Scientific support for Cuba's lost city
HAVANA — A Canadian-led expedition's contention that a temple-like structure exists on the seabed near Cuba is gaining scientific credibility.
Manuel Iturralde, one of Cuba's top geologists, plans to tell
an international conference of geophysicists in Havana tomorrow there is
no geological explanation for
the megalithic stone formations found in about 700 metres of water some four kilometres off the western tip of the Caribbean island.
Iturralde said while it's too early to say definitively that the structures are man-made, evidence is growing.
More studies are needed to determine whether the symmetrically
arranged formations, which occupy an area of about 20 square kilometres,
are indeed the ruins
of a sunken city. But, Iturralde said he found physical evidence of "significantly strong seismic activity...that has not been previously recorded."
The deep-ocean exploration team — led by Paulina Zelitsky, president
of Advanced Digital Communications and a Soviet-trained offshore engineer
in Canada for 30 years — stumbled on the site while combing the ocean floor for sunken galleons in July, 2000.
Most scientists have rejected the idea of a lost city, but Iturralde's
seismic data coincides with a theory that an earthquake may have led to
the sudden sinking of
an island that once lay between the Guanahacabibes Peninsula, at the western tip of Cuba, and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Iturralde said it if the hypothesis proves to be true, it would change the entire understanding of Caribbean history.