Message #67215

[Bianca]

A land bridge from Mexico to Cuba?





The Lost City of Atlantis has warmed romantic hearts for thousands of years.


The Greek philosopher Plato, who died in 347 B.C., called it a utopia destroyed by an
earthquake, and people have been trying to find it since.

They have looked from the Aegean to Antarctica, from Europe to the Bahamas, without
success.

In his book Gateway to Atlantis, Andrew Collins speculated the Caribbean might turn out
to be the site of Atlantis and proposed that it might have been destroyed by a comet
impact that devastated the eastern coastline with mammoth tsunamis or tidal waves.

Zelitsky and Weinzweig dismiss the Atlantis talk.

The story is myth, said Zelitsky, a Russian-trained engineer. "What we have found is more
likely remnants of a local culture," once located on a 100-mile "land bridge" that joined
Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula with Cuba.

This local culture, however, might be every bit as remarkable as Atlantis.

The Maya, for example, developed a magnificent civilization on the Yucatan Peninsula be-
ginning about A.D. 250 and peaking about A.D. 900. Spain finally completed its conquest
of the Maya about 1500.

The Maya produced advanced architecture, painting, pottery and sculpture, and their
grasp of mathematics and astronomy was remarkable for its time. They might have deve-
loped the first calendar, and were among the first to make paper and books of tree bark.
They cut large stone blocks and made buildings, courtyards and pyramids, many for wor-
ship of numerous gods.

But Zelitsky thinks the Mega site pre-dates even the ancient Maya -- by a lot.

Recently excavated sculptures by the Olmec and Totonec peoples, also of the Yucatan
and Central America, are about 4,500 to 6,000 years old, she said.

"The Mayan nation came to the Yucatan at much later times and learned the arts and
sciences of civilization from earlier nations." We know little of these nations, she said,
"thanks to the Spanish church, who burned all archives."

Today Mexico and Cuba are separated only by the 100-mile width of the Yucatan Channel,
and geologists have speculated for years that a "land bridge" once joined the two. Accord-
ing to this theory, underwater faults eventually parted and destroyed the bridge, swallow-
ing the land above.

But 2,000 feet? If the megaliths are indeed ruins, how did they get so deep?

Zelitsky answers that large-scale underground movement of Earth's tectonic plates is
usually accompanied by volcanos and earthquakes.

"It's a very powerful event,' she said, and the sinking of an island "could have happened
very quickly." While some megaliths on the sea bottom appear organized, she said, others
do not. "Over about 20 square kilometers there are a large number of structures that appear
jumbled, disorganized," she said.

Cuban geologist Iturralde, she said, "has clearly identified on the ocean bottom the coastal
structures of a separated island." Also, she said, the sea bottom at the site is covered with
volcanic glass "which could be generated only on the oxygenated surface."

Everyone should keep an open mind, said geologist Iturralde.

"These are extremely peculiar structures, and they have captured our imagination," he said.
"If I had to explain this geologically, I would have a hard time."

But, he added, just because no natural explanation for the so-called ruins is immediately
apparent, it doesn't mean there isn't one. "Nature is able to create some really unimagin-
able structures," he said.

He also raised a third possibility. The megaliths might be natural structures, he said, "but
transformed or adapted by intelligent beings for dwelling or religious purposes."