Ancient Civilizations: Underwater Ruins of Ancient Civilizations?

A triangular staircase?

This is a picture of a 2 step staircase with a diver in the background.

An arch created by piling two massive stones and another large stone as a wedge.

Triangular stones view from above.

A 4 step staircase.

As National Geographic reports...

"For example, Kimura said, he has identified quarry marks in the stone, rudimentary characters etched onto carved faces, and rocks sculpted into the likenesses of animals.
"The characters and animal monuments in the water, which I have been able to partially recover in my laboratory, suggest the culture comes from the Asian continent," he said.

"One example I have described as an underwater sphinx resembles a Chinese or ancient Okinawan king." Whoever created the city, most of it apparently sank in one of the huge seismic events that this part of the Pacific Rim is famous for, Kimura said.

The world's largest recorded tsunami struck Yonaguni Jima in April 1771 with an estimated height of more than 131 feet (40 meters), he noted, so such a fate might also have befallen the ancient civilization.

Kimura said he has identified ten structures off Yonaguni and a further five related structures off the main island of Okinawa. In total the ruins cover an area spanning 984 feet by 492 feet (300 meters by 150 meters).

The structures include the ruins of a castle, a triumphal arch, five temples, and at least one large stadium, all of which are connected by roads and water channels and are partly shielded by what could be huge retaining walls.

Kimura believes the ruins date back to at least 5,000 years, based on the dates of stalactites found inside underwater caves that he says sank with the city.

And structures similar to the ruins sitting on the nearby coast have yielded charcoal dated to 1,600 years ago-a possible indication of ancient human inhabitants, Kimura added.

Click here to see more pics at national geographic.

Here is an abstract of a Japanese Study; Title;Research for submarine ruins off Yonaguni, Japan. Journal Title;Bulletin of the College of Science, University of the Ryukyus

Abstract;Submarine research surveys using SCUBA and sonic surveys reveal detailed topography similar to submarine, pyramidal features looking like a stepped pyramid off Yonaguni in Okinawa, Japan. The site is called Iseki Point(ruins site) as a leisure diving spot. Yonaguni Submarine Pyramid(YSP) is the major structure that stands under approximately 25 meters of ocean. Essentially, it has a cliff face like the side of a stepped pyramid, and dimensions of about 290m(length) by 120m(width) by 26m(height). Flat terraces, straight walls and its surface structure of walls with scars of tool marks driven in by a wedge on the structure are identified to be artificially fabricated. Appearance and size of YSP are similar to the biggest, ancient castles such as Shuri and Nakagusuku Castles in Okinawa Island, where they are called 'gusuku'. Roads associated with drainage canals were recognized, surrounding YSP, and that a retaining wall was found along a road. The southern point of the wall is composed of huge rock fragments. Stone tools and other artifacts were discovered from the sea bottom. Those evidence strongly shows that the YSP has not been manufactured by nature. It is identifie to be man-made. The formation age is estimated to be about 10,000 years ago based on 14C and 10Be age determinations. (author abst.)

The only difference between the Japanese scientific investigation and the one printed in National Geographic is the date ascribed to these structures. In National geographic the structures are 2000 years old and in the Japanese Scientific Study it has been dated to the last ice age (10,000 years ago).

Cultures have sprung up fully developed (development process for a culture is said to take 3-4 thousand years) on the Indus River about 3000 BC. The cultures THEN declined. If these cities were on a shoreline that got inundated by the ocean that would explain how these cities popped up fully developed made of standardized clay bricks, with underground sewage, public bath-houses and an already established system of meditation that must have been a precursor to 'modern' yoga. (This civilization is called the "Indus Valley or Harrapan Civilization")

Since the cultures from which yoga may have come from popped up fully developed on the Indus and Saraswati rivers, where did these people come from?

Considering the rising sea levels over the last several thousand years, maybe the civilization began along - what used to be - the coastline of India, several thousand years ago. BBC reports about the underwater ruins found; "the structures are said to resemble archeological sites belonging to the Harappan civilisation, dating back more than 4,000 years."

BBC Reports:

"Marine experts have discovered a clump of archaeological structures deep beneath the sea off India's western coast.

Although the discovery has not yet been accurately dated, the structures are said to resemble archeological sites belonging to the Harappan civilisation, dating back more than 4,000 years. "

According to the BBC, the earliest form of writing has been discovered in the Harrapan ruins found in an archeological dig in Pakistan. (picture above)

Conclusion: An underwater city, made on the same plans as cities along the river valleys up north. Indicating a civilization that existed long before our recorded history and that has been lost to time (so far).

The Bimini road is a series of limestone rocks that go out into the sea. The standard belief is that they are natural formations but some people say that they are part of a man made harbor.

The most up to date refutation of that claim (that I can find) is located here

An investigation that refutes the above refutation (yes, I know it sounds funny), is located here.

Best part of the Bimini structure is that it is easily explored by American divers and someone with time and money on their hands could do a deep sea survey of the general area and might find more structures buried underneath (deep sea sonar and satellite scanning is a way to get started). Although the PDF suggests a date around 9500BC, the type of stone structures found have been found in the Mediterranean as well. Thus this could be an ancient pier made when the ocean was lower during a mini ice age and not necessarily the big ice age 12000 years ago. The dominant theory is that it was a mid-way harbor to get to the underwater ruins of Cuba(before it was underwater).

There is still a lot of investigation that needs to be done. What we don't need to do is wonder if there are any more underwater structures. They keep turning up year after year, some in plain site, so there are definitely more. A thorough exploration across the globe is called for (we have only explored 3-5 percent of the ocean floor, which means there is a lot of territory left to cover - which we can narrow down using data of sea levels to find where the ancient coastline used to be. That's where we should start looking for more ruins)

This article is premium content here but it is also printed in full here. This is also mentioned in National Geographic.

HAVANA -- The images appear slowly on the video screen, like ghosts from the ocean floor. The videotape, made by an unmanned submarine, shows massive stones in oddly symmetrical square and pyramid shapes in the deep-sea darkness.

Sonar images taken from a research ship 2,000 feet above are even more
puzzling. They show that the smooth, white stones are laid out in a geometric
pattern. The images look like fragments of a city, in a place where nothing
man-made should exist, spanning nearly eight square miles of a deep-ocean
plain off Cuba's western tip.

"What we have here is a mystery," said Paul Weinzweig, of Advanced Digital
Communications (ADC), a Canadian company that is mapping the ocean
bottom of Cuba's territorial waters under contract with the government of
President Fidel Castro.

"Nature couldn't have built anything so symmetrical," Weinzweig said, running
his finger over sonar printouts aboard his ship, tied up at a wharf in Havana
harbor. "This isn't natural, but we don't know what it is."

The company's main mission is to hunt for shipwrecks filled with gold and
jewels, and to locate potentially lucrative oil and natural gas reserves in deep
water that Cuba does not have the means to explore.

Treasure hunting has become a growth industry in recent years as technology
has improved, allowing more precise exploration and easier recovery from
deeper ocean sites. Advanced Digital operates from the Ulises, a 260-foot
trawler that was converted to a research vessel for Castro's government by
the late French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.

Since they began exploration three years ago with sophisticated side-scan
sonar and computerized global-positioning equipment, Weinzweig said they
have mapped several large oil and gas deposits and about 20 shipwrecks
sitting beneath ancient shipping lanes where hundreds of old wrecks are
believed to be resting. The most historically important so far has been the
USS Maine, which exploded and sank in Havana harbor in 1898, an event
that ignited the Spanish-American War.

In 1912, the ship was raised from the harbor floor by the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers and towed out into deeper water four miles from the Cuban
shore, where it was scuttled. Strong currents carried the Maine away from the
site, and its precise location remained unknown until Ulises's sonar spotted it
two years ago.

Then, by sheer serendipity, on a summer day in 2000, as the Ulises was
towing its sonar back and forth across the ocean like someone mowing a
lawn, the unexpected rock formations appeared on the sonar readouts. That
startled Weinzweig and his partner and wife, Paulina Zelitsky, a Russian-born
engineer who has designed submarine bases for the Soviet military.

"We have looked at enormous amounts of ocean bottom, and we have never
seen anything like this," Weinzweig said.

The discovery immediately sparked speculation about Atlantis, the fabled lost
city first described by Plato in 360 B.C.. Weinzweig and Zelitsky were careful
not to use the A word and said that much more study was needed before
such a conclusion could be reached.

But that has not stopped a boomlet of speculation, most of it on the Internet.
Atlantis-hunters have long argued their competing theories that the lost city
was off Cuba, off the Greek island of Crete, off Gibraltar or elsewhere.
Several Web sites have touted the ADC images as a possible first sighting.

Among those who suspect the site may be Atlantis is George Erikson, a
California anthropologist who co-authored a book in which he predicted that
the lost city would be found offshore in the tropical Americas.

"I have always disagreed with all the archaeologists who dismiss myth," said
Erikson, who said he had been shunned by many scientists since publishing his
book about Atlantis. He said the story has too many historical roots to be
dismissed as sheer fantasy and that if the Cuban site proves to be Atlantis, he
hopes "to be the first to say, 'I told you so.' "

Manuel Iturralde, one of Cuba's leading geologists, said it was too soon to
know what the images prove. He has examined the evidence and concluded
that, "It's strange, it's weird; we've never seen something like this before, and
we don't have an explanation for it."

Iturralde said volcanic rocks recovered at the site strongly suggest that the
undersea plain was once above water, despite its extreme depth. He said the
existence of those rocks was difficult to explain, especially because there are
no volcanoes in Cuba.

He also said that if the symmetrical stones are determined to be the ruins of
buildings, it could have taken 50,000 years or more for tectonic shifting to
carry them so deep into the ocean. The ancient Great Pyramid of Giza in
Egypt is only about 5,000 years old, which means the Cuba site "wouldn't fit
with what we know about human architectural evolution," he said.

"It's an amazing question that we would like to solve," he said.

But Iturralde stressed that the evidence is inconclusive. He said that no
first-hand exploration in a mini-submarine had been conducted, which would
provide a much more comprehensive assessment. He said a remote-operated
video camera provides only a limited perspective, like someone looking at a
close-up image of an elephant's toe and trying to describe the whole animal.

The National Geographic Society has expressed interest and is considering an
expedition in manned submarines next summer, according to Sylvia Earl, a
famed American oceanographer and explorer-in-residence at the society.

"It's intriguing," Earl said in an interview from her Oakland, Calif., home. "It is
so compelling that I think we need to go check it out."

Earl said a planned expedition this past summer was canceled because of
funding problems. But she said National Geographic hopes to explore the site
next summer as part of its Sustainable Seas research program.

Earl has visited Cuba and described the preliminary evidence as "fantastic"
and "extraordinary." But she stressed that as a "skeptical scientist," she would
assume that the unusual stones were formed naturally until scientific evidence
proved otherwise.

"There is so much speculation about ancient civilizations," she said. "I'm in
tune with the reality and the science, not the myths or stories or fantasies."

As they search for answers, Weinzweig and Zelitsky have suddenly become
involved in a new mystery -- the discovery of a potential blockbuster
shipwreck. They said that on Aug. 15, their remotely operated vehicle came
across what appears to be a 500-year-old Spanish galleon that they had been
searching for.

They declined to name the ship, fearful of other treasure hunters, but they said
it carried a priceless cargo of emeralds, diamonds and ancient artifacts. By
contract, they said they can keep 40 percent of the value of whatever they
recover. They said the value of findings at the newly discovered wreck could
far exceed the nearly $4 million that their private backers have so far invested
in their operations.

Weinzweig said a closer examination is needed to prove the ship's identity. He
said that in treasure hunting, as in the search for Atlantis, there is no substitute
for science.

"One thing is legend," he said, sitting on Ulises's bridge. "Another is the hard
evidence you find on the ocean floor."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

The following are images taken by the Canadian exploration company called Advanced Digital Communications who discovered the site;

A large cube of stone.

An extremely large pyramid shaped stone. Dimensions are not mentioned.

A large rounded stone.