George Erikson: Lost city found near Cuba could be Atlantis!
The Associated Press, Reuters, The Christian Science Monitor and many other "hard news" publications are posting stories on what most archaeologists have long considered fantasy -- underwater ruins of a great city resembling the legend of Atlantis.
In July 2000, while searching for shipwrecks, ocean engineers Paulina Zelitsky and Paul Weinzweig of Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) used sophisticated side-scan sonar equipment that detailed clear images of symmetrically organized stone structures that resembled pyramids, roads and buildings. Surprisingly, these structures were found 2200 feet below the sea's surface off the western tip of Cuba. In July 2001, ADC returned to the site with experts from the Cuban Academy of Sciences aboard the 360-foot research vessel "Ulises." This time they sent a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) down to examine and to photograph the structures. Images sent back by the ROV confirmed the presence of large, cut granite-like blocks in perpendicular and circular formations, some in the shape of pyramids, with many blocks stacked one atop another.
Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde, Ph.D, commented, "The megalithic stones are very unique structures... I do not have any easy explanation for them in a natural geological process." Part of Dr. Iturralde's problem is that the stones appear to be cut granite blocks from 6.5 to 16 feet in length. Yet there is no granite in that region of the Caribbean, only limestone. A trip with a beefed-up ROV capable of drilling into the blocks to determine their composition was set for this July (2002). The National Geographical Society(NGS) had sent investigators, and then had pledged 2 million to the effort. But the needed funding has not materialized. The NGS continues to express interest, but there appears to be pressure from the State Dept. against NGS involvement with Cuba (partners with ADC).
Is this small underwater plateau Atlantis? According to Plato, Atlantis was an island-continent. However, Zelitsky, Weinzweig and the geologists who have studied it all agree that the area was once part of a ninety-mile-long land bridge that connected present-day Cuba to Mesoamerica's Yucatan Peninsula. They speculate that catastrophic events -- a series of volcanic eruptions and /or earthquakes, perhaps initiated by the collision of a football-sized comet or meteor with the Earth -- could have caused the land to sink. Collisions of space objects of this size are known to occur, on an average, once every 10,000 years.
If this 7.7 square mile area was connected to America, it could have been a major port or even the capital of the island-continent Atlantis, which was described by Plato as "larger than Libya and Asia combined." This is roughly the size of North and South America combined. In Atlantis in America: Navigators of the Ancient World, Ivar Zapp & George Erikson present evidence of early structural sophistication in large stone structures found throughout Mesoamerica. The great spheres of Costa Rica -- as much as 7 feet in diameter and weighing 30 tons, yet perfectly spherical to within 2 millimeters -- could not have been constructed by our technology before the discovery of the laser 50 years ago. They had to have been shaped by a superior technology... one matching Plato's description of Atlantis. Further the authors have concluded that the star temples of the Olmec and Maya, and carved-in-stone images of bearded and Negroid figures throughout Mesoamerica that date back thousands of years, are vestiges of an earlier seafaring civilization.
This past winter, Erikson led tours to many of these sites including Cerro Maya, which rests at the base of the Yucatan Peninsula. Cerro Maya's oldest pyramid was known to be partially submerged. Repeated dives revealed that a great portion of the structure is underwater. NASA photography has shown that an underwater tunnel connects Cerro Maya to Santa Rita -- a Mayan site located 7 miles across Corozal Bay. It could only have been constructed 11,500 in the past, at the end of the Pleistocene (last Ice Age) when Sea levels were much lower. Cerro Maya may have been linked to the underwater site off Cuba.
In Atlantis In America, based on their finds of related navigational instruments, Zapp & Erikson predicted that the heart of Atlantis would be found offshore of the tropical Americas, under several hundred feet of water. However, they were aware of, but did not factor in, the effects of a geological disturbance of the kind described by Zelitsky and Weinzweig. These independent researchers drew closer together when Zelitsky & Weinzweig requested a copy of Atlantis in America, stating, "our discovery has made us intensely interested in ancient megalithic structures -- particularly in Central and South America."
Description above from www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/alcfnc.htm
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