Does Bimini Road Lead to The Lost Civilization of Atlantis?
Off the coast of Bimini lies an ancient stone formation submerged beneath crystal blue waters. The mysterious path makes many wonder if it is remnants of the mythical lost land of Atlantis.
Researchers, geologists, archaeologists, and scientists alike have visited and studied the huge, flat stones off the coast of Bimini, known as the Bimini Road. They have tried for years to discern whether the limestone blocks are a natural phenomenon, or evidence of an ancient lost civilization.
Bimini is an island in the Bahamas, part of a chain of islands 50 miles east of Miami, Florida. A mere 20 feet down in the blue waters off the coast, a stone path can be found; large, flat rocks cut at right angles, seemingly set purposefully in straight lines. This impressive formation stretches half a mile along, with a pronounced hook at one end. The stones can measure up to 13 feet (4 metres) across.
Strange Slab “Found by a research team off the coast of Bimini.” Photograph by Zig Zag Productions and Ross Goodlass - National Geographic
According to Unsolved Mysteries in the World, “The origin and meaning of ‘Bimini’ are unknown. However, the name appears in the Ancient Egyptian language and Baminini, which means, ‘Homage (ini) to the Soul (ba) of Min.’ Min was the Egyptians’ divine protector of travelers on far-off journeys, a particularly appropriate god to be worshiped at distant Bimini, if indeed the island had been visited by voyagers from the Nile Valley.”
In 1968, subsea archaeologist Joseph Mason Valentine and his diving party encountered the ‘paved’ road, now called the Bimini Road or Bimini Wall. After their initial discovery, the site was visited often by innumerable divers, researchers and scientists, further revealing the existence of two additional linear features laying nearly parallel to the enigmatic path.
The Bimini Road, or Atlantis Stones - the rock formation mapped. (HowStuffWorks)
Unexplained Mysteries writes of the connection between the discovery and American mysticist Edgar Cayce, who was said to predict future events during trances. “Another curious element of this mystery is a prediction made in 1938 by Edgar Cayce: ‘A portion of the temples may yet be discovered under the slime of ages and sea water near Bimini… Expect it in ‘68 or ‘69 – not so far away.” The Bimini Road was located in 1968, some propose as a fulfillment of the prediction that the history of Atlantis would be revealed to the world.
Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Plato was first to write of Atlantis. His records of a cursed island out of favour with the gods is referred to as a parable, warning that hubris and the abuse of power may be the undoing of a civilization. But what if the story is more than a teaching tool? What if there truly existed an advanced ancient civilization which was lost to the seas and wiped from our history? Since Plato’s tale of Atlantis, many have searched for the doomed city’s whereabouts.
Illustration by Sir Gerald Hargreaves showing a utopian scene of the mythical land of Atlantis (National Geographic)
The existence of a buried Atlantis is possible, and some would insist likely, as throughout history people and civilizations around the world have suffered terrible cataclysms of tsunamis, volcanic explosions, earthquakes and other disasters, and disappeared from the pages of history until rediscovered centuries later. Could Atlantis have suffered a similar fate?
Skeptics think not, and dismiss the connection between the Bimini Road and Atlantis. Consensus among conventional geologists who drilled core samples of the Bimini rocks is that it’s a natural phenomenon. They explain that the beachrock has been weathered by erosion, the tides scouring and eroding lines and edges into the limestone along natural joints, as it does so in other locations around the globe. Further, they suggest that any ‘tool marks’ found on site are not evidence of ancient stoneworking, but instead the result of tourists and investigators chipping away at the rocks for souvenirs or research.
Not all have been satisfied with the mainstream theories, and expeditions have been mounted to solve the riddle of the Bimini Road.
Sci Fi Channel did an investigation and documentary on the underwater formation in 2006. Wikipedia notes that Quest for Atlantis: Startling New Secrets focused on the legend of Atlantis, highlighting the Bimini Road. A team of researchers dived at Bimini Bay, and reported discovering “an entire second layer of square-cut rocks with similar dimensions beneath the stones.” This suggested to the researchers that the ‘road’ may have been part of a larger wall or water dock.
Were the stones carefully and purposefully placed by an advanced civilization which was plunged into obscurity by cataclysm, or did the rocks erode into perfect shapes through the actions of time and the sea? Like the Bimini Road, the mystery endures.
Featured image: A photograph of the so-called Bimini Road. Image source.
References
Bimini Road - Unsolved Mysteries in the World
Bimini Road - CrystalLinks
Bimini Wall - Wikipedia
Atlantis—True Story or Cautionary Tale? – National Geographic
The Mystery of the Bimini Road – Unexplained Mysteries
By Liz Leafloor
Comments
How many structures in the world are made from natural materials? Perhaps we could say “all of them,” with a generous definition of “natural.” But even with a conservative definition, we have to realize that dismissal based on the materials used is a weak argument, at best.
Not only were leveling blocks placed under some of the beachrock stones, but the orientation of stones is varied. Beachrock forms with a bias toward the sea side of formation. The Bimini structure has stones which are aligned naturally with this bias, but many stones which are at right angles or 180 degrees opposite of this alignment. That the skeptics avoided these facts only shows their clear bias against the evidence.
Atlantis? Plato hinted that Atlantis (if it existed) had colonies in the islands of the Great (unnamed) Continent. Though the Bimini structure came too late to have been a part of an Atlantean colony (sea level was far lower 9600 BC), it could have been used by the children of Atlantis.
Rod Martin, Jr.
author
Mission: Atlantis
The Bible's Hidden Wisdom
Edgar Cayce: Evidence
Climate Basics (#1 Weather Bestseller)
Anyone looking at photos and video of the site can see that this is manufactured. Nowhere in nature do we see rocks “weathered”, by any means, into such precide shapes, and then lined up like a road or wall. Whichever one this was, it’s no natural formation. Since Atlantis was supposed to be between Europe and the Americas, based on Plato’s writing, his would make perfect sense as part of that ancient land.
LGE
I have spent hundreds of days on Bimini and made dozens of dives on the road.
Cousteau cored the formation in the 60's and found nothing to indicate a manufactured construct.
If you explore the shoreline opposite the road (near the old Rockwell Estate), you will find the exact same formations developing at the water's edge, You can even find erosion fissures that form the right angles and "T" patterns that seem so mysterious and man made in the road. Those rocks were formed in situ at a surf line. I have read many versions of the time lines of sea level some of which are presented to rule out this possibility but the facts are there for anyone to verify.
If you haven't been there and explored the island, you have no business making claims regarding something about which you have no knowledge. Firsthand observation trumps mythology and conjecture every time.
It is a natural formation.
If you want to keep any new archaeological discovery as a "mystery" and no as science, your arguments and conclusions will always be obscure and never enlightened.
The affirmation that: “Consensus among conventional geologists who drilled core samples of the Bimini rocks is that it's a natural phenomenon.”
Sorry, that is an absurd conclusion. A professional geologist NEVER will drill a core sample to determinate an entire structure as architecture. The rock is natural phenomenon, the build is not. The sample is only necessary do know the composition of rock, never the structure, mounted and organized thousands of rocks. Nature never make straight angles or mounting in planned ways.
Think a minute about: Who is this “geologists” who say stupid stuff ? Or they are journalist to do disinformation the public ?
that something was going on down below what today is the ocean level. Off the coast of Cuba they've located some pretty amazing structures.
youtube: Could This Be Atlantis? Pyramids Found in Waters Off Cuba
Pages