I've noticed that Aaron DuVal's phony press releases broadcasting unsubstantiated and sensational claims of locating Atlantean temples near Bimini and translating Atlantean records are still widely-circulated on the Internet as "evidence" for Atlantis.
These two informative and revealing articles should help to put that to rest
-I hope! R.I.P.
IN SEARCH OF THE STONES OF ATLANTISAndrew Collins with the aid of Egyptologist Simon Cox, pursues the truth
behind the tales of Atlantean `temples' being found off the coast of Florida.On Labour Day 1968, an underwater archaeologist and zoologist associated
with the University of Miami named J. Valentine Manson, believed he had
identified a man-made structure of enormous size in shallow waters,
north-west of Bimini, a tiny Bahaman island some 55 miles east of the
Florida coast. With the appearance of a reversed letter J, it consisted of
multiple rows of gigantic, close fitting, pillow-shaped stones that ran for
a distance of 633 yards before making an abrupt turn and disappearing
beneath the fast shifting sands. After careful study, some of the huge
blocks were found to rest on tiny corner stones, or plugs, of either
limestone or granite, very much like the megalithic dolmens or table stones
of western Europe and New England.
The site became known as the Bimini Road and was extensively investigated
during the 1970s by a research team led by ancient mysteries writer David
Zink. Although Valentine, Zink and other primary researchers in this field,
such as Dimitri Rebikoff and Bill Donato, became convinced that the stone
causeway was man-made, oceanographic archaeologists and geologists have
repeatedly dismissed the structure as misidentified beach-rock, a
conclusion hotly disputed by supporters of the road theory.
Since the 1970s many more examples of inexplicable stones structures have
been detected in the clear blue waters of the Great Bahama Bank, which
stretches between Bimini in the north and the right-hand shoulder of South
America in the south. Yet never has the archaeological community taken even
the slightest interest in these strange underwater anomalies, other than to
dismiss them with rational explanations.
Such was the situation when on 21 June 1997 a curious E-mail was posted to
certain press agencies and newspapers across the United States. It claimed
that irrefutable evidence of antediluvian `temples' had been discovered off
the coast of Bimini. All was to be revealed at a press conference to be
organised on 25 July by one Aaron Duval, the author of the E-mail and the
`president' of a local `Egyptological Society', at the Miami Museum of
Science.
In subsequent releases despatched between 6 and 15 July to the same
sources, tantalising details of the alleged discoveries were outlined by
Duval. The so-called `Ancient Bimini Temples', or `Scott Stones' (named
after the alleged discover), were said to have been constructed of huge
blocks of stone, each around six feet in thickness, and ranging in length
from nine to twelve feet. These came in three different colours - red,
white and black, bringing to mind the multi-coloured walls that Plato, the
Greek poet and philosopher, spoke of in his classic account of the fabled
island city of Atlantis. Further linking the Bimini `temples' with Atlantis
was Duval's claim that the `walls' were coated in three different types of
metal - later revealed as brass, copper and iron. Plato had also said that
the walls of the lost city were coated in different types of metals,
including gold, brass, tin and an unknown substance called orichalcum,
which was said to have `flashed' with a `red light'.
More peculiarly, Duval linked the alleged site with Ancient Egypt, claiming
that `casing stones', like those that originally covered the Great Pyramid,
had been found on the site. Furthermore, he spoke of the presence of
`bore-holes', similar to examples present in the bedrock besides some of
the unfinished obelisks to be seen in the famous granite quarries at Aswan.
In addition to these features, Duval stated that the Scott Stones possessed
`orbital plots of the planets and what seem to have been intricate star
shafts', or `sky maps', which `recorded the paths of various heavenly
bodies (particularly) Saturn and Jupiter'.
These were serious claims that needed to be checked out, so my colleague
Simon Cox and I made immediate contact with Duval via the telephone,
expressing our wish to join him for the intended conference at the Museum
of Science. Regularly we would ring Duval for a friendly call, and at first
he was open with us, but then things started to change. Shortly afterwards
the intended press conference was cancelled and Duval advised us not to
make the journey out to Miami. However, since we had already purchased
non-returnable tickets, this was now impossible and, if nothing else, a few
days on Miami South Beach seemed like a good idea to me.
Simon and I arrived in Miami on 24 July and following several calls from
our hotel room, we were finally able to meet Duval in the hotel foyer (he
refused to meet us anywhere else) two days later. Yet after three hours in
his company he had revealed nothing whatsoever about the so-called `Scott
Stones'. Instead he spoke vaguely about some tests that were to be
conducted by a local laboratory on some waterproof `glue', or mortar, he
had found attached to some of the stones.
He also spoke much about Edgar Cayce ...
In 1940 America's well-known `sleeping prophet' predicted that part of
`Poseidia will be among the first portions of Atlantis to rise again.
Expect it in '68 or '69'. Incredibly, he had gone on to state that: `A
portion of the (Atlantean) temple may yet be discovered under the slime of
ages of seawater - near what is known as Bimini, off the coast of Florida'.
Although J. Manson Valentine was fully aware of this prophecy when he first
came across the Bimini Road in 1968, its fulfilment managed to forge a
permanent link between Bimini and Plato's conception of a now sunken island
metropolis called Atlantis. Indeed, it has ensured that the Edgar Cayce
Foundation has taken a healthy, and very active, interest in the shallow
waters of the Great Bahama Bank right through to the present day.
Since we could do little more, Simon and I returned to the United Kingdom
and, despite Duval's cool reception towards us, we kept in touch with him.
Within weeks he was claiming that tests carried out on the mortar-like
`glue' found attached to some of the Scott Stones were providing a date of
12,000 years BP (before present). He was still awaiting final confirmation
of the results from the laboratory concerned, but said he hoped they would
arrive within a matter of days. That was in August 1997. In February 1998
Duval was still claiming that the full results had not been received. Yet
as with everything else he was alluding to, Duval refused point blank to
discuss the matter, and would not reveal the nature of this revolutionary
new method that was able to scientifically date stone mortar.
Clouding the issue still further was the involvement of a major
international publisher who, with the help of a London-based publicist and
literary agent, offered Duval a seven-figure deal for an exclusive book on
his discoveries. In our opinion, it was for this reason that he had called
off the initial press conference planned for 25 July 1997 and had been
unwilling to discuss his alleged discoveries. It is our knowledge, however,
that by February 1998 the publisher in question had still not received even
a two-page synopsis of the intended book - Duval apparently blaming
ill-health, family commitments and the lack of any final test results for
this extraordinary delay.
So what is the truth behind these extraordinary claims? Were the Scott
Stones simply a creation of Duval's mind - a fiction without any basis in
fact? In spite of his reluctance to talk, Duval appeared to be telling the
truth. This therefore implied that he did have something to offer -
something that in his opinion constituted evidence of Atlantean temples.
Then there was the question of the location of the so-called `Scott
Stones'. On being asked whether he would use a boat or plane to reach the
site, he refused point blank to answer and became noticeably agitated -
even getting up on one occasion with the words `I know what you're trying
to do', ie. wheedle the location out of him. Add this to his claim that he
often visited the Scott Stones and it implied that they were easily
accessible to him, perhaps even in vicinity of Miami itself, and nowhere
near Bimini. More significantly, on being prompted as to their position, he
would say only that some of the stones were in shallow waters, some were at
the low tide mark while still others were permanently on display above the
water line.
We could make no sense of these enigmatic statements until, after several
trans-Atlantic telephone conversations with leading figures in the Bimini
project (none of whom believed Duval's claims), we heard about the work of
Richard Wingate, a maverick mineral prospector and explorer. He had become
involved with the search for `Atlantean' structures in the Bimini area
during the mid-1970s, around the time that David Zink was conducting his
yearly expeditions to the Bimini Road.
Wingate believed he had identified new `Atlantean' structures in the
shallow waters of the Great Bahama Bank. Unfortunately, they included a
scattered array of column drums fashioned from white marble which he took
to be the remains of an in situ temple structure. However, as is easy to
realise, it seems more likely that this site is composed of ballast or
loose masonry deposited here by a colonial wreck during the eighteenth or
nineteenth century, a fact that has often been invoked to show the supposed
woolly-natured loose logic of those working on the Bimini project. Yet it
was his claim to have discovered worked and dressed stone blocks, many
displaying evidence of advanced drilling techniques, on a Miami jetty that
had most caught our attention.
During a full-length interview on Atlantis and its association with the
Great Bahama Bank produced by Douglas Kenyon and Thomas Miller during the
late 1970s, Wingate reported how between the years 1925 and 1928 the US
Army Core of Engineers hired a Miami salvage company to collect large
quantities of stone ballast for the construction of various sea walls and
jetties in the Miami area, including those examples at Jupiter Inlet, north
of West Palm Beach, and at South Beach and Fisher Island, east of downtown
Miami. In this last case two miles of sea-walls of loose stone end in
parallel jetties that reach out like arms into the open sea for a distance
of around 400 yards.
According to Wingate, all these jetties and sea-walls contained large stone
blocks, mostly hard granite, basalt and coral, dredged from a shallow water
location named Moselle Shoals (formerly Moselle Reef), which lay some 30
miles north of Bimini. More significantly, he claimed that many of these
blocks were not only regular in shape, with right angles and smooth
surfaces, but that they also bore evidence of circular bore holes which
regularly penetrated their entire width, depth or length for anything up to
twelve feet. Strangest of all was his claim that some granite blocks
possessed five-sided bore-holes which appeared to turn as they passed
through the solid rock, rather like the barrelling of a rifle. Wingate
argued that these stone blocks were among those removed from Moselle
Shoals, and even managed to find and interview on camera an ageing seaman
who could recall the several barge-loads of rock being transported from the
Great Bahama Bank to Miami and Jupiter Inlet. This now elderly gentleman
also recalled that one of the barges got into trouble and finally sank to
the bottom where it remains to this day.
Video footage and photographic stills were shown of the sea-walls and
jetties in question, while there was close ups of the stone blocks
containing either circular or five-sided bore-holes. Clearly, if Wingate
was correct in his surmise, then it strongly suggested that an advanced
culture with a highly sophisticated technological capability may well have
been responsible for the construction of the stone structures found on the
Great Bahama Bank. This would have been strong evidence in support of
Cayce's prophecy suggesting that the remains of Atlantis, in particular
part of the temple of Poseidia, would be discovered off the coast of
Bimini.
Was it possible that Duval's Scott Stones were none other than the cut and
machined blocks previously recorded both at Juniper Inlet and South Beach,
Miami, by Richard Wingate during the late 1970s? Firstly, Duval linked his
alleged discoveries with Egypt's highly advanced stone-ware technology, in
particular the stone cutting techniques evident in the granite quarries at
Aswan. This, of course, brought to mind the circular and five-sided
bore-holes referred to by Wingate. There was also the fact that Duval had
mentioned stones in three colours - black, red and white - bringing to mind
the basalt, granite and coral found among the jetty stones. In our opinion,
however, the clincher was when we heard Wingate say on the TV documentary
that attached to some of the jetty stones was a form of `Atlantean glue',
or mortar - exactly what Duval claimed to have discovered attached to the
remains of his `temples'. Since Wingate obviously believed that these
stones were fragments of an Atlantean temple once located at Moselle
Shoals, it was understandable why Duval should have come to the same
conclusions about the Scott Stones.
Yet if these assumptions were correct, and Duval had simply rediscovered
the stones placed among the sea-walls and jetties at Miami's South Beach
(near his home in North Beach), then why had he not credited Wingate for
these discoveries? Did he not know of his work, or had he deliberately
chosen to ignore Wingate's findings? More importantly, were the bored
stones spoken of by Wingate really of great antiquity? The elderly seaman
from the salvage company involved with removing the ballast from Moselle
Shoals had also pointed out that the rest of the stones used to construct
the sea-walls and jetties had come from stone quarries in North Carolina
and Maine. How could Wingate, and presumably Duval as well, tell such
stones apart? How could they know whether a stone block was either from the
sea-bed or a mainland quarry? It was a troubling thought, and one which
needed to be addressed one way or another.
In order to settle the matter, I decided to return to Miami, arriving there
on Thursday, 5 March 1998. The following day I took a taxi ride to Jupiter
Inlet and after much tramping around I found the sea-walls in question.
They lay either side of the narrow inlet and extended out as jetties into
the open sea. In the time permitting I was only able to inspect the stones
on the southern side, which consisted mainly of large pieces of white
granite and coral fragments, the latter coming from a location just
off-shore. Some of the granite possessed lines of shallow bore-holes along
their edges, which were clearly done to fracture the stone, while only one
piece of granite bore a distinctive circular borehole. It was around four
inches in diameter and penetrated through its entire depth for a distance
of some four feet. Unfortunately, all the granite stones were
unquestionably quarry off-cuts brought in fairly recently to extend the
existing sea-wall. This I know as I was able to speak to workmen actually
working on the reconstruction of the sea-wall during my visit.
Whether the stones in the sea-wall and jetty on the opposite side of the
inlet contained more ancient stones removed from Moselle Shoals remains to
be seen. Enigmatically, one work-man - looking like an extra from The
Village People - did say that he was unaware of the composition of many of
them, saying only that they were `as hard as Hades', whatever that was
supposed to mean. He was unable to elaborate any further.
Slightly disappointed I returned to Miami and the next day made my way out
to the sea-wall and jetty located at the most southerly point of South
Beach. Of the thousands of loose granite blocks examined many hundreds of
them bore evidence of circular drill holes of varying sizes and depths.
These generally took the form of short incisions in rows, clearly done to
fracture, weaken and finally break the rock away from the bedrock. Other
holes pierced right through the length, width or breadth of individual
blocks, just as Wingate had described. More significantly I found two good
examples of five-sided holes, yet I quickly realised that these had been
made by a powerful circular drill that had simply jolted off-centre as it
had penetrated through the rock, leaving a geometrical, five-sided
impression. More telling was the fact that all around one of these
five-sided holes were lines of perfectly circular holes that matched the
diameter of the curve that formed each of the five sides of the hole,
meaning that they had been made by the same drill. Elsewhere I even found a
hole with three beautifully curved sides, caused by the same drilling
defect.
There were literally thousands of huge stone blocks, many several tonnes a
piece, that bore clear evidence of sophisticated drilling operations, and
yet not one of them showed any sign of having lain in shallow waters for
many thousands of years. The ballast was clean and free of ages of slime
and coral, meaning that the vast majority of the stones making up these
sea-walls and jetties were, like those at Jupiter Inlet, quarry off-cuts
and not the remains of Atlantean temples. Even if the five-sided bore-holes
found by myself were not those featured in Wingate's TV documentary from
the 1970s, it is simply too much to imagine that the ancient Atlanteans
were able to bore five-sided holes in solid rock in the same manner as
modern-day quarry drills. In addition to all this, I came across granite
blocks stained with iron oxide, caused it would seem either by poles having
once been placed inside the circular holes or, in case, the remains of what
appeared to be a highly rusted drill bit still stuck in position. I also
found traces of modern concrete attached to some of the stones, making me
recall the `Atlantean glue' referred to both by Duval and Wingate - I
suppose you can mistake one for the other.
Removing the significance of the Miami and Jupiter jetty stones from the
equation leaves little significance in the knowledge that vast quantities
of rock was removed from Moselle Shoals to build sea-walls and jetties in
different parts of Florida in the 1920s. It also destroys Wingate's claims
to have found granite and basaltic masonry from the temples of Atlantis.
How this affects Duval's claims to have found Atlantean temples off the
Bimini coast is up to the reader to decide. The publishers who offered him
an enormous advance for exclusive rights to a book that would prove once
and for all the existence of Atlantis are still hoping that Duval might
have something to offer them.
Even if Duval's claims do come to nothing, it is our opinion that major
discoveries are to be made in the shallow waters of the Great Bahama Bank.
After his death in 1994, it was found that J. Manson Valentine had left a
detailed catalogue of no less than sixty-five proposed archaeological
sites, all of them in the vicinity of Bimini and the Bahaman islands in
general. Furthermore, Bill Donato and his specialist diving team have
recently discovered cut and dressed granite blocks in the vicinity of
Moselle Shoals that simply cannot be put down to either dumped ballast from
colonial vessels or local beach rock. There is also the Bimini Road itself
which, despite claims to the contrary, remains totally unexplained. Should
these sites prove to be as ancient as many now believe, then it is clear
that Egypt's Sphinx-building Elder culture may not have been alone, and
that it was simply one small piece of a much larger jigsaw on a global
scale.
-end-
1) Simon Cox is incorrectly credited as an "Egyptologist".
2) I disagree with Collin's assertion that the Atlanteans were incapable of machining stone. Engineer Chris Dunn determined that the sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid at Giza was hollowed out by a drill running at 5000rpm. If Cayce was correct concerning the Atlanteans level of technology, then boring holes into stone would be the least of their feats.
3) On the topic of ballast dumps at Moselle Shoals north of Bimini, Bill Donato (who is mentioned below) and I talked about the common misconception concerning what qualifies as "ballast" recently and such stones were not big jagged blocks, but small rounded "football-sized" stones which would not scrape or poke into wooden hulls.
4) Aaron Du Val issued tantallizing press releases for about five years in the latter half of the '90s but never once delivered any evidence and certainly no support data -no photographs, no diagrams, no maps, -nada! Nichts! A friend infilitrated his meetings in Miami and informed me that Du Val revealed absolutely nothing there but still charged admission! I challenged Du Val to "come clean" on this matter or go away, and he never replied.
5) The revised article omitting Simon Cox is located at
http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/stones.htmWarmest Regards,
Paul Bader