Inside ‘lost' 6,000-year-old underwater city on coast of Cuba with stone structures 2,000ft below sea's surface
Marine engineer Paulina Zelitsky and her husband, Paul Weinzweig, stunned the world in 2001 when sonar scans revealed huge stone formations on the seabed near the Guanahacabibes Peninsula.
5
5
5
The images showed what looked like pyramids, circular structures, and massive blocks 'reminiscent of an urban development,' according to BBC News.
Some of the stones measured up to 10 feet and appeared deliberately stacked.
'It's a really wonderful structure which really looks like it could have been a large urban center,' Zelitsky said at the time.
The Canadian team, from Advanced Digital Communications (ADC), estimated the ruins could be more than 6,000 years old — making them older than the Egyptian pyramids.
But despite the jaw-dropping find, no follow-up expedition has ever been carried out.
While social media users today speculate the ruins are proof of Atlantis, experts remain cautious.
'It would be totally irresponsible to say what it was before we have evidence,' Zelitsky warned back in 2001.
Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde-Vinent, from the Natural History Museum, admitted the structures were 'extremely peculiar' but stressed the depth posed a major problem.
'It's strange, it's weird; we've never seen something like this before, and we don't have an explanation for it,' he told The Washington Post.
Iturralde estimated it would take up to 50,000 years for the seabed to sink that far, far earlier than any known advanced civilization.
Michael Faught, an underwater archaeology expert at Florida State University, agreed.
He said: 'It would be cool if Zelitsky and Weinzweig were right, but it would be really advanced for anything we would see in the New World for that time frame.
'The structures are out of time and out of place.'
Other scientists have argued the formations are likely natural rock structures.
Despite skepticism, the discovery continues to fuel conspiracy theories online.
'Civilizations that existed before the ice age, perhaps multiple civilizations that rose and fell... The historical knowledge that has been lost (or hidden),' one person posted on X.
Another claimed: 'There is so much hidden history. Finding it so fascinating. Everything we been taught is a lie.'
Funding problems and Cuba's strict control over foreign expeditions have also been blamed for the lack of further investigation.
A planned dive in 2002 was scrapped, according to US oceanographer Sylvia Earle.
Weinzweig himself once insisted: 'The structures we found on the side scan sonar simply are not explicable from a geological point of view.
'There is too much organisation, too much symmetry, too much repetition of form.'
Another underwater enigma often compared to Cuba's 'lost city' is the Yonaguni monument off Japan's coast.
Discovered in the 1980s, the massive stone formation sits around 90 feet underwater and features sharp-angled steps and terraces that appear man-made.
Tests of the rock show it could be more than 10,000 years old.
If carved by humans, it would date back to a time before the last ice age — a theory that, like the Cuban ruins, continues to divide experts over whether it's a natural formation or evidence of a vanished civilisation.
5
5
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Vast underwater city discovered near 'resting place of Noah's Ark' rewrites Bible story known to millions
An ancient underwater city beneath Turkey's Lake Van could potentially reveal secrets that challenge the origins of Noah's Ark. The sprawling ruins lie 85 feet below the surface near the town of Gevaş, just 150 miles from Mount Ararat, the mountain traditionally believed to be the final resting place of the biblical boat. Geological evidence suggests that the ruins were submerged 12,000 to 14,500 years ago, when a Mount Nemrut eruption blocked the Mirat River, and caused massive flooding during the Younger Dryas, a period of extreme climate upheaval. While mainstream scholars dismiss the theory, many independent researchers believe this disaster wiped out an advanced civilization, one so ancient that it may have inspired the earliest versions of the Great Flood story. 'As far as I'm aware, any civilizations in the last 6,000 years did not have the technological means to create the type of stonework we're seeing here,' said independent researcher Matt LaCroix, who spoke about the discovery on the Matt Beall Limitless podcast. LaCroix and an international dive team are preparing to explore the site in September using advanced imaging tools to map the ruins, which he believes could help rewrite humanity's timeline. The underwater complex spans more than half a mile, featuring a stone fortress flanked by circular temples with precisely carved masonry. There is also a capstone engraved with a six-spoked 'Flower of Life' symbol, an ancient motif also found at sacred sites in Peru and Bolivia. Discovered in 1997 by Turkish underwater filmmaker Tossen Salin while studying Lake Van's unusual micro-invertebrates, the ruins have remained largely unknown to the public. While archaeologists confirm the structures exist, many attribute them to the Urartian period around 3,000 years ago, or even to the medieval era. But they have admitted that the site has yet to be fully studied or definitively dated. LaCroix, however, said in a July episode of the podcast that geological data told a different story. He explained how soil sampling and analysis of Mount Nemrut show clear evidence of a massive eruption around 12,000 years ago. As a result, Lake Van's water level rose dramatically, over 100 feet, according to some estimates. Because stone cannot be carbon-dated, researchers hope to find organic material, such as sediment layers or artifacts, which could confirm the age of the ruins. But collecting such evidence underwater poses major challenges. The site's sophisticated stonework, with tightly interlocking blocks, angular joints, and no visible binding agents, appears to rival the engineering seen in megalithic sites like Sacsayhuamán in Peru. 'You can see that the temple has been significantly damaged, said LaCroix. 'All the stones on the top have broken off except those at the edges. The site resembles Peruvian masonry, with precisely angled stones forming triangular joints, and only the front appears flat. It's beautiful and would have been perfectly carved.' He believes the shared architectural features, symbolic motifs, and astronomical alignments across sites in Turkey, South America and Asia suggest the existence of a long-lost global civilization. Scholars have long acknowledged that the biblical flood story likely evolved from earlier Mesopotamian texts. Ancient cuneiform tablets from Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian cultures, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Atrahasis, and the Eridu Genesis, describe a massive flood sent to destroy early civilization, and a chosen man who builds a vessel to save life on Earth. In these tales, the survivor is called Ziusudra or Utnapishtim, names predating Noah by thousands of years. Excavation logs from Shuruppak, Iraq, believed to be the home of this early flood survivor, show a distinct flood layer above ancient Sumerian ruins. These records, uncovered at the Penn Museum, provide physical evidence of a catastrophic event similar to those described in the ancient texts. Even the Babylonian Map of the World, the oldest known map, marks the Ararat region near Lake Van as a place of ancient significance, possibly linked to tales of a lone survivor who emerged after a global deluge. LaCroix argues that the biblical version is not being dismissed but rather reframed in its historical and cultural context. He told Beall to picture a thriving civilization along Lake Van, building temples and structures on stable, elevated ground they believed would last forever. The lake's water level was stable for millennia, until the eruption of Mount Nemrut changed everything. 'It's not that Lake Van would have had to have been 85 feet lower,' said LaCroix. 'It would have had to have been more like 100 feet lower or more, because these ruins are at 85 feet deep. So, what could account for a lake rising over 100 feet?'
Times
2 days ago
- Times
Fight to save ‘most beautiful snail' from most voracious predator — us
No one knows why the Polymita snails of Cuba are so beautiful, or why their beauty is so varied. Probably, though, the array of different colours and stripes evolved as a way of avoiding predators. Which is why it is so ironic that those adornments are — today — the reason it is attracting the most voracious predator of all: us. Conservationists have warned the shells of this disappearing species are being sold to collectors, who may not even realise the snails are endangered. Now a global collaboration of scientists is looking to better understand and breed in captivity these magnificent molluscs — with the hope of preserving them. 'They are so beautiful and extraordinarily variable,' said Professor Angus Davison, from the University of Nottingham. This means that as a snail scientist he finds himself in an unusual situation. 'While all snails are interesting and beautiful to me, most snails, by and large, are not outwardly beautiful to other people.' He has been part of a team collecting samples in Cuba, with a view to mapping their DNA. He is interested in how many species there are and how they are related. It is believed that there are six, but traditional methods of counting rely heavily on intricate analysis of their genitals. The hope is that genetic data could both be more definitive, and also provide clues not contained in their penises to explain why they are like this at all. Paradoxically, said Davison, being colourful can be a way of evading predation — and this is his leading hypothesis. 'You might assume they stand out against the background. That's not necessarily true, depending on where they live.' But being very different from each other, in the way they are, could be a positive survival strategy. 'Most likely there's a bird out there that eats the snails. That bird gets a search image in its head for the most common snail — let's say it's a yellow snail. And then you get a gene change that makes a green snail. The green snail will not be eaten because the bird doesn't see them. And so the green snails will become more common. 'And then another mutation arises, which makes an orange snail. And so on.' Until, eventually, there are enough different colours that while they evade birds, they catch the eyes of tourists instead. It is illegal to collect and sell the snails, but it is hard to enforce. 'The problem is, Cuba's undergoing very great financial hardships. So there's a very great incentive for locals to collect the shells and sell them.' Davison's worry is that publicising the beauty of the snails might increase the market. His hope, though, is that educating people about them could decrease it. 'No person in the UK would buy rhino horn if offered it on a holiday. But there are people who will happily buy a shell, not even thinking about the animal or where it came from.'
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Daily Mail
Discovery of 6,000-year-old underwater city prompts historical rethink
However, an even bigger mystery unfolded after the discovery: no one ever went back to examine the alleged lost city in more than two decades. One factor that has held back further research has been the fact that fellow scientists have continued to voice their skepticism about the sunken city, saying it would have taken up to 50,000 years for a city to sink that far underwater. Other critics have contended that the 'structures' are natural rock formations, arguing that an entire city wouldn't have been so well preserved if it sank during a catastrophic seismic disaster. The neglected underwater structures have recently resurfaced on social media, with many people claiming that the explorers found the ruins of Atlantis. However, Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde-Vinent of Cuba's Natural History Museum was one of the skeptics who cautioned that the stone structures could be natural formations. 'It would be totally irresponsible to say what it was before we have evidence,' Zelitsky added in a 2001 interview with BBC. Unfortunately, more evidence was never gathered, as a follow-up expedition to Cuba's Guanahacabibes Peninsula never took place. Social media users have continued to question why the research into this mysterious site was abandoned, with some claiming the implications of a city predating the ancient Egyptians have triggered a cover-up. 'Civilizations that existed before the ice age, perhaps multiple civilizations that rose and fell... The historical knowledge that has been lost (or hidden),' one person on X said. 'There is so much hidden history. Finding it so fascinating. Everything we been taught is a lie,' another person claimed. Despite rampant speculation of an archeological conspiracy, scientists have argued that there are legitimate reasons why the lost city of Cuba isn't real. In 2002, Iturralde noted that the structures were so deep underwater, it would have taken much longer than 6,000 years for this area to sink nearly half a mile due to shifting tectonic plates. If this were a sunken city that took roughly 50,000 years to reach these depths, it would completely change our understanding of human evolution. Currently, scientists have concluded that modern humans (Homo sapiens) were hunter-gatherers 50,000 years ago, since there's no evidence they created urban societies or sophisticated buildings. 'It's strange, it's weird; we've never seen something like this before, and we don't have an explanation for it,' Iturralde told The Washington Post. Michael Faught, a specialist in underwater archaeology at Florida State University, also shared his doubts that these structures were man-made. 'It would be cool if Zelitsky and Weinzweig were right, but it would be really advanced for anything we would see in the New World for that time frame. The structures are out of time and out of place,' Faught told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The unexplored city isn't the first mysterious structure to potentially rewrite human history. Archeologists have actually found several allegedly man-made temples which significantly predate the Egyptians, including Göbekli Tepe in Turkey - a site believed to have been inhabited from around 9500 BC to at least 8000 BCE. That's over 5,000 years before the Egyptian pyramids were built and roughly 6,000 years before Stonehenge. Another underwater structure discovered near Japan, called the Yonaguni monument, features several sharp-angled steps that stand roughly 90 feet tall and appear to be made entirely of stone, leading many to believe it was man-made. Tests of the stone have shown it to be over 10,000 years old, meaning if a civilization built this pyramid by hand, it would have taken place before this region sank under water - more than 12,000 years ago. Along with scientists widely discounting the findings in Cuba as a natural phenomenon, its location so close to the socialist national have made returning to the site politically difficult. Advanced Digital Communications, the Canadian company that was mapping the ocean floor in Cuba's territorial waters, entered into a contract with the government of President Fidel Castro to conduct the original expedition.
