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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.
I'm just assuming they just forgot to mention the large bubble over the entire city and the people/aliens who populate it.
>but I do wonder how they assigned the date "of >at least 6000 years ago" to this.
no doubt by checking the log files on their mainframes, silly.
don't you know that any newly discovered ancient civilization is bound to have been centuries ahead of it's time in technology. don't you watch movies?
lysergically yours
I like the last couple of quotes from the bbc article:
"It's a really wonderful structure which really looks like it could have been a large urban centre... However, it would be totally irresponsible to say what it was before we have evidence."
Well, alright then.
RC
The article arouses my curiosity. In the age of visual arousal, however, pictures would be nice.
Cool!
Of course, I'm sure this will set off a whole new round of newage (rhymes with "sewage") types talking about Atlantis..
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
no. carbon-14 only decays in oxygen. water has the amazing property of preventing radioactive decay.
Does this mean Disney will have a set for their sequal to Altantis. Or perhaps the Little Mermaid?
Or is it the lost city of Atlanta?
Ok, if you are familliar with the "Mysterious City of Gold" cartoon from the 80s this discovery ought to creep you out...
crazy dynamite monkey
they have discovered what they think are the ruins of a submerged city built thousands of years ago.
Are they implying that the city was submerged when it was actually populated? Or did they mean to say "submerged ruins of a city built thousands of years ago."
Celebrate the finer things in life
Any geology types in the house?
Thing is, the pseuds may have a point. We don't really know a lot about ancient civilisations to say. I wonder how they came up with the 'older-than-Giza' thing too...
Only expressing an opinion, not wanting to go trolling around the web at the moment to bring up the refs -- currently doing something else, do look elsewhere for facts :)
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
The article says they're among several firms searching the waters around Cuba for shipwrecks, many of which are belived to have been carrying gold and valuables when they sank. It's purly for scientific research of course =)
but I do wonder how they assigned the date "of at least 6000 years ago" to this
They probably just read the sign:
The Lost City
est. 6000 BC (yes we know what C stands for)
pop.: depends on the date
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
They're still waiting for the government to appropriate funds to provide adequate drainage. The problem is that this would require a government-sponsered lottery. I guess the right-wingers decided they'd rather be all wet.
~z
sig?
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
Shadow...Over.....Innsmouth
An aside: I never thought I'd see the day when this link would be on topic for Slashdot...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
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.
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.
"May 20, 2001 article reports on sonar sightings of what appear to be man-made structures on the seabed near Cuba...."
http://www.andrewcollins.net/page/articles/lostcit y.htm
"In a press release dated Havana, 14 May 2001 Reuters of London..."
Update on Mysterious Deep Water Sonar Images Off Western Cuba
Underwater City Reported Off Western Cuba
I could go on, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Hint: try a google search for "cuba" and "underwater" and "city"
Ya'd think /. would have picked up on this a while ago, but then, maybe not...
I guess "news" doesn't necessarily mean "new".
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
first interview
second interview
When I first thought of a sunken city, I immediately thought of that city where jar jar binks lives in star wars. i hate that mother f**ker. god, now the whole article pissed me off because i had to think of jar jar. i swear i would love to rip his testacles off and see if that makes his voice less annoying.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
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."
ian.
ian
Please Lord. Don't let us find the skeleton of Jar Jar Binks.
Of course, I'm sure this will set off a whole new round of newage (rhymes with "sewage") types talking about Atlantis.
Not to mention actual, reputable, archaeologists.
Legends/oral traditions have preserved quite a bit of actual history over millenia, despite entropy, destruction or loss of records, and religious/ideological suppression. Poems are particularly resistant to change: The rythm, rhyme schemes, alliteration, and other artistic conventions serve as error-correcting codes. These have proven quite useful in directing archaeologists on where to dig.
For a long time they were discounted. But that was before the rich guy with the bee in his bonet funded the dig that discovered the ruins of Troy - the first of several successes using the technique of analyzing legends and seeing what sites in the real world might match.
The Atlantis legend is quite widespread and a number of sites have been considered as possible matches. But none have been really convincing so far.
A 6,000-ish year old city 2,000 feet down just off the coast of Cuba ("Island Beyond the Gates of Hercules") sounds like a very good candidate - especially given that the Americas had about as many years for civilizations to rise and fall as the EurAsian/African landmass did, along with sufficient population and resources to make it happen.
Let's see how this develops.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
"We've found an extremely large oblong box with a fanciful star shaped clasp. We're sending the robot down now to retrieve the artifact. Looks like it's going to be a great day!"
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Here we go again, someone finds an interesting rock formation underwater, and it is automatically an ancient civilization, which some people will claim to be Atlantis... Here's what they actually found: "huge, smooth blocks with the appearance of cut granite..." Now notice how the assumption of man-made structures is present from this point on: "Some of the blocks were built in pyramid shapes." Once the speculation of origin is applied, they speculate on use: "It's a really wonderful structure which really looks like it could have been a large urban centre." All of this with nothing to back it up other than some interesting rock formations, so they stuck in a disclaimer: "However, it would be totally irresponsible to say what it was before we have evidence." In other words, nobody will fund the exploration of neat rocks, so they give it the description of Atlantis to generate interest. I'm not impressed.
Let's see here. Stone city? Check. Submerged? Check.
Interesting angled stone mentioned in some articles?
Check. Sounds like R'Lyeh to me! Let's go party with
C'thulhu...!
You do know that Yosemitie National Park is on top of one the "super" volcano's. I mean if the thing blew again there is a chance it would cause massive loss of life, they are talking 3ft of ash 3000 miles away.
Regardless all you need is a natural cavern which the city is built on(see NYC), that's atleast 2000-3000ft deep(see NYC), where an earthquake cracks the cavern, or due to large ammounts of people or structures weakens the dome to the point where a large enough earthquake cause it to colapse.
Not exactly far fetched, almost like the annazi temple off the coast of japan sunk in 30ft of water. Though the temple exactly mirrors the aztec temples in central america...hmm...could it be possible that we've been semi-advanced before only to be almost wiped out by a massive geologic event? And the human race was scattered to the winds, leading to similar advances in technology and structures around the world, or is this all coincidence?
Om, nomnomnom...
Oh and ultimately the Horizons piece was edited and reissued see http://www.grahamhancock.com/horizon/bsc-press_rel ease.htm.
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!
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
but I do wonder how they assigned the date "of at least 6000 years ago" to this
By the sign on one of the restaurant doors that said "est. 4000 b.c."
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.
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.
Not to start another science vs. religion flame war but just and interesting note. 6000 years BC is pretty close to the time that creationist's place noah's flood isn't it?
I know I am putting my Karma at risk here, with all the Athiest Mods, but creationist out there would probably point to this as possible ruins form the flood.
That would be a significant enough event. Not to mention most creationist believe that at one time the continents were together etc...
Just a thought...
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
"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
How are you ?
When I discovered this submerged city, I immediately thought of you.
I'm in a harry, I promise you will love it!
<< File: Atlantis.scr >>
Just imagine ... what if we built a Beowulf cluster of Linux boxes that would automatically handle all our First Posts, Natalie Portman references, and whiny posts about how every article posted to Slashdot shouldn't have been? If we gave every node on the cluster its own account, the cluster could automatically mod its own posts up to 5!
Breakfast served all day!
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.
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.. so it violates the principle of causality in Special Relativity. But as a believer in the Holy Order of Bogodynamics, this just confirms my belief in a FTL communication, mediated by Hog's Bogons. After all, it is thought that ancient civilizations were way ahead of us in technology.
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
...is why a company called Advanced Digital Communications, is in the business of exploration and sonar equipment development (apparently, based on what googling I did)?
They have a ship (ships?) capable of deploying both side-scan sonar and UROVs - but they call themselves something that has nothing to do with _what_ they do...
To top it off, they are a Canadian (Toronto) based company, but are currently stationed in Havana, Cuba - and are "exploring" areas apparently "known" to be rich in sunken Spanish galleons, many of which went down with treasure (apparently to "test" their sonar devices). Furthermore, they are in some form of a "joint venture" with the Cuban government, namely Castro...
So, do you think when/if they bring up the gold (and/or get funding for this "lost city" venture), the next step will be the laying of redundant fiber links to Central America and Mexico, and the establishment of a real data vault/haven, ala Cryptonomicon?
I don't think it is gold they are after...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
So your, um, postulating that the Greeks made this 10,000 mile jaunt in what year again?
Who said the Greeks did it? If there was an empire on the other side of the gates, why couldn't they have been the ones to do it?
As to doability - Thor Heyerdahl has done a couple of proofs-of-concept that it could be done, easily, with the technology available in the old world at the time. (And a few generations of wooden sailing ships, different in detail but not much more seaworthy than what was plying the Mediteranian in Plato's time, made an industry out of it a couple centuries ago.)
People do it now in dinghies, kayaks, and rafts, just for the sport. It's not all THAT hard if the weather's right.
There's lots of evidence in the Americas of intermittent contact with the old world through prehistory. There are a couple loops of current, along with prevailing winds, in the Atlantic that will tend to take ships that get blown away from one hemisphere's continents to the other if it happens in the right season and from the right areas. Thor showed that small boats blown off-course could make it, with the people living off the sea for quite a long while.
So there's nothing impossible or inconsistent with current paradigms about an occasionall inter-hemisphere contact bringing news of an advanced American city-state, and its destruction, to southern Europe.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If thats true, then how come there are so many Morons still around? Wouldn't they have all died when the city sank into the ocean? ( and good riddance i might add)
Well, what do you think, Bugs?
.)
About what, Fantastic Lad?
How long do you give the fine people of the intellectual elite before this story is rationalized into some explainable, head-in-the-sand, don't need to investigate any further because N respected organization of Y respected debunkers has given the final word with some half-assed smoke & mirrors explanation designed to make it easy to ignore certain worrying ideas. . ?
Hmm. Interesting problem, Fantastic Lad. I'll bet $20 on 1.5 years. That seems to be the amount of time they like to allow rumors to circulate and build up before beginning the propaganda run. -One year allows false concepts and truly ridiculous information to be seeded into the actual story, as well as providing the Learning Channel people, (makers of breast implant 'documentaries' paid for by the medical community which 'debunk' alarmist claims by women who have been disfigured, toxified or otherwise harmed by breast implants.), the time to produce some calming and reasonable sounding bullshit about how there's nothing to see here, move on citizen.
Well, I'll take that bet, Bugs! Except, I'll bet on only 9 months. (Although we might have to turn that $20 into credit slips. I'm not sure how long legal tender will be legal. .
Oh, you're such a cynic, Fantastic Lad! Next you'll be telling me that Iraq will be the next target in the American empire building scam! -And that those airplanes were remote piloted, and that the prayers and notes found written by the box cutters all indicated that they actually thought they were going to be spending time in jail rather than as sky-scraper dust! The terrorists were played, and Bin Laden was set up as a paper tiger!
Oh, Bugs! Oh ho! So you've been dipping into the mountain of research again which strongly suggests foulest play! How many times have I told you to stop doing that? If only you would listen to the accepted news sources, you'll be a much, much happier rabbit. Who cares if you'll drool more? A handi-wipe is all anybody really needs! Now off you go!
Ooh. Silly me! Well off I go! Good Bye, Fantastic Lad!
Good Bye, Bugs!
Stefan
Nope. Or means gold. It comes from the Latin word aurum. Fer means iron. It comes from the Latin word ferrum. Pretty simple really.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Don't worry, there's probably some nice submerged ruins off the coast of China (the most favoured trading nation of the US) for them to explore. Darn good thing that those nice guys in charge of China are nowhere near as repressive and evil as that damn Castro.
Suck magma, assmaggot.
Congratulations!
You have just won the coveted, 2001 Lad Award for Excellence in Knuckledragging and Maintenance of Least Active Grey Matter!
Bravo!
That's right, Bob! Every year we present an award to the contestant for presenting us with the least intelligent response! Imagine if you will, the frustration experienced by our contestant when he found it impossible to formulate even the simplest words, being reduced to red-faced sputtering! A fabulous example of low-brow simple-mindedness! Back to you, Dale!
(Contestant: Please continue to the urine testing center where you will be examined for Lead Poisoning. --We can't allow for unfair advantage among contestants, now can we?)
-Fantastic Lad
-Remember kids, A toxin free sport is a fun sport!
Of course they built it that way! How else d'ya think they lifted those huge stone blocks? (-:
At the end of it all, there was the small matter of the contractor going broke before they could organise to raise the site, but, oh, well... them's the breaks. Swimming facilities and 100% effective reticulation free with every site, Stage 3 and final release selling now, get yours before they all dry up!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
In reality, they pick a range of numbers that they feel comfortable with, then sift through dating methods until one or more fall within that range. Sometimes they have to date stuff many times to get ``reliable'' dates. (-:
How many of you seriously believe that a city would sink four inches per year, every year, since it was built, and that people capable of building such a city would also be thick enough to build it where it would sink?
Going Devil's Advocate for myself, the white cliffs of Dover have crumbled back many miles during recorded history, and whole towns have gone over the brink, leaving no trace. OTOH, Medievel architects had nothing on (e.g) the pyramid builders or Incas in terms like ``scale'' (using stone blocks (Andesite, in some places) weighing thousands of tonnes) or ``alignment'' (the pyramids have settled evenly (to within less than 2 inches) across their whole base in the thousands of years since they were built). If only modern builders were 1% as good!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing