Images from the Cuban Site

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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."

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What next? For now, nothing





ADC operates from the Ulisses, a 260-foot trawler that was converted to a research
vessel for the Cuban government by the late French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.

The company made headlines a year ago with its discovery in nearby waters of the U.S.
Navy battleship Maine, which was sunk under mysterious circumstances in 1898, touch-
ing off the Spanish-American War. (The ship had been sunk in Havana Harbor. In 1911 it
was taken offshore and sunk again, honorably, with a U.S. flag flying from its bow.

Its exact location was unknown until it was found by Weinzweig and Zelitsky.)

In finding the Maine and the Mega site, Advanced Digital has made use of two major impro-
vements in underwater exploration. One is side-scan sonar, which allows a wider sweep of
ocean bottom than earlier sonar equipment, and the other is the satellite-based Global Posi-
tioning System, or GPS.

GPS allows a surface vessel to fix its position to within a few feet and then to follow a pre-
cise, reliable search trackline. Connected by cable to the vessel, side-scanning sonar sweeps
the ocean floor with pulses of sound, providing a strikingly clear picture of objects on the
bottom.

When a promising object is detected, an ROV can be dispatched to investigate. Searches
can be performed in 20,000 feet of water.

For now, though, Weinzweig and Zelitsky say they have their hands full keeping up with the
terms of the contract with the Cuban government.

"We have signed a long-term exclusive contract with the Cuban government for the natural
resources of the Cuban Gulf of Mexico," Weinzweig said. "Our money is private and comes
from family and friends who have purchased shares in our offshore company. We have spent
$4-million over the last three years and we will require an additional $8-million or $9-million.

"This kind of work is very expensive and we require investment financing. However, our own-
ership in the final product, whether oil or treasure, would more than handsomely reward the
investment required for conduct of deep and ultra deep work on the ocean bottom.

"For now we are busy with our other work," Zelitsky said. "As soon as we have done enough
to help finance an archaeological expedition (to the Mega site) then maybe we can do that.
But right now it's oil and gas."




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



"The St. Petersburg Times" is my hometown newspaper.

They are very keen on Archaeology, especially underwater.


Bianca

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                                                          2001-05-17



                                            Did a Reading Foretell that Atlantis



                                                 Would Be Found Near Cuba?





UPDATE OF 11/23/2001

This update is based upon two sources of information:

  a recent interview conducted with Mrs. Zelitsky, discoverer of the ruins,
  by Linda Moulton Howe, and 

  a summary of additional information by Scott Corrales that appeared on
  Rense.com. 



Here below is our original article of May, 2001.
 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cayce reading 996-12




deals in part with sources of funding that might be approached to develop the Bimini
islands as "the resort premier above others."  Almost in passing, as the reading conti-
nues, we find the following observation:


"For this [remains of Atlantis at Bimini] is of the first highest civilization that will be un-

covered in some of the adjacent lands to the west and south of the isles, see?"



This passage seems to imply that the remains of Atlantis will be discovered first in adjacent
lands to the southwest of Bimini. This could also mean, as well, "the Aryan or Yucatan land,
where the temple is overshadowing same" [the records of the Atlantean civilization], as men
-tioned in reading 2012-1.  But inasmuch as "adjacent lands" (plural) are mentioned in the
Bimini reading, we ought not to exclude Cuba.

Cuba is considerably more "adjacent" to Bimini than is Yucatan.

At any rate, here is the press release of interest
(quoted for informational and research purposes only):

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                                        Looking for lost riches in Cuba’s seas


                        Underwater surveyors say they may have found sunken city





http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/573489.asp

HAVANA, Cuba, May 14 - Barely touched since the colonial era of piracy and shipwrecks, sea
bottoms around Cuba are an underwater fantasy world promising treasure-laden sunken ships,
insights into times gone by - and maybe even a lost city.

ONCE A HUB for shipments of gold, silver and other plunder from New World to Old, the Cari-
bbean island’s waters likely hide billions of dollars’ worth of treasure from hundreds of ships that
sank after encountering reefs, storms or pirates.

But that is not all that tempts foreign companies, which, in a joint venture with President Fidel
Castro’s government, are beginning an unprecedented, systematic search of one of the world’s
most-fascinating, least-explored undersea regions.

As well as gold-laden Spanish galleons, important secrets and insights into regional history,
global environment trends, ancient geography and marine science also lurk in the depths.

"It’s a new frontier," Soviet-born Canadian ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky enthused as she
pored over video images of hitherto-unseen seafloor taken by underwater robots.

"We are the first people ever to see the bottom of Cuban waters over 50 meters," said Zelit-
sky, president of Canada-based Advanced Digital Communications. "It’s so exciting. We are dis-
covering the influence of currents on global climate, volcanoes, the history of formation of Cari-
bbean islands, numerous historic wrecks and even possibly a sunken city built in the pre-classic
period and populated by an advanced civilization similar to the early Teotihuacan culture of
Yucatan."

ADC, the heavyweight among four foreign exploration firms here, was testing its deep-water
equipment off Havana Bay late last year when its ship, Ulises, found the century-old wreck of
the battleship Maine while surveying the seabed.

The ship blew up mysteriously in 1898, killing 260 American sailors and touching off the Spanish-American War.

ADC has also been exploring a string of underwater volcanoes about 5,000 feet (1,500 meters)
deep off Cuba’s western tip, where millions of years ago a strip of land once joined the island to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.





SEARCHING FOR A LOST CITY



Most intriguingly, researchers using sonar equipment have discovered, at a depth of about
2,200 feet (700-800 meters), a huge land plateau with clear images of what appears to be
urban development partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resemble pyramids,
roads and buildings.

ADC is excited but reluctant to speculate until a joint investigation with the Cuban Academy
of Sciences and the National Geographic Society takes place early this summer.

"It is stunning. What we see in our high-resolution sonar images are limitless, rolling, white
sand plains and, in the middle of this beautiful white sand, there are clear manmade large-size architectural designs. It looks like when you fly over an urban development in a plane and you
see highways, tunnels and buildings," Zelitsky said.

"We don’t know what it is, and we don’t have the videotaped evidence of this yet, but we do
not believe that nature is capable of producing planned symmetrical architecture, unless it is
a miracle," she added in an interview at her office at Tarara, along the coast east of Havana.

ADC’s deep-water equipment includes a satellite-integrated ocean bottom positioning system,
high-precision side-scan double-frequency sonar, and remotely operated submarine robots.
They plan to add two submersibles to take people down.

On the treasure trail, it has already located 700 target sites where historic wrecks are thought
to lie, and it recently videotaped and identified three of them as large 17th-century ships with
valuable cargo.





THE BIGGER PICTURE



 Bringing up treasure will finance the project. But Zelitsky said, "Our agenda is much broader.
We are very anxious about global environmental changes. Archaeology is providing us with
the means to conduct broader scientific ocean exploration."

The other three foreign companies - one Canadian, one French and one South African - ope-
rate in shallower waters than ADC. Under contracts with Cuban state partner Geomar, all the
firms have concessions to explore in different swaths of sea and would share profits with the government.

American companies are prohibited from participating by the long-running U.S. embargo on the communist-run island.

The rush of interest in Cuba’s seas is due in part to the Castro government’s recognition that
it does not have the money or technology to carry out systematic exploration by itself, though
it does have excellent divers.

"As you know, we have financing problems. This is a very expensive activity. They give us
technology and financing. We provide historical and ocean expertise," said Eddy Fernandez,
vice president of Geomar.

"These projects are very important in helping us rescue things from history, which contribute
to our national patrimony," he added at a ceremony launching a mini-submarine used by the
other Canadian company, Toronto-based Visa Gold.

Visa Gold, which operates in Cuba out of Havana’s Marina Hemingway, says it has already
brought up some 7,000 artifacts including jewelry, diamonds and pistols from a brigantine called Palemon that sank in 1839 off Cuba’s northern coast.

The new target in Havana Bay is the Atocha y San Jose, which sank in January 1642 while
trying to reach port after fleeing storms at sea. Like the other firms, Visa Gold combines sea
exploration with research, checking archives in Spain and elsewhere to establish roughly where
boats went down.

"This is a very historic point, the mouth of Havana Bay, the most strategic point in the New
World at that time," company president Paul Frustaglio said at the launch ceremony.

WHY CUBA?

‘Cuba is right in the center, the logical route for all the boats.’ 
- CESAR GARCIA DEL PINO
 

 
Naval historian Havana’s large natural harbor and Cuba’s location as a stopping point between
Europe and mainland Latin America made the island a natural trade hub after the arrival of 16th-century Spanish conquistadors.

"Cuba is right in the center, the logical route for all the boats," local naval historian Cesar Garcia
del Pino said. Since boats congregated around Cuba, it was also logical many of them should sink
here thanks to piracy, poor maps and navigation equipment, and regular storms in the Caribbean.

"I know of about 1,600 boats from the 16th to the 20th century that went down here. Those that came from Europe were full of merchandise and those leaving from America were carrying the pro-
ducts of the region - gold, silver and so on," Del Pino said. "I consider the historical value greater
than the commercial value because a sunken boat is a time capsule."

ADC is drawing on local talent, with a mainly Cuban staff of 50, including 14 on land and 36 on
its research vessel "Ulises." Most of its lower-tech equipment is also Cuban - including the ship,
which is rented from the government.

While the Canadian company is proud of doing good science, it also promises to make a lot of
money and would like to plow some wealth back for the general good.

"They say there is $3 trillion of treasure lying on the bottom of the Caribbean, and a good part
of that is near to Cuba because a good part of the wealth of the world came through Cuba,"
ADC representative Paul Weinzweig said.


"But you have to bear in mind that it is ill-gotten wealth. A lot of it is the result of **** and
pillage of New World colonies. ... We want to cover our costs, provide a return to shareholders,
and we also want to use a part of our personal share of returns to benefit people and humanity."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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As shown on the map above, the most likely place for the "submerged city" to be located --
as described in the press release -- would seem to be off the western tip of Cuba. This sur-
mise is based on the Washington Post article by G. Gugliotta (February 12, 2001), which is
reproduced in part at the end of this posting.


The area of the seafloor shown in pink conforms to the press-release statement that the
submerged city lies on a sandy plain beneath 2,200 feet (670 meters) of water. Note that
we offer our interpretation after studying a NOAA map of the bathymetry around all of Cuba.
The narrow area of the sea floor shown below in pink is the only one that seems wide enough
for a plain holding the remains of a city in this region off the western tip of Cuba. Note too,
that we offer our opinion under the assumption that the following points are true:

 the story is based upon evidence that is true (the story is not based on imagination), and


that a similarly-wide area of the sea floor that runs parallel to Cuba's northern coast, beg-
inning east of Havana and running eastward to south of Cay Sal Bank, is not the area of in-
terest to the ADC exploration firm. That is, we infer that the area of interest to ADC is tied
to the location off the western tip of Cuba where the Washington Post article indicates that
the greatest quantities of precious metals from shipwrecks are located.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~







                                Treasure In The Deep? Cuba, Firm Aim To Find Out





By Guy Gugliotta.
The Washington Post
Staff Writer.
Monday, February 12, 2001

Twice a year, the ships of the Spanish flota set sail from Porto Bello, in what is now Panama,
and from Vera Cruz, on the Mexican coast. They were loaded to the gunwales with Peruvian
gold, Mexican silver and jewels from the emerald mines of Colombia.

The ships headed north to the Yucatan Channel, which separates Mexico from Cuba, before
curling into the Gulf of Mexico for the run to the Havana harbor. It was there, off Cuba's
western tip, that the flota faced its moment of greatest peril.

"That's the corner," Ernesto Tapanes said. "There were a lot of pirates hiding there waiting
for them. And that spot probably has the largest number of hurricanes in the region."

Tapanes and his mother, Paulina Zelitsky, are the leaders of Advanced Digital Communicat-
ions, a Canadian salvage company that has signed a five-year joint-venture contract with
the Cuban government to chart the deep waters off the western coast and search for
sunken treasure.

Last October, to test the expedition's side-scan sonar and its robot submarine, the expe-
dition found and filmed the wreck of the USS Maine, the fabled battleship whose sinking
after a massive explosion in Havana's harbor on Feb. 15, 1898, triggered the Spanish-Ame-
rican war.

In 1912, U.S. government salvors finished building a cofferdam around the hulk, patched it
and towed it four miles out to sea, where they scuttled it with full military honors in 3,700
feet of water. To this day, historians dispute whether the Maine was sunk by a Spanish
water mine, as U.S. authorities charged at the time, or by an internal explosion, as suggest-
ed by a 1976 investigation.

The ADC expedition will not answer this question, for while finding the Maine "proves that
we can do what we want to do," Tapanes said, ADC wants to use its search technology
to find the wrecks of treasure-laden ships that have not been seen for hundreds of years.

"We're interested in the flotas that were going to Havana," Tapanes said. Off Cabo San
Antonio on Cuba's western tip and off the Isle of Youth, about 80 miles east, "we know
there is going to be an extreme concentration of wrecks."

Cuba, isolated as the Western Hemisphere's lone communist outpost, has had neither the
expertise nor the inclination to examine its deep territorial waters with technology that in
the last quarter century has plumbed the oceans' depths far beyond anything ever con-
templated by divers.

Using side-scan sonar to locate foreign objects on the sea bottom and small submarines
and submersible robots to examine and recover artifacts, explorers have achieved remark-
able results: discovering hydrothermal vents near the Galapagos Islands in 8,000 feet of
water; filming the RMS Titanic, sunk 12,000 feet deep in the North Atlantic; and salvaging
thousands of golden coins and ingots from the Gold Rush-era steamer USS Central America,
lying in 8,000 feet of water off the South Carolina coast.

Under the deal negotiated by Zelitsky in 1999, ADC and a Cuban government corporation
will map the deep waters off western Cuba and split any salvage 50-50. ADC expects to
find a lot, and experts say the company is probably right.

"The western end of Cuba would make sense for picking up a ship from Vera Cruz, and some-
one coming out of Porto Bello would sail right by the Isle of Youth," said historian Sherry
Johnson, a colonial Caribbean specialist at Florida International University. "The Gulf itself
was called 'the Spanish lake,' so if you were a pirate, you didn't want to go there."

. . .

The ADC expedition is betting that the residue of these and other adventures lies in the
ocean depths off western Cuba.



"Just by virtue of Cuba's location and history and its position on this trade route, our
success rate should be very high," Tapanes said. "It alleviates the need to look for one
specific galleon. If we find bottles, anchors and stuff, we can say, 'There's a wreck here,'
and be reasonably sure about it."


www.huttoncommentaries.com/article.php?category=6&article=29 - 32k -

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                                                          C U B A





by Linda Moulton Howe

PART I

The following pictures are high resolution side scan sonar images of large structures a half mile
down on the sea floor, made of sand, off the western tip of Cuba. They are made in 2000 by
ADC International, Inc., a company directed by Paulina Zelitsky and Paul Weinzweig.
 





© 2000 by ADC International, Inc.



The location of the source of these images is given below in yellow:
 

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The Guanacahabibes Peninsula is an anomaly. Its limestone, clay and sand substrata is geologi-
cally more similar to the Yucatan Peninsula than the island of Cuba.
 

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Besides the sonar images, also some video footage was made by remote camera,

from which the following stills originate:








Rounded, megalithic granite-like rock with
unidentified line detail.

Video image © 2002 by ADC International, Inc.




Squared off large block of granite-like stone.

Video image © 2002 by ADC International, Inc.

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Pyramid shape seems "carved out of" massive rectan-
gular stonethat can be seen behind the pyramid glow-
ing in the glare of the ROV's light

(Remote Operated Video). Video image © 2002
 by ADC International, Inc.




Another mystery - what is the triangular object that
in the video seemsto be resting independently on the
large, curved stone?

Video image © 2002 by ADC International, Inc.

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Black arrow points to a "V-shaped" pattern that loops
at the bottom.

Video image © 2002 by ADC International, Inc.







Analysis



The discoveries near Cuba are one of the most popular subjects on this website, viewed from
the number of search hits. However, from the standpoint of reality they are one of the weakest.

The sonar data are interesting from the point of view of having found a site that deserves fur-
ther inspection. Anything beyond that is pure speculation. What is needed are pictures that are
more easy to interpret. The ones that have come together with the sonar data are promising,
but they are too few and too unclear to draw specific conclusions.

Another reason to be extra careful is caused by the same fact that there is mainly sonar data:
the subject lies at a much greater depth than Yonaguni, Bimini, and the others, making it un-
reachable to divers. The depth of the finds is the standard way to date the finds, through the
relation with known sea levels. The much greater depths of the finds near Cuba means they
are from a different, much older, age than the others, when one disregards the effect of rise
and fall of plate levels themselves (but these effects usually play on much longer time scales).

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                                             Cuban Megaliths and the Atlantis Question






Linda Moulton Howe
Part 2

October 5, 2003  Havana, Cuba -

Three years ago when Paulina Zelitsky and Paul Weinzweig, co-owners of Advanced Digital Communications, saw the first side scan sonar images of the deep water structures off the
western tip of Cuba, some underwater objects were dark as metals sometimes show up on magnetometers. I asked Paul if any more data supported the initial cesium magnetometer
data which implied there might be metal coatings on some of the megalithic structures.



Computer graphic frame depicting ADC International, Inc. ship, R/V Ulises equipped with:



Dynamic Positioning system equipped with two 500 HP lateral thrusters.

20 ton capacity A-frame, 2 cranes and 3 large ultra-deep water winches, including one oceanographic winch.

Posidonia 6000 - USBL bottom positioning system ranged 10 km with sub-meter accuracy.

Deeptow Side Scan Sonar and Cesium Magnetometer with Real Time processing.

ROV equipped with TMS, 3 video cameras, manipulator and excavator.

DGPS, Digital Gyrocompass and Ecosounder, Electronic Navigation System "WE CAN" integration system.
 
Integrated computer and video network with monitors in all labs and theater for audience of 44 to monitor
subsea video in real time.

Satellite INMARSAT B and C communications system.



Deep tow system comprised of sidescan sonar and cesium magnetometer.

Image © 2002 by ADC International.

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Interview:

Paul Weinzweig, Partner with Paulina Zelitsky, Advanced Digital Communications International, Inc., Havana, Cuba: "It's possible there could be metal because sometimes the darker the image, the more dense the material. But again, this is only hypothetical and would need to be verified by visual probes, by an ROV (Remote Operated Video) and cameras and good lighting. The area is quite extensive, spread out over several kilometers and we've barely touched it in terms of video probes.



Map of Atlantis based on Plato's descriptions, published in the New York American
on October 20, 1912 from

Imagining Atlantis © 1998 by Richard Ellis.


http://www.altarcheologie.nl/index1.html?underwater_ruins/cuba/Earthfiles_com_2.htm