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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.
Any geology types in the house?
If the structures really date back to 6000 years ago there must have been a huge seismic event in that area since then because the water levels have not increased 600 meters since then! The structures must also belong to a civilisation closer to the Incas or Mayas (stone stuctures, pyramids) than their north american counterparts. This is of course if it isn't some kind of underwater lava flow or something (which can take on weird shapes). Sometimes to get funding people will say anything.
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
ABC ran a special to promote the new "Atlantis" movie a few months back. It was acutally pretty informative, but one of the tidbits that came out of it was that this place in Cube is starting to be widely beleived to be the location of Atlantis. Supposedly, all the "clues" fit.
This Globe & Mail article has substantially more information on this finding, including the quote below which answers the above question:
The article also makes notes of symbols and inscriptions on the structures and that the images "bear a remarkable resemblance to the pyramidal design of Mayan and Aztec temples in Mexico."
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Atlantis isn't the only sunken city of myth... But considering the alternatives, If it is a lost mythical city, I'm sure hoping it is Atlantis!!!
Since the explorers are still alive, and wrote the article, it may be safet to presume it may not be R'Lyeh.
Bork!
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.
Actually, the Olmecs started around 1000 BC. Yes, I know it was a typo, I'm just being mean.
An archaeology textbook that happened to be in the vicinity of my computer lists the first Mayan communities at about 1000 B.C., and were well-established by 600 B.C., when they were constructing their pyramids.
Personally, if this is man-made (yes, it probably is, but I don't know if I'd rule out natural geologic processes yet), I doubt very much it would be anywhere near 6000 years old; the oldest known semi-urban civilizations in the New World only date from about 2000 BC, and even then only a handful of groups were moving away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. I also doubt that this would be a previously undiscovered civilization, if the remains have only been found in such a small area. Probably would be an outpost of one of the mesoamerican groups, though I'm not sure how they would get there. It's kind of a long way from Tenochtilan, and if they traveled up around the Gulf you'd expect to find other sites with similiar architecture.
The problem is, Plato made the entire legend up, without any precedent. The widespread Atlantis legends all spring from that single invention. (The "great flood" legends are distinct and separate from Atlantis legends.)
Really? And after all these years how do you show that Plato did it himself, rather than simply repeating something he had heard and being the first person to be recorded to do so. The same was said about Homer and the Oddesy, but they found Troy.
The Americas had about as long, true, but there was a huge lack of cultivatable plants and domesticable large animals.
The Egyptians built quite well with just human labor rather than using domestic animals. (Also: The Americas had quite a range of stuff - including wolly mamoths - until the inhabitants ATE them.)
As for plants - where do you think corn comes from, just for starters? And tomatoes? There were a number of other crop plants in the Americas that weren't available in the "old world" - including a grain that was nearly made extinct by the Spaniards (in their reaction to a rather bloody ritual that was associated with its cultivation).
Despite the convenient old world conceit that they "civilized" the new world (rather than wiping out the current civilizations there by introducing disease and then conquering or subverting the cultures most of the survivors, destroying their records and traditions) there have been several rather extensive civilizations in the Americas. These include one that was destroyed by a climate change well before the European invasion, and an empire that formed the ACTUAL foundation of the resurgence of Repulics. One more would be no surprise.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I see a lot of comments here by people who are skeptical at the veracity of this claim because of the age and depth of the ruins. This skepticism can be easily overcome though, by simply looking at the numbers, the geology of the surrounding area, and geology in general.
For a city to sink 2000 feet in 6000 years only requires an average subsidence rate of 4 inches a year. While 4 inches a year sounds high at first, you must all remember that this IS a geologically active area with a number of faults, uplifts, and volcanoes. As an example, in one sunny June afternoon in the late 1600's, the city of Port Royal Jamaica plunged 40 feet below the surface of the sea, killing thousands. That's forty feet in ONE DAY. There have also been foundations and hints of other structures on the Bimini shelf and elsewhere around the Carribean that indicate that these kinds of shoreline changes have ocurred fairly consistently throughout the regions history. A look at shoreline maps of many of the inhabited islands, even over just the past few centuries, CLEARLY shows that some islands no longer exist, while others have drastically changed size or shape. If these kinds of changes can happen over a few hundred years, who knows what's possible over a few thousand? For all we know, this region could be sitting on top of an emptying magma chamber for a volcanic vent, or a section of crust that was relieved of some upward tension and subsided. These situations could easily provide subsidence rates far in excess of what would be needed to get this city to that depth.
To make a long story short, the region of the Caribbean tectonic plate is known to be highly volatile and active, and it is under immense pressure from its larger surrounding neighbors (the North American plate, South American Plate, etc). To assume that one section of it could not have dropped 4" a year ignores both the regions history and gological evidence.
You've also got to remember that there are Mayan legends about the Olmec that sound distinctly Atlantis-like. The legends said that the Olmec were the former rulers of the Yucatan who were centered on a great island in the Caribbean. That island, again according to legend, plunged below the sea and destroyed their civilisation. There are other similar legends throughout Central and South America about the "educators" (like the Viracocha's of the Andes), a people who came among them and taught them construction, farming, and astronomy, and who spoke of their destroyed homeland. Archaeologists have marveled for years at the consistency of these legends from one region to another, and tin-foil-hatters have attributed them to everything from Atlanteans, to the Irish, to space aliens. It's much more realistic to think that these "Viracochas" may have simply been a Caribbean civilisation destroyed when their home area dove beneath the waves.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Ok, they get the date from the fact that the city is deep in the water! They know that as long ago as 6,000 years ago, that area was STILL underwater. so it must be older than that. Right?