Quite a while back a Canadian company found some odd structures off the coast of Cuba. I posted about it awhile back but it’s not coming up on the search, but you can read about it here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1697038.stm
Anyway, I’ve been trying to find out what it was (being both an archeology buff, and a diver), but have had no luck getting more information.
I have contacted National Geographic (which had partnered up with the original company that discovered the site) and was told that they were doing a TV special on it (which was to have aired last summer, however I never heard anything more about it, although I should admit that it could have been aired and I just missed it)
I have also contacted the Cuban ministry in that region, but was told to refer to their ministry of science (unfortunately my spanish is not good, and the contact they gave me was a telephone number in Cuba).
I have not heard/read anything else and the curiosity is driving me nuts!
I’m asking the guru’s of the straight dope to help me out to find more info if it exists.
Well, I found this, but almost nothing more recent (The date given by Reuters is Mar. 29, 2002)
I wasn’t able to find any more information (National Geographic has a page here from may 2002), so it doesn’t look like they found anything very interesting.
Problem here is that when you do a search on this subject you get all kinds of weirdo crackpot sites with their own agendas.
Here are some of the good ones.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/41/236.html
If you are up for some mangled English try this
http://www.guerrillero.co.cu/pinardelrio/ingles/aunque.html
They went back earlier this year but there is not too much hard evidence yet, there seems to be a lot of talking up the various possbilities, but not enough peer review.
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/printarticle/gam/20011207/UCUBAN
A more balanced article by those Canadian types, but still rather too sensationalist given the actual eveidence.
http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSScience0203/27_city-cp.html
It is still too early to tell, but the comments about Spanish galleons(with potentially very lucrative cargoes) makes me wonder if this issue is suffering a little ‘artistic licence’ to attract funding for other underwater projects.
Unfortunately when yuo look at the dating of the online articles on this structure, you find almost definative statements based only upon the tentative findings of the first scan in 2000, and most articles of this predate the later July2002 expedition.
One would think that by now there would be a lot more fuss if this July trip had more evidence, but it seems to be still fairly vague.
I think that if you look this up you need to be very careful of who is saying what.
Cubans point out that if this had been a man-made structure, that other traces of the civilisation that created it would surely remain in other places, and it is likely that this would have had to have had trading relationships with other places, or at least colonies.
They also mention that to date there have not been any known civilisation that predates 4000BCE and these formations are at least 6000BCE.