Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms

Ancient Gateways of the Past

THE LOST CITY OF ATLANTIS

from the book "History of Bimini, Volume I"
by Ashley B. Saunders, 2000
pages 45-53

The oldest mention of Atlantis is found in two of Greek philosopher Plato's dialogues, "Timaeus" and "Critias" which date back to 300 B.C.  Plato introduces Atlantis in a conversation between Solon and certain Egyptian priests at Sais, as a huge island, existing about 10,000 B.C., with an ideal government and advanced agriculture, an elaborate system of canals and bridges, opulent temples with ceilings of ivory and roofs of gold.  Rules by Poseidon (Neptune) and his ten sons, including Atlas, the Kingdom threatened to overwhelm Europe.  Then its people grew corrupt, and the island was violently destroyed by volcanoes.

Early scholars took the story literally and believed Atlantis sank in the Atlantic Ocean near the Straits of Gibraltar.  Most today believe Plato meant the story as an allegory for human potential and sins, and believe that the story of Plato's Atlantis - as well as the flood that inspired the story of Noah in the Bible - arose from the volcanic destruction of Thira, an island 100 miles off Greece in the Aegean Sea, in 1470 B.C.
 

According to Plato:

"The Atlantic Ocean was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth you Greeks call as you say, "the Pillars of Heracles" (Hercules), there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia (Asia Minor) together; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean...Yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent.  Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of Kings, a great and marvelous power, which held sway over the island and over many other islands also and parts of the continent; and, moreover, of the lands here within the Straits they ruled over Libya as far as Egypt, and over Europe as far as Tuscany."

The story of Atlantis has since revived.  In Plato's time, however, Atlantis was basically a Mediterranean story.  Since that time historians and scholars believe Atlantis could have existed anywhere from the Mediterranean to the North American Continent.  In the 19th century ships sailed the Atlantic Ocean to explore the sea floor in search of Atlantis, and before World War II scientific societies existed for the sole purpose of exploring the problem of the sunken island.  In recent years the search for Atlantis has expanded to the Bahamas, primarily in the area of the Biminis.

Plato, who was born in Athens about 427 BC, gave the world its first literary reference to Atlantis, insisting on the truth of his story of a paradise destroyed. The bronze bust of the philosopher is in an archaeological museum in Naples. Plato died in Greece in about 347 BC; but his ideas, and his description of the lost city, are as vivid as ever.

Edgar Cayce, the "sleeping-prophet," (1877-1945) believed he could diagnose illness, interpret dreams, read the past and foretell the future in a hypnotic trance.  It was in exploring his subjects' past lives that Cayce discovered Atlantis, a topic that came to make up 30% of Cayce's life readings.

His concepts were even more wondrous than Plato's.  Caybe believed Atlantis was an island near Bimini where an advanced civilization peaked in 50,000 BC and was destroyed in 10,000 BC.  By understanding the Earth's fundamental electrical and gravitational forces, Atlanteans built "boats" that flew by something akin to teleportation.  The same forces helped Atlanteans lift mammoth stones to build splendid temples.  The end began when the Atlanteans became corrupt and developed the "fire stone", a "terrible mighty crystal" of incredible force.  It was to be for good, to control the "great animals overrunning the Earth".  But somehow its rays "set in motion the fires in the inner portions of the earth".  And volcanoes destroyed Atlantis.

In 1934, Edgar Cayce, the "sleeping-prophet" went into one of his hypnotic trances and made a prediction:

"The sunken portion of Atlantis...a portion of the temples, may yet be discovered under the slime of ages of sea water near what is known as Bimini, off the coast of Florida.  Expect it in 1968, not so far away."

This is the earliest known mention of Atlantis in connection with Bimini. Cayce died in 1945 and Atlantis and Bimini remained relatively unnoticed until 1957, when Dimitri Rebikoff arrived in Bimini for the first time with his sophisticated submarine Pegasus.  During his trip he also visited some of the surrounding islands.  At that time some Bimini fisherman spoke to him about some miraculously big flat rocks in 15 feet of water near Paradise Point, North Bimini.  For more than three generations the fishermen of Bimini had peered down through their glass bottom bucket at these giant stones in bafflement and wonder.  Perhaps Rebikoff might provide them with some answers as to their origin.  Rebikoff was short on cash and could not afford to pay the local fisherman the required fee to guide him to the stones.Besides, no one at that time imagined that some archaeological site could be found.  Rebikoff did not follow up the proposition.

In 1968, further indications of an unusual formation of the sea-bed came from observation by an aircraft pilot who noticed distinctive bands of coloration in the water near Paradise Point, North Bimini.  An investigation was made by Dr. J. Manson Valentine, a curator of the Science Museum of Miami, who was later joined by Dimitri Rebikoff, with special underwater photographic apparatus for taking wide-angle pictures.  Valentine had been studying the Great Bahama Bank from the air and from the water for more than 20 years.

J. Manson Valentine was led to the site of the stones by Bimini fisherman, Angelo Rolle.  Valentine went swimming int he crystal clear water off Bimini's Paradise Point, looked down at the bottom 15 feet below, and discovered what today is called the Bimini road.

He saw hundreds of flat rocks, eight feet square and two feet think, maybe ten tons each, arranged not quite tongue-in-grove, but in a half mile-long, 100 yard reverse "J" running southwest to northeast.  Was it natural or man-made? Simple beach-rock or the road to Atlantis.  Most geologist called it natural.
 

According to Valentine:

"Believe me, these are not squares of beach rock arranged by nature in neat rows to foll gullible underwater archaeologists.  Many of the stones are of flint-hard micrite, unlike soft beach rock.  The lines of closely fitted stones are straight, mutually parallel, and terminate in cornerstones.  The stone avenue does not follow the curving beach rock-line, which follows the shape of the island, but is straight.  The long avenue contains enormous flat stones propped up at their corners by pillar stones like the dolmens of the coast of Western Europe.  Perfect rectangles, right angles, and rectilinear configurations are unaccountable in a natural formation.  One end of the complex swings into a beautifully curved corner before vanishing under the sand.  No one has yet dug underneath it, so we don't know how far down the stones go."

Valentine mentioned the Bimini location and numerous other bottom features as being the works of ancient man.  A prehistoric race that could transport and position cyclopean stones in ways that remain a mystery to us.  He claimed that the scores of submerged structures indicated remnants of a buried civilization, and that the Bimini foundation may be a man-made dike or ceremonial road built before a flood at least 11,000 years ago.

In 1969, Dimitri Rebikoff, recognized as an outstanding inventor of underwater exploration and survey equipment, made an aerial photographic survey of the 1500 feet long "Bimini Road".  Rebikoff is convinced the great stones, some of which measure 16 feet square are part of an ancient man-made structure which could have been a giant harbour for antediluvian vessels.  According to Rebikoff, the stones lie in an orderly row, stretching 656 yards, the length of six and a half football fields, covered with silt and seaweed but plainly visible.  Then they turn 90 degrees, stretch for another 328 feet, then turn again, to form a deep U.  Three lines of stones, resembling groynes or piers, protrude from the base of the U some 75 feet.  Rebikoff noted the blocks are limestone and have been submerged from 6,000 to 10,000 years. Rebikoff, who has explored similar underwater sites in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, claimed the submerged Bimini harbour is evidence of a high civilization, a civilization that could never have existed unless it had ships. The Bimini site is completely identical in design to known harbour and installations submerged in the Mediterranean, which indicates they were built at the same period, by the same seafaring people.
 

According to Rebikoff:

"We have to consider that 10,000 years ago, the Bahamas was an enormous shelf above water and could contain millions of people.  The numerous discoveries seem to prove that hypothesis.  We still do not really know anything on the civilization.  The problem is evidently archaeologic and not geologic.  We have to find the key to this formidable enigma."

Dr. David Zink, a former United States Air Force Academy English professor intrigued with the origin of myths, arrived to study the "Bimini Road" in 1974. He sailed all the way from Galveston, Texas on the "Makai II".  In Miami Dr. J. Manson Valentine gives Dr. Zink a full briefing including slides taken from the air.  Dr. Zink spent six weeks of reconnaissance at Bimini.  An initial tape-and-compass survey is done on the Road.  Fathometer profile from seaward to beachward leads of Road indicate a roughly horizontal seafloor.  Beachrock is usually formed on a slope.

In 1975, Dr. Zink spent seventy days of field work at Bimini based on "Makai II" and "Gypsy".  He made a tape-and-compass survey of the Bimini underwater road site.  The East Site was probed down to 9 feet with an airlife; no stonework found.  However, two artifacts were found.  A tongue-and-groove building block and a stylized marble head.

In 1977, the marble head was hoisted and delivered to the Bimini Commissioner.

As archaeological director for the Bahamas Antiquities, Dr. Zink had geologist analyze the stones, and determined that they were, indeed, sedimentary, but made of shells that do not occur naturally here.  They must have been quarried elsewhere and placed here, he concluded.  By Atlanteans.  From the accumulated evidence, Dr. Zink is convinced that the "Bimini Road" site is part of a vast complex of sacred geometry, such as at Sacsahuaman and Tiahuanaco in the Ands Mountains of Peru, or Stonehenge in Britain.  He claimed it may prove to be one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the Western Hemisphere.  Dr. Zink believes the megalithic stones were transported to the site and put in place when the sea level in the Bahamas was much lower, perhaps 30 feet lower as far back as 8,000 years ago.
 

According to Zink:

"The megalithic blocks are a sedimentary rock composed of a shell-hash cemented together in a marine environment and subsequently hardened by re-crystallization (micritized).  The blocks of this site may have been quarried from a homogeneous bed elsewhere and brought to Bimini or cut and shaped on or near the site.  Trace-element analysis so far does not support the latter possibility.  In either case, additional shell-hash blocks with dissimilar cementing has also been a part of the structure."

Dr. Zink then departed radically from traditional archaeological methods. He asked a Houston, Texas psychic named Carol Huffstickler to do a reading of the site.  She astounded Dr. Zink by telling him the stones were not a road, but fallen pillars of an ancient sacred temple.  They were probably erected in about 28,000 BC she said.  By Atlanteans.  She said the Atlanteans were aided by advanced, friendly beings from the star cluster Pleiades.

Dr. Zink, in his 1979 book, The Ancient Stones Speak, said the road is not an isolated phenomenon.  He said it fits in a neat "Planetary grid" with other myserious megaliths, from the Great Pyramid in Giza to Ankor Wat to Stonehenge to the curious stone structures on Easter Island.  Dr. Zink believes many civilizations, separated widely in both history and geography, came to understand that the Earth's natural magnetic and electrical energy flows closer to the surface at certain places.  At those sites, which girdle the Earth in a geodesic dome pattern, they built their sacred temples.

To date, Dr. Zink's investigation at Bimini has produced only two artifacts. In 1975, Dr. Zink discovered a tongue-and-grove building block fragment which was almost completely buried under the sand.  It proved to be a mixture of sandstone and limestone not found elsewhere on the island.  Also in 1975, one of Dr. Zink's divers, Gary Varney, discovered what proved to be a highly stylized animal head worked from marble, another material not native to the island.  So far, neither of these artifacts has been related to known Meso-American culture.

Atlantis, whether true or not, according to one's point of view, has continued to haunt the consciousness of mankind to the present.  Whether we believe it or not it has remained a part of our culture.