Hidden Pyramids Underneath Our Oceans

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Satu keajaiban yang masih tidak diketahui ramai ketika ini.


Pyramids Underneath Our Oceans
- By Frank Joseph - 揂ncient American擺/b]

One of the greatest discoveries in the history of archaeology was made last summer ('95), off Japan there, spread over an amazing 311 miles on the ocean floor, are the well-preserved remains of an ancient city. Or at the very least, a number of closely related sites.

In the waters around Okinawa and beyond to the small island of Yonaguni, divers located eight separate locations beginning in March 1995. That first sighting was equivocal - a provocative, squared structure so encrusted with coral that its manmade identity was uncertain. Then, as recently as the summer of 1996, a sports diver accidentally discovered a huge, angular platform about 40 feet below the surface, off the southwestern shore of Okinawa. The feature抯 artificial provenance was beyond question. Widening their search, teams of more divers found another, different monument nearby. Then another, and another. They beheld long streets, grand boulevards, majestic staircases, magnificent archways, enormous blocks of perfectly cut and fitted stone - all harmoniously welded together in a linear architecture unlike anything they had ever seen before.

In the following weeks and months, Japan抯 archaeological community joined the feeding-frenzy of discovery. Trained professionals formed a healthy alliance with the enthusiasts who first made the find. In a progressive spirit of mutual respect and working alliance, academics and amateurs joined forces to set an example of cooperation for the rest of the world. Their common cause soon bore rich fruit. In September, not far from the shore of the island of Yonaguni, more then 300 airline miles south from Okinawa, they found a gigantic, pyramidal structure in 100 feet of water. In what appeared to be a ceremonial center of broad promenades and flanking pylons, the gargantuan building measures 240 feet long.

Exceptionally clear sub-surface clarity; with 100-foot visibility a common factor, allowed for thorough photographic documentation, both still photography and video. These images provided the basis of Japan抯 leading headlines for more than a year. Yet, not a word about the Okinawa discovery reached the US public, until the magazine, 揂ncient American

ShadowChaser

camne lak ada ancient civilization kat jepun tiba-tiba ni? ye ke diorang ni
bukan situ pacific ocean dah?

HangPC2

Originally posted by ShadowChaser at 23-5-2006 02:24 PM
camne lak ada ancient civilization kat jepun tiba-tiba ni? ye ke diorang ni
bukan situ pacific ocean dah?

kan dulu benua China pernah bercamtum dengan Pulau Jepun

ShadowChaser

jadi kau rasa ni mungkin very ancient chinese civ?

akira_nagasaki

yang ni ke yang di maksudkan.

ada jugak aku terbaca dari sumber website ni

http://www.altarcheologie.nl/

pyramid ni ada kena mengena ngan atlantis yang tenggelam tu tak agak2?:hmm:

Thanks for the website. Gambar yg saya ada pun sama seperti dalam link tu.

ShadowChaser

woow, atlantis kat jepun?

lonso

btoi2 dlukan bumi bercantum coz zaman batu n ntah ape jd ais mencair

ShadowChaser

tapi takkan org zaman batu atau dinasour yang buat bangunan tu , mesti org zaman moden, maksud aku lepas zaman ice

akira_nagasaki

kalau ikut peta semasa zaman ice age. pyramid tu mungkin di bina atas land lepas tu bila zaman lepas ice age tenggelam semuanya. penemuan ni mang menarik la kan.

Sephiroth

Kalau di ikutkan cerita2 dulukala spt di Mahabratha serta cerita mengenai Raja Monyet huru harakan Istana Laut (hingga orang China kena lari ke Benua China dan mulakan tamadun baru), rata2 mengatakan ada puak2 tertentu yg hidup di dasar laut ataupun ada manusia yg hidup di kawasan yg tengelam. :hmm:

Mystery macam mana setengah2 puak spt kaum asli Jepun, Hawaii, Fuji, Australia dll boleh sampai ke benua masing2 sedangkan mereka terpisah dr kumpulan manusia yg utama di benua Asia masih belum terjawab dgn sempurna.

Menurut sejarah, Kaum Asli sudah hidup di Semenanjung Malaysia lebih kurang 180,000 tahun yg lalu dan masa itu, mereka banyak menrayau sampai sesat di Australia (macam sekarang juga). :hmm:

sephia_liza

Yonaguni is a small island south-west of Okinawa in the Japanese archipelago. In 1988, scuba divers led by Kihachiro Aratake discovered an enormous stone structure on the seabed off the coast of Yonaguni.

The structure lay more than 75 feet below the surface. Investigation showed it was 600 feet long, 450 feet wide and 90 feet high. The locals decided it was a natural formation.


Ten years later, the experts weren't so sure. The first geologist to investigate the site was Professor Masaki Kimura of Ryuku University on Okinawa. In April 1998, he discovered a structure divided into five distinct layers and decided it had to be manmade. It is easy to see why. Underwater photographs and video footage reveal a stepped, ziggurat-like monument of extraordinary proportions.

Each step is about 3 feet high with clean edges and sharp angles. There is also an archway and two parallel monoliths among other intriguing features like drainage channels. Further investigation led to the discovery of smaller satellite ziggurats near the main edifice.

Each is about 30 feet wide and 6 feet high. Each appears to be constructed of stepped slabs. Divers also found what looks like a road surrounding the main structure.

Robert Schoch, the American geologist who re-dated the sphinx, dived to examine the Yonaguni Monument and later commented that while natural water erosion and rock splitting might possibly produce a structure of this type, he had never seen anything quite like it before.

Professor Kimura was even more forthcoming. He maintained bluntly that if the sharp steps were the result of natural erosion there would be debris on the seabed surrounding them. In fact, there is none.



The aptly named Team Atlantis expedition who dived to make a video documentary of the site concluded that while the monument may be a natural formation in part, it had certainly been extensively modified by human hands.
In other words, someone in the depths of prehistory discovered a suitable rock formation and used sophisticated engineering techniques to shape it the way they wanted.
But if the various structures in the Yonaguni complex are artificial, there is no known Japanese civilization that could have created them. Geological dating places the site above water no later than 8000 BC. (The actual time-span is somewhere between 8000 and 10,000 BC.)
Orthodox prehistory claims the most advanced culture in Japan at the time was small groups of hunter-gatherers. As Professor Kimura points out, there is no way they could have built or even modified the Yonaguni Monument.
He believes for something of this size some sort of machinery must have been involved

The Yonaguni Discovery
Ancient American-Archeology of the Americas Before Columbus

One of the greatest discoveries in the history of archaeology was made last summer, off Japan.

There, spread over an amazing 311 miles on the ocean floor, are the well-preserved remains of an ancient city. Or at the very least, a number of closely related sites.

In the waters around Okinawa and beyond to the small island of Yonaguni, divers located eight separate locations beginning in March 1995. That first sighting was equivocal - a provocative, squared structure, so encrusted with coral that its manmade identity was uncertain.

Then, as recently as the summer of 1996, a sports diver accidentally discovered a huge, angular platform about 40 feet below the surface, off the southwestern shore of Okinawa. The feature's artificial provenance was beyond question.

Widening their search, teams of more divers found another, different monument nearby. Then another, and another. They beheld long streets, grand boulevards, majestic staircases, magnificent archways, enormous blocks of perfectly cut and fitted stone - all harmoniously welded together in a linear architecture unlike anything they had ever seen before



This photo of the "face" purportedly from Yonaguni sites were printed in Ancient American) In the following weeks and months, Japan's archaeological community joined the feeding-frenzy of discovery.

Trained professionals formed a healthy alliance with the enthusiasts who first made the find. In a progressive spirit of mutual respect an working alliance, academics and amateurs joined forces to set an example of cooperation for the rest of the world. Their common cause soon bore rich fruit.

In september, not far from the shore of the island of Yonaguni, more then 300 airline miles south from Okinawa, they found a gigantic, pyramidal structure in 100 feet of water.

In what appeared to be a ceremonial center of broad promenades and flanking pylons, the gargantuan building measures 240 feet long. Exceptionally clear sub-surface clarity, with 100 foot visibility a common factor, allowed for thorough photographic documentation, both still photography and video.

These images provided the basis of Japan's leading headlines for more than a year. Yet, not a word about the Okinawa discovery reached the US public, until the magazine, "Ancient American" broke the news last spring. Since that scoop, only the CNN network televised a report about Japan's underwater city. Nothing about it has been mentioned in any of the nation's other archaeology publications, not even in any of our daily newspapers.

One would imagine that such a mind-boggling find would be the most exciting piece of news an archaeologist could possibly hope to learn. Even so, outside of the "Ancient American" and CNN's single report, the pall of silence covering all the facts about Okinawa's structures screens them from view more effectively then their location at the bottom of the sea.

Why? How can this appalling neglect persist in the face of a discovery of such unparalleled magnitude? At the risk of accusations of paranoia, one might conclude that a real conspiracy of managed information dominates America's well-springs of public knowledge.


(Photo Carved Stairway)

UPDATE MAY 2001 Japanese Scientists Say Yonaguni Pyramid Manmade

Massive Steps
Complex Structure

"On Dreamland, Ancient American Magazine editor Frank Joseph reports on a conference he recently attended in Japan at which Japanese geologists and archaeologists argued that the sunken pyramid off the island of Yonaguni near Okinawa has been found to be manmade.

It appears to be a construction made of wide terraces, ramps and large steps. However, American geologists have contented that the structure is not manmade, but a natural formation.

According to the report, Japanese scientists have documented marks on the stones that indicate that they were hewn. Not only that, the tools used in this process have been found in the area, and carvings have been discovered. A small stairway carved into the rocks appears to render the theory that this is a natural formation implausible.

The problem with all of this for western scientists is that it implies that an unknown eastern culture had developed a high degree of organization thousands of years before the earliest western civilizations. Geologically, the Yonaguni pyramid sank into the ocean at the end of the last ice age, around ten thousand years ago.

Some western geologists have theorized that, if it is manmade, it must have risen from the sea in more recent times, and been carved then.

However, the discovery of other, similar structures beneath the sea of Japan was also announced at the conference. If these prove to be similar to the Yonaguni pyramid they may rewrite the history of early man."..Source UK INFORMER

sephia_liza

Sometimes, it pays to listen to the stories of humble fishermen. Local fishermen in the coast of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu have for centuries believed in that a great flood consumed a city over 1,000 years ago in a single day when the gods grew jealous of its beauty.

The myths of Mahabalipuram were written down by British traveler J. Goldingham, who visited the town in 1798, at which time it was known to sailors as the Seven Pagodas. Legend had it that six temples were submerged beneath the waves, with the seventh temple still standing on the seashore.

Best-selling British author and television presenter Graham Hancock took these stories seriously. The hypothesis that there may be ruins underwater off the coast of Mahabalipuram has been around at least since the eighteenth century among scholarly circles.

揑 have long regarded Mahabalipuram, because of its flood myths and fishermen抯 sightings as a very likely place in which discoveries of underwater structures could be made, and I proposed that a diving expedition should be undertaken there,

sephia_liza

The remains of a huge underwater city off the western coast of India may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history. It's believed that the area was submerged when ice caps melted at the end of the last ice age, 9-10,000 years ago.



Marine scientists say archaeological remains disco vered 120 feet underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old. The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years.

The site was discovered by chance last year by oceanographers from India's National Institute of Ocean Technology who were conducting a survey of pollution. Using sidescan sonar - which sends a beam of sound waves down to the bottom of the oce an - they identified huge geometrical structures at a depth of 120 feet.

Debris recovered from the site - including construction material, pottery, sections of walls, beads, sculpture and human bones and teeth - has been carbon dated and found to be nearly 9,500 years old.



However, archaeologist Justin Morris from the British Museum says more work will need to be done before the site can be said to belong to a 9,000 year old civilization, since there can be errors in carbon dating. "Culturally speaking, in that part of the world there were no civilizations prior to about 2,500 BC. What's happening before then mainly consisted of small, village settlements," he says.

Strong tides make investigations in the Cambay difficult. Marine scientists led by the Madras-based National Institute of Ocean Technology are solving this problem by taking acoustic images off the sea-bed and using dredging equipment to extract artifacts.

The Indian Minister for Ocean Technology, Murli Manohar Joshi, says the images indicate symmetrical man-made structures and also a paleo-river, with banks containing artifacts, such as pottery. Carbon dating on a block of wood brought up from the depths suggests it dates back to 7,595 BC.

"We have to find out what happened then ... where and how this civilisation vanished," he says.

The city is believed to be even older than the ancient Harappan civilisation, which dates back around 4,000 years and is the oldest on the subcontinent. Although Palaeolithic sites dating back around 20 ,000 years have been found on the coast of India's western state of Gujarat before, this is the first time that man-made structures as old as 9,500 years have been found deep beneath the ocean surface.



Marine archaeologists have used a technique known as sub- bottom profiling to show that the buildings were built on enormous foundations. Graham Hancock, author of "Fingerprints of the Gods," says, "The [oceanographers] found that they were dealing with two large blocks of apparently man made structures.

Cities on this scale are not known in the archaeological record until roughly 4,500 years ago when the first big cities begin to appear in Mesopotamia. Nothing else on the scale of the underwater cities of Cambay is known. The first cities of the historical period are as far away from these cities as we are today from the pyramids of Egypt."

Hancock feels this discovery could have a major influence on our view of the ancient world.

pisang69

huiyo...menariknya....gud info...thanx

sephia_liza

New underwater discoveries spark interest in submerged cities Once dismissed by experts as folklore, the release of photographic and documentary evidence pointing to the possibility of prehistoric human settlements off the coast of Penghu has experts re-examining theories about the legendary continent of Mudalu


Image of the wall that has spark a host of theories ranging from extraterrestrial civilization to unusual volcanic activity.

What began this summer as a search for a legendary underwater town off the coast of Penghu by members of the Underwater Archeological Institute made headlines earlier this week -- but for unexpected reasons.
The expedition failed to locate the town they were searching for, but in late July, the group instead stumbled, or rather swam across, a 100m-long wall-like structure 28 meters beneath the murky waters of the archipelago's Hsichi and Tungchi islets.
Measuring 50cm in width, one meter in height and 100m in length and positioned on an east-west axis, the mysterious underwater edifice might not have been what the team was searching for, but the find has still managed to stoke imaginations across the nation.
The public was so enthralled with the news that after Public Television Service (broadcast a documentary charting the discovery of the wall, it was inundated with calls from the general public even before the program's final credits had come to halt.
"It was a huge surprise. Scores of people called in wanting more information and a longer, more in-depth show [about the wall]," said Ke Chin-yuan a PTS news assignment editor. "Because the existence of such things in Taiwan is not mentioned in history books, is not common knowledge and is rarely, if ever, the topic of TV a documentary, the program sparked a huge amount of interest."



Underwater Archaeology Institute divers inspect a wall-like structure that some believe may have been built 20 thousand years ago.

Home to roughly one thousand predominantly elderly civilians and a coast guard detachment, the Hsichi and Tungchi islets -- which together have a land mass of less than two-square kilometers and no paved roads -- were, until earlier this week, Taiwan's most forgotten outposts.

I told you so

The rest of Taiwan may have been awe struck by the find, but the island's residents remained blase about the events that took place on their doorstep. They've been trying to get people to believe in stories of sunken cities for years.

"The stories are part of Penghu's unwritten history. I've known of other such structures in the area since the late 1970s. But it was in 1992 that I first began to hear s

tories of a submerged town and the possibilities of an entire temple somewhere in the area," recalled expedition leader, Steve Shieh , who also heads up the UAI.

"While sounding pretty outlandish, the stories came from people I know and respect. These are not crackpots. Finding the wall was a complete accident, however, as we didn't know about its existence at all."

Regardless of the stir it has caused, the recent find is not the first such discovery to take place in Taiwan's territorial waters. In 1982, a Japanese research team discovered a 100m-long cross-like structure in waters off of Penghu's Hujing Island . Since then three other underwater wall-like structures have been pinpointed by independent underwater survey teams.

Widespread acceptance of the recent expedition's findings owes a lot to the fact that it is the first such expedition to receive assistance from the nation's only official marine archeological team -- the National Museum of History's Marine Archeology Team ( -- in order to search for what are considered by many academics as purely legendary sites.

Formed in 1995 to excavate the scattered remains of a Chinese Qianlong period vessel which was posthumously named, General No. 1 after Penghu's General Islet where it was discovered by fishermen in 1994, the team comprises deep-sea divers, anthropologists and archeologists and is funded by the Ministry of Education.



"It was a great opportunity for us to get involved with such a venture. Not only did our presence mean that there were qualified archeologists and anthropologists on hand, but it gave the expedition a lot of credibility," explained Yang Shi-zhao secretary and research fellow with NMHMAT.

"Hopefully the find will pave the way for more surveys of the area and eventually a better understanding of our history. We might even be able to prove that some truth lies behind the legend of Mudalu." Supposedly stretching from somewhere in what is today the South China Sea to Hawaii and encompassing many of the Pacific Islands, Mudalu was, according to the legend, home to Asia's earliest peoples, the Ketagalan , who supposedly lived in Asia sometime between seven and 15 thousand years ago.

Quite possibly Asia's earliest civilization, the Ketagalan peoples were reportedly incredibly advanced for the time, with both the know-how to create household utensils, a written language and the ability to construct pyramids and megaliths.

Just how the Ketagalan could have been so advanced, however, is where the legend gets a bit sketchy and, as some believe, quite unearthly.

Close encounters

According to historian Lin Sheng-yi who heads the Ketagalan of Taiwan Indigenous Culture Alliance -- a private organization that searches for traces of Taiwan's pre-history -- the reasons behind the advanced culture had quite a bit to do with visiting UFOs and their alien crews.

"It's quite obvious from looking at the few surviving pieces of Ketagalan artwork that they were in contact with alien peoples and UFOs. Artifacts clearly depict both UFOs and the radio waves emitted by them," explained Lin. "There can be no doubt that the recent find is a Ketagalan settlement, as its linear proportions clearly point to advanced construction knowledge."

Highly skeptical of the ideas put forward by members of KTIS regarding visiting aliens, archeologists and researchers are not totally dismissive of possible links to Mudalu. While still waiting for more precise dating results, experts have dated the structure to somewhere in the region of seven to 20 thousand years old.

"I'm still open to suggestions, but if the legend of Mudalu is to be believed, then bulwarks could possibly be found off the coast not only of Penghu, but Hualien and Taitung.

One of the most famous finds, that took place 20 years ago, was off the coast of Okinawa," continued Yang. "I certainly don't believe in the UFO connection, but the existence of a long forgotten settlement is certainly plausible."

Although the involvement of the museum's undersea archeology team has given the expedition a previously unheard of level of credibility, there are still questions as to the find's origins.

Volcanic phenomenon

The most significant of these is the lack of human remains or manmade objects in the vicinity. The lack of credible evidence leads many to continue to believe that the edifices are the result of volcanic activity.

Caused when lava flows are forced through joints in the structure of igneous rock beds, linear lave formations are found throughout the Pacific Ocean's "ring of fire." One of the most prominent such structures is in fact located at Hsishan on Penghu's Hujing Island.

Although the Hsishan formations are vertical examples of linear lava flows, the existence of these formations in such close proximity to the finds means volcanic activity cannot be dismissed. "When Penghu was created by volcanic activity millions of years ago it is quite possible that lava flowed into rock beds and over the years became flat and wall-like," explained Tsao Nu-chung of the Central Geographic Research Bureau

"While such structures do appear manmade because of their shape, it is in fact simply an unusual natural occurrence. Therefore we should be careful about jumping to conclusions about the structures." Shieh and his ten-man team remain adamant, however, that the structures found in Penghu are manmade.

Sonar soundings taken by members of the National Sun Yat-sen University's department of marine environment point to another four such structures; all of which cover roughly the same area and have nearly the same dimensions.

"If [the walls] were the result of volcanic activity then we would have an octopus shape on the seabed. The tentacles being the lava flows and in the center, where the body is, there would a crater," continued Shieh. "We didn't find a crater anywhere in the area, however. This certainly rules out volcanic activity."

Sephiroth

However, archaeologist Justin Morris from the British Museum says more work will need to be done before the site can be said to belong to a 9,000 year old civilization, since there can be errors in carbon dating. "Culturally speaking, in that part of the world there were no civilizations prior to about 2,500 BC. What's happening before then mainly consisted of small, village settlements," he says.  

Academy Boards, especially in the West always followed assumption that Egypt was the start of civilization as it spread elsewhere. Influence of the Bible could be felt here also. Westerners just love the idea that Humans were slaves to much higher civilised people. Accepting that some other civilisation flourished thousands of years before that could be a blow to their Egos. ;)

That is why they kept stating that Carbon dating has errors also. WHY don't they go and re-carbon date EVERYTHING they found so far in Museums because there could be error in carbon dating them also. ;)

Stupid Western, Egoistic Scholars. No matter how much evidence we give of the Advance Civilization in Asia, they always find some excuse not accept it. HISTORY means REVISING FACTS, NOT sitting on a Fact and claim they know all there is to know.

sephia_liza

A team of Canadian and Cuban researchers have discovered the remains of what may be a 6,000-year-old city submerged in deep ocean waters off the western coast of Cuba.

Using sophisticated sonar and videotape equipment, offshore engineer Paulina Zelitsky, her husband, Paul Weinzweig, and her son, Ernesto Tapanes, have found megaliths "of a kind you'd find at Stonehenge or Easter Island," Mr. Weinzweig said in an interview yesterday.



"Some structures within the complex may be as long as 400 metres wide and as high as 40 metres," he said. "Some are sitting on top of each other. They show very distinct shapes and symmetrical designs of a non-natural kind. We've shown them to scientists in Cuba, the U.S. and elsewhere, and nobody has suggested they are natural."

Moreover, an anthropologist affiliated with the Cuban Academy of Sciences has said that still photos taken from the videotape clearly show "symbols and inscriptions," Mr. Weinzweig said. It is not yet known in what language the inscriptions are written.

The sonar images, he added, bear a remarkable resemblance to the pyramidal design of Mayan and Aztec temples in Mexico. Mr. Weinzweig said it is too early to draw firm conclusions from the evidence collected so far.

The research team plans another foray to the site -- off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on Cuba's western tip -- next month. Next summer, it hopes to return again, this time with the first deep-water mobile excavator, equipped with functions needed for on-site archeological evaluation, including the ability to blow sand off stone.



Geologists have recently hypothesized that a land bridge once connected Cuba to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. And portions of the Cuban island are believed to have been submerged in the sea on three separate occasions in the distant past.

The structures are on a plateau that forms the bottom of what is thought to be a mud volcano, 650 to 700 metres beneath the surface of the ocean and along what is clearly a geological fault line. "It's well known that ancient civilizations liked to build at the base of volcanoes, because the land is fertile. So that's suggestive," Mr. Weinzweig said.

One tantalizing possibility, entirely speculative for now, is that if the legendary sunken continent of Atlantis is ever proven to have existed, these structures may have been submerged during the same cataclysm.

Mr. Weinzweig simply says that more information is needed. "We'd prefer to stay away from that subject. This is something of great potential scientific interest, but it must involve serious authorities on ancient civilizations."

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. "It's not exact, but they're very ancient."

If that dating estimate proves accurate, it would mean that an ancient civilization had designed and erected these vast stone structures in the Americas only 500 years after human settlements first became organized in cities and states.

They would also have been built long before the wheel was invented in Sumeria (3500 BC), or the sundial in Egypt (3000 BC). The three pyramids on Egypt's Giza plateau are thought to have been constructed between 2900 and 2200 BC.
The couple's Havana-based company, Advanced Digital Communications, discovered the site in July of 2000, using side-scan sonar equipment to view what resembled an underwater city, complete with roads, buildings and pyramids.

The team returned this past summer with a 1.3-tonne, unmanned Remotely Operated Vehicle, controlled from the mother ship via fibre-optic cable. Its cameras confirmed the earlier findings, showing vast granite-like blocks, between two and five metres in length, that were cut in perpendicular and circular designs.
But because of technical problems, Mr. Weinzweig said, "we were only able to survey the perimeter of the site.
Based on initial explorations, we think it's much larger than even our sonar projections show. It may extend for several kilometres."
In addition to the archeological site, ADC has been exploring what Mr. Weinzweig calls "the richest underwater cemetery in the world" for sunken Spanish galleons. Hundreds of treasure-bearing ships are said to lie around the island, several hundred to several thousand metres deep.
Last year, off Havana Bay, it found the remains of USS Maine, the battleship that blew up in 1898. That incident, never entirely explained, killed 260 sailors and precipitated the Spanish-American War.



Back in Cuba, a leading scientist recently admitted there is no easy explanation for the megalithic shapes found by Zelitsky's crew. The shapes on the sonar maps look like walls, rectangles, pyramids - rather like a town viewed from the window of an airplane flying overhead.

"We are left with the very questions that prompted this expedition," geologist Manuel A. Iturralde Vincent, research director of Cuba's National Museum of Natural History wrote March 13. At the time he was visiting the area aboard the 270-foot long Ulises, the Spanish trawler Zelitsky outfitted with sophisticated computer and satellite equipment for her surveys.

In his written comments, later delivered at a scholarly conference here, Iturralde concluded it was possible the structures were once at sea level, as Zelitsky theorizes.

Because of the large faults and an underwater volcano nearby, Zelitsky supposes the structures sank because of a dramatic volcanic or seismological event thousands of years ago.

Providing some support for that argument, Iturralde confirmed indications of "significantly strong seismic activity." Zelitsky shies from using the term "Atlantis," but comparisons are inevitable to the legendary sunken civilization that Plato described in his "Dialogues" around 360 B.C.

There have been untold, unsuccessful attempts over the ages to find that lost kingdom. One common theory is that Atlantis was located on the Aegean island of Thera, which was destroyed by a volcanic eruption nearly 3,600 years ago.

Zelitsky does, however, mention known archaeological monuments when discussing her find.

Numerous photographs are scattered throughout a video show of the megaliths, showing well-known ancient sites: the 1st century fortress of Masada high above the Dead Sea, Britain's circular monument of Stonehenge, the Roman fortress of Babylon in Cairo, the walls of Chan Chan, Peru, whose inhabitants were conquered by the Incas.

Perhaps, Zelitsky mused, the megaliths off Cuba are remains of a trading post, or a city built by colonizers from Mesoamerica. Those civilizations were far more advanced than the hunters and gatherers the Spaniards found upon arriving here five centuries ago.

Zelitsky admitted much more investigation is needed to solve the mystery. But that doesn't keep her from believing, or from smiling slyly as she opens her agenda for 2002 to the first page.

Written there are the words Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei uttered under his breath at the height of the Inquisition, right after abjuring his belief that the Earth revolved around the sun.

ShadowChaser

huh..a city that ancient...i wonder which civilization did it belonged

but it's still speculation, right..

Macam-macam pulak cerita khazanah buatan manusia purbakala dari dasar laut yang timbul.