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.

Comments

Very strange...

[SevenTowers]

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.

More information here on age of site ...

[ian stevens]

... but I do wonder how they assigned the date "of at least 6000 years ago

This Globe & Mail article has substantially more information on this finding, including the quote below which answers the above question:

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.

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."

ian.

Look at the geology!

[BrianH]

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.