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

carbon dating?

[Transient0]

>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?

Re:carbon dating?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:carbon dating?

[betis70]

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.

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.

politics

[zerocool^]

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

Re:politics

[gmhowell]

No, the problem is that the tree-huggers are citing wetlands violations.

Three words...

[pgaffney]

Shadow...Over.....Innsmouth

uh...

[talks_to_birds]

ahem...

• Lost city found off Cuba coast

  "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

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.

Read carefully for context:

[talks_to_birds]

www.earthfiles.com/earth249.htm

• Linda Moulton Howe:

  "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

The effect of natural disasters

[friscolr]

What geological phenomena could sink 2000 feet in 6000 years or less? This sounds really, really implausible.

In 1960 the most powerful earthquake of the 20th century moved the Chilean coast 60 feet in 5 minutes.
http://www.extremescience.com/GreatestEarthquake.h tm
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.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_7 62000/762047.stm

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.

Re:Atlantis at last!

[cnkeller]

No, that's near Gibraltar.

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.

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.