See what I've been reading.
"AND WHAT WAS IT THAT AS YOU LOOKED AT THIS SONAR IMAGE, WHAT WAS IT THAT EXCITED YOU?
Frank Muller-Karger, Ph.D., Caribbean expert and Professor of Oceanography, College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, Florida:
"When you look at sonar images, it looks sort of smooth, curved and shades - everything is sort of curvy and shades of curves. It looks smooth. So, when you look at these, you do see things that have very strong reflections along straight edges. There are a lot of those things, like you said, over a field of several kilometers, tens of square kilometers.
AND THAT THESE STRAIGHT EDGES THAT ARE BOTH RECTANGULAR AND SOMEWHAT PYRAMIDAL WITH STRAIGHT EDGES ARE ALL OVER THAT SEVERAL KILOMETERS AREA?
Yes, but again, it could be a very unique geological formation. We just don't know. Until we go there and take a very close look, all it will be is speculation and I would hope that nobody - it's very romantic to think, 'Oh, a lost civilization and ruins and all.' And we all would like to see something like that. But I don't think that it's the right thing to do without actually going there. I think it's great they are actually going to go there and take a closer look. Because just from a geological point of view, it would be very interesting also."
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
In 1960 the most powerful earthquake of the 20th century moved the Chilean coast 60 feet in 5 minutes.h tm
http://www.extremescience.com/GreatestEarthquake.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/chile/
In 1998 Hurricane Mitch pushed rivers 100's of feet up mountains, created brand new rivers, caused landslides which changed the shapes of mountains and covered entired cities, and left parts of the land covered in water over a year later. (if you're in Nicaragua look for the "Las Casitas" memorial - the distant mountain which caused the landslide shows obvious changes in its shape).
http://www.osei.noaa.gov/mitch.html
http://www.acerca.org/ejd1_results1.html
Volcanic eruptions can be so great as to cause the birth of islands. There was a well-studied one in the Pacific in 2000, i believe. Also in Nicaragua is an interesting series of small islands caused by a nearby volcano loosing its top - large pieces of land were blown miles away and landed in a lake creating these islands. I dont remember the name of the lake or volcano, though i have some photos at /home.7 62000/762047.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_
Natural Disasters are called "disasters" for a reason. 6000 years seems plenty for the earth to move a small bit of land a couple hundred metres.
-f
www.blackant.net
Time to put that Archaeology class I took in College to use.
Carbon dating would be one way, but you might have some issues.
Carbon dating only wors on organic matter. Carbon 14 is an isotope of carbon that is used in dating. Carbon 14 is created by the sun in the atmosphere, organic entities take in carbon dioxide during breathing, a small parcentage of which contains carbon 14, carbon 14 is used by the entity and stored in it.
When the entity dies, the carbon 14 is no longer being replenished from the atmosphere, it decays. You can figure out how much carbon the item would have if it were still alive by looking at similar items, see how much the item has and use the decay rate to find the time.
Nifty, the problems are though that its organic (no stone, no metal. Organic coloring on the metal or stone can be dated by not the inorganic stuff). Also, this stuff has been siting on the bottom of the ocean. Its possible that other sea life/salt/etc has contaminated many organic leftovers (or the organic leftovers have completely rotted away).
However, there are other things you can use to date items that have been underwater. Coral growth is fairly constant and measureable. And any silt that has deposited on top of the stone would also be datable because its organic.
So the 6000 years may not be quite accurate. It may have been 6000 years since it was submerged, but for all we know it may have been abanded for a 1000 years before then.
Very interesting, haven't heard of that one. The article lacks any real substance though, other than I found "this island that was in the right place at the right time".
Does anyone know if they surveyed it? Is there any evidence at all that humans lived there? Unusal stone structures? To even make the claim that it could be Atlantis, I would imagine that you need to have evidence of a civilization. It sounds like this guy basically said "Here's an island that fits the time frame, don't bother me while I go back to studying migration patterns of the palezoic."
The one other possibility that no one likes to discuss is that Plato was lying/making this up/a crackpot. It's not modern civilization owns the rights to writing down things that simply aren't true.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Being a former archaeologist, I can tell you that this 6,000 year date is bogus. They used a ROV and took NOTHING back to the surface. What would they carbon date?
This discovery was mentioned on Art Bell's show about 6 months ago. The researchers sound like quacks and are basing most of their dating assumptions on, well, nothing really.
If they found some intact beams they could use dendrochronology (ie tree ring dating) which is much more precise than carbon dating (+- in 10 year increments depending on whether it is a cutting date or a 'vv' date). That tells you when the beam was cut, which of course brings all sorts of questions about longevity of the structures. In the southwest, where I used to work, there are beams in Taos Pueblo that date back to the 1300s. They are still using them today.
Dating is a very difficult part of archaeology. Everything is based on associations that you must assume hold. They do not always end up being true.
I would wait and see on this one.
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
Deep sea detritus, a.k.a. "marine snow", a.k.a., little bity parts of small dead things, fall at a relatively constant rate on the marine floor. Thus, discovering the approximate age of the city could be as simple as
(amount of detritus covering) / (rate of detritus fall)
The 6000, I'm sure, is a complete guess given the current amount of available data, but I'm relatively confident of sedimentologists ability to estimate ages. Those dirt geologists rock.
better article
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It's flamebait because of people like me who become enraged when American history is attributed to events in the Book of Mormon. Well, not enraged. It's all harmless. But, I've been told by missionaries that Native Americans are all descendents of Lehi. I find that offensive. Hence, flamebait. Nobody has proof of what actually went on that long ago, so I can't really make a convincing arguement that the Native Americans are the descendents of people who came over the Berring Strait during the ice age, but personally I find that theory to make more sense than the Lehi-on-a-boat theory. Of course, not being LDS, I'm sure there are readers who know more about the subject and will now inform me of my wrongness. But, living in Utah, I've pretty much grown to enjoy it. :)
For those who are interested in LDS history and theology, this event is recorded in the Book of Mormon as having occurred to the inhabitants of the ancient Americas:
Read about it in III Nephi chapter 9
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine