The Underwater City in Cuba

17 Jan

The location of an alleged underwater city in Cuba. Photo: Wikipedia

According to legend there is a sunken city off the coast of Cuba that was built by an ancient civilization. It was first discovered by scientists in 2001 and allegedly contains many pyramids, statues and other structures that have been covered by the ocean.

Where is Cuba’s Sunken City?

Cuba’s sunken city is located off the coast of the Guanahacabibes Peninsula in the Pinar del Río Province of Cuba. It was discovered by marine engineer Pauline Zalitzki and her husband Paul Weinzwieg, owners of a company working on an exploratory project in conjunction with the Cuban government.

The underwater city covers an area of 2 square kilometers. Zalitzki and her team filmed sonar images of the site, capturing many strange stone structures. These included large circles, pyramids and smooth blocks of stone. Zalitzki initially believed that the site could have been the remains of a large urban centre than had been reclaimed by the waves.

Scientists were intrigued by the discovery but the city is so far under water that further exploration is difficult.

Is Cuba’s Sunken City the Remains of an Advanced Civilization?

Several geological experts have weighed in on the underwater city in Cuba.

Senior editor at the National Geographic, John Enclave, studyed the images and offered this comment:

"They are interesting anomalies, but that's as much as anyone can say right now, but I'm no expert on sonar and until we are able to actually go down there and see, it will be difficult to characterize them."

A respected professor of oceanography named Robert Ballard said of the discovery: "That's too deep. I'd be surprised if it was human. You have to ask yourself: how did it get there? I've looked at a lot of sonar images in my life, and it can be sort of like looking at an ink blot -- people can sometimes see what they want to see. I'll just wait for a bit more data."

A Marine geologist named Manuel Iturralde believed the site was fascinating but more study was needed before any conclusions could be drawn. He believes it would take at least 50,000 years for human made structures to sink to the depth at which they were found. As far as we are aware none of the humans that were alive 50,000 years ago were capable of building such structures.

Do you think the underwater city in Cuba is man made or just a strange naturally occurring structure? Let us know in the comments.