What happened to this mysterious city off the coast of Cuba?
In 2001, a Canadian company called Advanced Digital Communications was conducting a survey mission with the Cuban government when they accidentally stumbled across something spectacular. At a depth of more than 2,000 feet, just off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula in Cuba, sonar imaging systems photographed what appeared to be pyramids, circular arrangements and catacombs.
Since the discovery of this nameless city, geologists and scientists have had trouble grasping ideas about its origins, its age and its authenticity. What looked to be clear evidence of an ancient civilization divided researchers.
Marine geologist, Manuel Iturralde, claimed that the city would have taken more than 50,000 years to submerge to its current resting place at 2,000 feet under the water, in the dark depths just off the coast of Cuba. That, according to modern science, makes the city far too old to fit the established consensus surrounding the history of civilizations in the region. Iturralde is among other geologists who have called the ruins "out of time and out of place".
The researchers, who first discovered the anomalous city, thought they had stumbled across an old military installation. As time went on, they realized it was nothing like an installation that would have existed during WWII or the Cold War. Pretty quickly, they concluded that it was likely the remnants of an ancient city. It was then that doubts began to emerge due to the city's depths.
This site, perhaps built by a culture that far pre-dates the famous Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula, might have been the victim of a vast, mysterious cataclysm that somehow dropped it 2,000 feet beneath the surface of the sea.
"Nothing is known for certain now," Weinzweig said, "but oral tradition in early Mexico speaks of an advanced civilization of tall white people who came from the East, and of an island that sank in a great natural disaster." In the ancient language of some early Central American Indians, he said, "the word Atlanticu means 'our good father,' or, 'the place where our good father rests.' "
Then again, maybe not. Maybe the intriguing shapes found by the sonar are just that -- intriguing shapes, carved over the centuries by whimsical Mother Nature.
Robert Ballard, from the National Geographic Society, downplayed the city's authenticity, saying, "It's too deep. I've looked at a lot of sonar images in my life and it can be sort of like looking at an ink blot. People can sometimes see what they want to see."
However, in the summer of 2001, the researchers returned and surveyed the structures using an unmanned, remotely operated underwater vehicle.
St. Petersburg Times:
Images sent back by the ROV confirmed the presence of large blocks of stone -- about 8 feet by 10 feet -- some circular, some rectangular, some in the shape of pyramids. Some blocks appeared deliberately stacked atop one another, others appeared isolated from the rest.
Much of the structure's details, which were picked up by sonar imagery, are hidden under layers of dirt and sediment, making them less convincing to the naked eye. However, based on the parts that are visible, the structures were concluded to be made of granite.
Some researchers have suggested that a large earthquake could be the reason for the city's rapid submergence. Others, like Florida International Univesity's, Grenville Draper, have disputed the claims, saying that no such high magnitude events have ever been recorded in the area and that no historical records suggest that any such event ever took place in the region. Others have added to the doubts by noting that such a high magnitude quake would have left the city in a heap of unrecognizable ruin.
AtAncient-Origins.net, Brad Yoon suggests that the Caribbean Sea, like the Mediterranean, may have once been a dry basin:
Could it be that the Caribbean Sea has a similar geological history as the Mediterranean Sea? That is, could the Caribbean Sea have been a dry basin, and could it have been so during the existence of anatomically modern man? Having performed an exhaustive search on the topic, I couldn't find a single source within the alternative literature let alone a peer-reviewed scientific paper that put forth such a hypothesis. However implausible this hypothesis may be, if true, it would provide a simple and elegant solution to the problem discussed, namely that of how a city could have been built close to 700 meters (2300 feet) below sea level today, or 580 meters (1900 feet) below sea level even during the maximum drawdown of the world's oceans. If the Caribbean Sea simply did not exist for an extended period of time in the human past, a reasonably advanced civilization inhabiting the area could have built cities on dry land thousands of feet below sea level, even over ten thousand feet below sea level.
No major expeditions have yet been conducted to scour the ruins of the ancient, lost city of Cuba. This despite researchers from Canada and Cuba promising to conduct more research into what could be a ground-breaking revelation. It has since been more than a decade since its discovery, but the sunken city of Cuba seems to have been forgotten by mainstream science and archaeology.
Until a major expedition is conducted, we may never get close to understanding what Cuba's sunken city really is, or whether it holds the key to fully understanding human history and civilization.
