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Science

Pillars Underwater 149

Posted by Hemos from the pretty-cool-idea dept.
iammichael writes "Scientists scouring the Atlantic Ocean have found huge towers of stone (the tallest ever) that they've named the "The Lost City" since they are located on a seafloor mountain named Atlantis Massif. Read about it on Yahoo news or CNN"
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Pillars Underwater

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  • Later that afternoon, (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    lawyers from Disney Corporation filed suit against U of W for devaluing the name of the Atlantis animated franchise. The city of Anaheim subsequently assessed back taxes against Disney for this (very slowly) mobile property.

  • Re:Um... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And the name of the king of Tir na nOg?
    Altan.

    I mean it's not to far of a jump from Aztlan to Atlantis and Altan....

  • Re:Found it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    here's a working link [google.com], you turd.

  • Phil's underwear?!? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You know it's been a long night when /. headlines start looking even stranger than usual.

    Geesh.

  • AYBABTU (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @03:01PM (#90574)
    TOP SECRET

    Intercept: 1123984 Channel: 59876

    Subject: DP Base Control

    Date: 01:00:32 7/11/2001 UTC

    Summary: This is is an intercept from DP Base to control indicting the discovery of base 68 and imminent discovery of base 69. Partial decoded transcript follows. It is recommended that action be taken ASAP to prevent the movement from 69 to 70.

    To Home Base

    From Deep Piller 69

    They are found our base 68. We must move our to base 70 or we will be overrun by newcomers. Deep portions of base 68 under attack by bright lights and something calling itself nnc or cnn. Server under attack by something called dot slash or slash dot or dot slash dot. Recommend move to 70 when feasible.

  • Re:Um... (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @03:27PM (#90575)
    Chances are, in my opinion, America _was_ atlantis- plato's map of the capital of atlantis was still similar to the centre of Aztlan at the time the Spanish found it, at least a millenium after the events Plato chronicled were supposed to have taken place. I think conventional wisdom has kept quiet the extent of european-american contact in early history - And there's the roman remains recently found in the gulf, suggesting at least a little early european-american contact.

    Interestingly, Irish legend places one of the parent races of the Irish people, coming from the west, with advanced technology (for the time - including a prosthetic hand???) - though it must be pointed out that anyone coming by sea from africa or the mediterranean will also finally approach Ireland from the south-west. But Irish legend places the kingdom of the immortals, Tir na nOg, to the west, across the ocean. In fact, every sea-going european race extant at or a bit before plato's time talks about land to the far west of europe....

  • Yeah, now we just need to find out, who has the stone that matches them. With the luck our civilization had recently, I would guess, it's either Gates, Bush or Arafat ;-P
  • And, thankfully, the reproductive opportunities present in both cases lets Mamma Nature do the weedin' ...

  • Whoa. Revelation! (Score:5)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisumNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @03:02PM (#90578) Homepage Journal
    Thermophiles, the only inhabitants of the Lost City, include archaea, a recently discovered class of organisms which scientists believe are among the most primitive on earth.


    Right above NT Administrators, yet only a couple rungs below /. readers.

  • Disney (Score:1)

    by Falrick ( 528 )
    Will Disney know no shame? It's obviously a publicity stunt for their newest animated flick.

  • No... (Score:2)

    by Danse ( 1026 )

    It should be "The Previously Lost, But Recently Found City."

  • IIRC, the two places most likely to have been Aztlan was central Mexico -the states of Zacatecas and Durango- or somewhere in Nayarit, another mexican state. In Zacatecas, there's a place called Chicomoztoc (50 miles south of Zacatecas city), an ancient indian fortress on top of a mountain, and that mountain have seven caves, like the ones mentioned in the Aztlan's legend.

    DISCLAIMER: English is not my first language, if you want to correct my grammar or orthography, you are welcome.

  • It should be noted that there's this wonderful current running by Europe that flows right across the Atlantic to the Carribean. With good weather and a little luck, you could take a makeshift raft from Europe to America! The idea that, in all those years of seafaring, no one from Europe managed to get to America is pretty far fetched, even if it wasn't until much later that systematic exploration and cross-Atlantic commerce began...

    --

  • If you'd bothered to actually read the article, you would know (a) these newly discovered pillars are not volcanic per se (unlike the previously known, darker pillars found in spread zones), they build up due to chemical reactions, and (b) the largest ever discovered is 180 feet -- these are not things that build up for millions of years to make islands.

    --

  • devphil "Hey, there's nothing to the west that we can see; it's gotta be better than what we know right now, let's invent legends about it." Okay, so I would've made a lousy anthropologist. :-)

    Judging by the way most anthropologists and archaeologists classify anything they can't understand as "Religious Significance", I'd say you have a very fine grasp of the subject.

    In a few thousand years' time, I expect most of the freebie merchandise handed out at computer exhibitions will be classified as being of "Religious Significance". All hail the mighty Dust Puppy and praise to the Novelty Mobile Phone Holder.

    One wonders what anthropologists and archaeologists would make of an entirely agnostic or aetheist society. Speaking as an agnostic myself, I really irks me that long after my death, people will be slapping "Religious Significance" labels over my property.

    --

  • Beware! The lost city of R'lyeh has been found and the dead nightmare god Cthulhu will soon awaken from his dreaming to visit untold horrors upon mankind! Run!
  • If anyone is familiar with the man Edgar Cayce (a.k.a. "The Sleeping Prophet"), you may have read about his readings on Atlantis. If the man's hit/miss ratio is keeping at the same phenominal rate and this is what I think it might be, then we've just stumbled across the power source for the population of Atlantis.

    Basically, the source of electrical power for the people of Atlantis was a ruby-like gem housed in a tower that emitted some laser-like beam of energy. This energy was the source of all of the Atlantian technology.

    While this gem was the source of all of their power, it was also the reason for their eventual destruction due to some kind of over use or abuse.

    Regardless, this is not a fantasy that I've made up, this is actually what Edgar Cayce had told in one of his many readings on Atlantis. I don't have a URL for more information, but there are books on Edgar Cayce and his readings on Atlantis if you're interested. You may also want to check out the book "The Sleeping Prophet". This man was no joke (b. late 1800's, d. 1942?)

    --

  • Oh great ... (Score:3)

    by MouseR ( 3264 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @04:15PM (#90587) Homepage
    Disney marketing just reached new depths ...

    Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
  • I didn't know that the Spanish ever went to Aztlan. As far as I know, it is a legendary place supposed to be somewhere in US California, maybe LA.

    And if you mean Tenochtitlan, a city built on a lake, with canals and all that, it was built when the Aztecs arrived to the lake, somewhen in the XII or XIII century. Well after Plato.
    __
  • How hard would it be to rig a videocamera to capture their 'high-resolution sonar images' ?

    Very hard, compared to the side-scan sonar unit which is merely towed behind a surface ship. To get video from 800 meters down requires expensive submersibles, either robotic or manned.

    Fortunately the National Geographic Society is sponsoring another expedition. We should have some answers soon.

  • Some FAR more interesting underwater structures... (Score:5)

    by GPS Pilot ( 3683 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @05:48PM (#90590)
    ...have been discovered near Cuba. Far more interesting, because the principle investigators believe they're man made.

    And they're not merely a 2200-year-old city in shallow water like the one recently-discovered off the coast of Egypt -- these structures are 800 meters deep, and must be far older.

    If this discovery is verified, it'll be huge.

    Read about it on a mainstream site [google.com] (MSNBC -- quick, grab it before it disappears from Google's cache!)
    or get more detail from this fringe site [earthfiles.com].

  • Re:Um... (Score:1)

    by armb ( 5151 )
    Irish legend also holds that Saint Brendan discovered America well before Columbus or the Vikings did. And just to prove it, Tim Severin built a leather currach

    He didn't prove it happened, he proved the journey was possible. But yes, it was impressive. There's also information at http://www.timseverin.net [timseverin.net]

    He also sailed the Pacific "on a bamboo raft to test the theory that Asian sailors reached America some 2,000 years ago."
    --

  • You're thinking of that other ark, the ark of the covenant, in which they kept the stone tablets on which the ten commandments were carved.

  • Huge? No it will be buried and forgotten like all the other evidence of an advanced prehistoric civilization. The so-called "scientists" that make up archaeology's status quo really don't want to rewrite their textbooks...

  • Give any engineer a tour of the great pyramids and show him the gigantic interior granite slabs fitted together with incredible precision and ask him if he could duplicate it with today's technology given an unlimited budget.

    Or take him to Macchu Pichu and ask him the same question.


  • You've probably seen the videos of black smokers giving off what looks like soot on the ocean floor. Well, sometimes they get carried across the ocean floor with the plate, but instead of getting carried into the subduction zone, they get scraped off onto shore. You can find the remains of one if these in the back country of Santa Barbara, CA.

  • Re:Um... (Score:2)

    by rjk ( 10763 )
    > Chances are, in my opinion, America _was_ atlantis

    I think Crete and Santorini are a considerably better bet if you're looking for the origins of the Atlantis myth.

    They're closer to where the myth grew up, they had a flourishing civilisation at the right time and it probably was wiped out by natural disaster (volcanic explosion on Santorini, leading to a tidal wave hitting Crete). You can visit these places and look at rather ancient ruins, and wonder if these are the places which inspired the story.

    Putting the Spanish arrival in America "at least a millenium" later is an underestimate, two to three millenia might be a bit closer.

  • I still can't see the fnords.

    Ah, you're pining for the fnords!

  • > when everyone just saw the Atlantis movie . . .

    You were disappointed?

    Imagine thier disappointment when they realized that NOBODY saw the Atlantis movie!
  • Just to pick a nit:

    s/Anaheim/Burback/

    domc
  • And notice after the setup for "I speak Atlantean"... the fuckers ordering the food UNDERSTAND AND SPEAK ENGLISH. Damn, I hate McDonalds.
  • Not only was the headline misleading but Slashdot capitalized on it as well. I guess they learned the trick of putting misleading headlines just to get a click. Lame.
  • So, instead of a pig party, would you invite them to a Reboot/Reformat/Reinstall party?

    --
  • The story and the slashdot post are really misleading... these are natural formations, not man-made structures. The lost city of Atlantis has not been found, that is just the result of playful naming by the scientists involved. You can now return to your regularly scheduled life.

    -m

  • Re:Um... (Score:3)

    by MindStalker ( 22827 ) <mindstalker&gmail,com> on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @03:11PM (#90604) Journal
    The Yahoo article in amazingly deceptive if you only read the first few paragraphs. The stone towers are actually natually formed volcanic vents. Its just that because they are so huge and are found in "Atlantis" the scientist thought it would be cute to call this formation of rocks the "Lost City". It is NOT Atlantis.
  • That's because, to most of the clowns in the news media, a scientific event doesn't happen until the resulting paper is published in "Nature."
  • I listen to him on the way home. I think they have found something more intresting off the cost of Cuba. This is what I would like to see. I hope his back gets better.
  • ...the "18-story-high towers of stone" boggle my mind to the point where I can't really see how human back then could have built such a thing. I don't know how tall the Pyramids are but still, that's really friggin' tall. It would be really cool if it really was Atlantis or some other great city or structure lost for centuries. The Yahoo article says that the pillars were found near "volcanic fault ridges". Is it possible that these pillars are really volcanic lava vents that once filled with lava and cooled to form a tall columns of igneous rock and that somehow the surounding ocean floor (silt or whatever it might be) was washed from around the columns or a siesmic event left the columns standing but took most of the ocean floor with it? I don't know. It would rock if it was human made but I just do see how it could be. I wonder how tall the Pyramids are...

    --

  • ..after reading the rest of the article I see now that they did actually talking about volcanic possibilities so it looks like my observations aren't unique. Oh well. Maybe next time.

    --

  • They have found Noah's Ark... the Turkish government won't let anyone go there

  • Well, of course it was to the west. (Score:5)

    by devphil ( 51341 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @06:55PM (#90610) Homepage
    In fact, every sea-going european race extant at or a bit before plato's time talks about land to the far west of europe....

    ...because they knew from first-hand experience that going to the land to the east meant you got killed by migrating Mongols, going to the lands in the south meant you got killed by expanding Greeks, Romans, Persians, or Africans, and going to the lands in the north meant you froze to death or drowned. "Hey, there's nothing to the west that we can see; it's gotta be better than what we know right now, let's invent legends about it."

    Okay, so I would've made a lousy anthropologist. :-)

  • ahhh yes M:TG, stopped playing after they fucked up 4th edition... that was back in '96, what's been going on since then?

  • Are these pillars anything like the "discovery" of that lost city which so conveniently resurfaced (the discovery, not the city ;) at around the same time as that "Atlantis" movie?

    Speaking of that movie, am I the only one that gets irritated by the McDonald's commercial? "I speak Atlantian".. Not after I hit her in the face with a brick. ;)

  • There's also a Tir na nOg in Alpharetta, GA (northern suburb of Atlanta) -- it's a horse farm.
  • It isn't even implied that the towers were human-constructed, if you take the time to read the article...

  • Those aren't lost towers (Score:3)

    by joq ( 63625 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @03:01PM (#90615) Homepage Journal

    Jimmy Hoffa is buried in dem things der tuff guy
  • There is a very good reason for the so-called "clowns" in the news media to not discuss things until they have appeared in Nature.

    http://www.nature.com/nature/submit/gta/index.ht ml #5.1

    "5.1 Prepublicity. Once submitted, contributions must not be discussed with the media (including other scientific journals) until the publication date; advertising the contents of any contribution to the media may lead to rejection. The only exception is in the week before publication, during which contributions may be discussed with the media if it is clearly indicated that their contents should under no circumstances be publicised until Nature's press embargo has elapsed (1900 h local London time on the day before the publication date)."

    This is typical of many major scientific journals. (E.g., medical journals) In this day of the Web, the relevance of these kinds of embargoes is debatable, but there are important reasons for them. Mainly, Nature wants to ensure that its contents are properly peer-reviewed before being released. If everyone discusses non-reviewed results in the open media before the review process can be finished, the research will tend to run ahead of the reviewers. In my experience, this is a major problem with the rising of "pre-print" servers, which show results before peer review. As far as I can tell, the results are something like doing scientific research on Slashdot. The results rarely end up being properly peer reviewed, and when they do, nobody reads the journal articles, because they've "already seen" the results on the pre-print servers, regardless of what changes had to be made to satisfy the reviewers.

    A minor reason not to discuss things until the article appears is if Nature rejects the article.

    Anyhow, the news media have probably talked to these scientists for the past week, to get the story as straight as they can before their own deadline. Of course, since the mainstream media (and, perhaps as importantly, their editors) aren't generally well-trained in science, they often garble things, and often will play up unrealistic future visions to impress readers. Just like slashdot.

  • So the pillars of society in Atlantis are venting.

    What else is new?
  • What does the language spoken by people in Atlanta have to do with fast food?

  • Scientists scouring the Atlantic Ocean have found huge towers of stone

    Sonofa! Thats were I left those things.
    I really gotta stop drinking those salt water martinis
  • I think the Ark of the Covenant is in Ethiopia, not Turkey. A friend is trying to arrange a holiday to see it. Apparently they (the people that guard it) parade it around their village once a year.
  • I wonder what Art Bell [artbell.com] will make of this?
  • This rumor has been floating around the Internet for a few years now. Surely it ought to be obvious that it's a hoax. A man with the opinions Art Bell supposedly holds would hardly marry a Filipina, which he has in fact done. The rumor has been refuted repeatedly, and the Filipino publication that recently repeated it without checking their facts first is falling over backwards trying to retract it so as to avoid a defamation lawsuit. (They have in fact published two separate retractions.) A summary of the full story is here: http://www.artbell.com/filipino.html To the pinhead moderator: -1: Overrated, possibly. But "Redundant"? Who else made this comment before I did?
  • As noted Dec 12,2000: http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/mar/dec12.html
  • http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/mar/dec12.html
  • I think conventional wisdom has kept quiet the extent of european-american contact in early history - And there's the roman remains recently found in the gulf, suggesting at least a little early european-american contact.

    I don't know that conventional wisdom kept things quiet, but the Phoenecians certainly did. This was a middle-eastern race, who had probably the most advanced navigational capapbilities of their time. I seem to recall that there is evidence which suggests that they were not only going to the Americas, but that they were getting as far away as New Zealand.

    Apparently they were very secretive and would rather scuttle a ship than let someone following find out where they were going. It doesn't surprise me that none of their knowledge got passed on to us.

    -- Steve

  • The article on Yahoo mentioned that the a component source of heat that drives the chemical reations that occur that produce these pillers is thought to be from an exothermic reation from a rather rare rock called olivine that was found in close proximity to hydrotheric vents; the chemical reagents involved make a lighter-colored build-up than the normal precipitation of minerals and chemicals found in other hydrothermal vents so far.
  • True. But people that have followed the discovery of oceanic ridges, tetonic plates, and the hydrothermal vents with their odd life-forms that have been in the common press off and on for the last twenty odd years would NOT have assumed right off that this was mention of the discovery of the city of Alantis....
  • I still can't see the fnords.

    fnord!

    --Adequacy.org, Slashdot without the crap. [adequacy.org]

  • What was the last movie to use hydrothermal vents as a tie-in ?
    -- Dennis Hopper's "Black Smokers" in Waterworld.

    So that was a success then.

  • A rather rare rock? Hmm.

    Minor quibble: olivine is a mineral rather than a rock. But also, isn't most of the mantle of the earth made of olivine?

    It's not as common in the crust as quartz, but in terms of volume I would guess there's more olivine in the earth than anything else.

    Of course, I'm not a Geologist or anything...

  • Who knows what might piss off a geologist, eh? Like I said, I'm not one.

    But here goes:

    • A mineral is a chemical substance in a particular form. So say, the mineral calcite is calcium carbonate.
    • A rock is a lump of one or more minerals. A rock could be made up of only one mineral (e.g. limestone is made of calcite), but the properties of a rock are its bulk properties, whereas the properties of a mineral are those of individual crystals.
    I hope that's not too garbled.

  • Anime Rip Off (Score:4)

    by zpengo ( 99887 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @02:48PM (#90632) Homepage
    CNN and Yahoo! just ripped off [slashdot.org] that story from some Japanese anime.

    Geez, how many times is this story going to be posted?

  • I agree that is seems strange not to release any images; however, considering the validity of Zelitsky's last find [ardmoreite.com], maybe her team deserves the benefit of the doubt?
  • There have been stories of evidence of Roman/Greek/Egyptian/whatever visitation to North America for quite a while. Other than L'Anse Aux Meadows [pch.gc.ca] in Newfoundland, which is probably a real viking settlement, most likely, the "evidence" is from ballast that was shovelled into the hulls of ships that travelled here much later.

    Regardless if a few Egyptians found their way onto shore, say, in Ft. Lauderdale, or Vikings in Newfoundland, they didn't hang around very long, and had no cultural impact, so it's like they were never here anyway. Maybe enough to make you go "hmph. Well I'll be damned" like you would if you found a puppy under your wheelbarrow after a flood. You certainly won't be telling the puppy story 30 generations from now.

    Move along. Nothing to see here.


  • True about the pacific, I was thinking more of the proported cyclopean size of the structures in Ry'leh when I made the reference.

  • Cthulu (Score:4)

    by MrBlack ( 104657 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @04:18PM (#90636)
    could this be the famous city Ry'leh where Cthulu lies dreaming?
  • The Gulf Stream and the prevailing winds both flow/blow East. Sure, you might end up landing in Africa instead of Ireland, but if you've just sailed across the Atlantic, following the coastline North shouldn't be too intimidating.
  • I always thought the parody of Donovan's "Atlantis" was a bit ... not-targeted at the right audience in that episode. But, then again, it was damn funny.
  • Skeptic Magazine [skeptic.com] has a "Skeptic Jr." section this [quarter/month] devoted to Atlantis. It's targeted at younger kids, but it's still a good read.

    The part I liked the most was the summary of the Internet's views on Atlantis... about the blue-blooded mermaids and so on.
  • Well, OF COURSE she can speak Atlantian! We all know how what linguistic geniuses McDonalds drive-thru cashiers can be! I'll bet that she can say "Do you want to super-size that combo?" in at least 12 languages, and yet still make sure that you can't understand a damned word that she's saying over the drive-thru speakers...
  • this is not about a civilization.

    the phrase "lost city" seems more interesting than this oceanographic discovery of the decade.

  • Irish legend also holds that Saint Brendan discovered America well before Columbus or the Vikings did. And just to prove it, Tim Severin built a leather currach identical to the one described by Saint Brendan, left from Co. Kerry in 1976, and landed on Newfoundland in June 1977. For the full story see here [castletown.com].

  • More info about Archaea (Score:3)

    by khym ( 117618 ) <matt@Nospam.nightrealms.com> on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @03:15PM (#90643)

    The archaea (or archaebacteria) are an interesting group of organism. They look like bacteria, but are more closely related to plants and animals than to bacteria, even though they have the circular DNA of bacteria rather than the straight DNA of animals/plants. The can also survive in a remarkable range of hostile environments. Two interesting pages on them are:


    Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
  • yup i was pissed off about the same thing.. Sensationalism on Slashdot is starting to piss me off.. Robotic Baseball pitcher. BAH. Pillars underwater. BAH.. I hate you!
  • Hey, it's not beyond belief that Atlanta would be picked up and moved to the center of the ocean - I mean, it'd probably make for easier Delta connections, and who wants to be in the South? :) At least that's the way Futurama [ign.com] told it.

    Bender: "In case of emergency, my ass can be used as a flotation device."
    ---------
    Milhouse: "Why don't we put it on the internet?"

  • So that explains why I was in the theater!
  • Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagh'nagl fhtagn.

  • It's Cthulhu, not Cthulu, and I just posted this [slashdot.org]

  • Re:come on (Score:3)

    by Misch ( 158807 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @06:35PM (#90654) Homepage

    everyone should know this is just another disney promotion.

    Well, of course it is. It was one of the top 3 stories [go.com] on ABCNews.com [abcnews.com] today. And, as many people know, ABCNews is owned by the Disney corporation.

  • Tabloid Slashdot? (Score:5)

    by InfinityWpi ( 175421 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @03:13PM (#90657)
    You notice that the writeup doesn't mention these are naturally-occuring pillars? You make it sound like they're man-made Greek columns or something...

  • Re:Um... (Score:5)

    by shokk ( 187512 ) <ernieoporto @ y a h o o .com> on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @05:43PM (#90659) Homepage Journal
    Formally, it is "The City Formerly Known As Lost", but they're having trouble coming up with one of those Prince symbols.
  • everyone should know this is just another disney [maquilasolidarity.org] promotion.

    watch, in a week, disney [maquilasolidarity.org] will come out with some new toys for McDonalds [disinfo.com] toys.

  • Actually, the ancients considered everything west over the Atlantic as literally the end of the world. It would be akin to us looking in the space.

    It's small wonder why legends about superior people from the west of the Atlantic are so prevalent in European mythology.
  • i guess the mods thought it was silly for you to point out the obvious
  • Yahoo? intentionally sensationalized the entire report. You have to read a few lines before you realize this isn't about finding part of Atlantis.

    Read CNN's review of the information (which has a pic BTW) for a better understanding of what the discovery is really about (hydrothermal vent communities...Specifically..A whole new type!!)

    Yahoo?, Why didn't you just stick to search engines??

  • ..........a few months ago.
    Nice of Yahoo and CNN to finally pick it up.

    http://www.floridafossilhunters.com/newsletter/ March2001/marNews2001.htm


    web and shell hosting plus more
  • "Religious significance" may be what "television anthropologists" cite, but speaking as an Anthropologist of sorts, I'd have to say that it's not always the best explanation for things.

    Also understand that pop culture can sometimes reinforce things like "religious significance" as an explanation. For example, witness the number of people running around these days with the hazy idea that in early human history, we all worshipped some universal "mother goddess" across all cultures -- very politically correct, and very popular... Seems to give people, especially women, a real warm fuzzy. The evidence people have heard/seen? So-called "fertility figurines" from any number of cultures as seen [of course] on TV documentaries. And of course, it's all nonsense.

    This view is certainly not the accepted one within the academic community, for the most part, and certainly not in the universal sense. For all we know, these figurines are the Barbie Dolls of ancient children in one culture and wig-holders in another. But you won't sell product if you spend an hour saying "we don't know" on television.

    What I'm getting at is that when you say "judging by the way most anthropologists and archaeologists classify..." it appears that you're mostly looking at the wrong anthropologists and archaeologists. Read the Anthropology journals instead -- the cable channels are in it for the ratings.

  • Underground geysers? (Score:3)

    by Traicovn ( 226034 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @02:58PM (#90672) Homepage
    "It's a brand new kind of hydrothermal system,"

    Actually, it's probably been happening for hundreds of thousands of years....

    The pictures are kind of neat though, and it's alway interesting to see what kinds of new life have turned up here on earth. (they mentioned they had reccently found some one-celled organisms living near the vents) It's hard to imagine sometimes, that even with all the technology like satellite imaging looking down on the earth, there are still places that are mysteries.

    Looking at the description, they sound kinda like underwater hotsprings or geysers (like the ones out in Yellowstone) and they build a kind of dome or tower because of a build up of the minerals that are expunged from the opening. One would think that these would be larger and hotter being closer to earth's core, but apparently that's not the case.

    [Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
  • I'm suspicious of the article. The woman quoted describes beautiful structures which are 'obviously' manmade, but indicates that don't have the videotaped evidence...yet. How hard would it be to rig a videocamera to capture their 'high-resolution sonar images' ? Come on, if you have some big scientific discovery, this sounds like it would be the first thing you would do if you were a media whore, which she seems to be.

    She also refers to ' limitless, rolling, white sand plains '. Forgetting that 'rolling' suggests something quite different from 'plains', how does she tell what color the sand plains are from a sonar image ? And why haven't these rolling plains been disturbed by detritus/currents/tides ? Why hasn't the color of these plains been distorted by algae/corals/debris ?

  • "Religious significance" may be what "television anthropologists" cite, but speaking as an Anthropologist of sorts, I'd have to say that it's not always the best explanation for things.

    My sister-in-law studied anthro and archeology for about eight years, and she had an interesting story to tell along these lines a few weeks ago -- one of those things that she picked up in college... some of the students at her University had chosen to move into a primitive pseudo-Celtic settlement, in an attempt to study the effect of so-called primitive living on health.

    When the research crew came in several months later to quietly observe the "Celts," they discovered a phenomena that had been found in excavations of true Celt villages -- shallow indentations in the floor just inside and to the sides of the doorways. This had always been attributed to unknown religious tradition -- the old standby of previously unexplained phenomena. When they asked one of the "Celts" what the significance was, assuming they were offering pits, or some such, the response rather shocked the researchers:

    The "Celt" said, "Oh, that's nothing... every time it rains, the chickens come into the [hut], walk a little way out of the doorway, and flap their wings against the ground for a bit to knock the water off."

  • I can see the gleam in the eye of these researchers. Announce the existance of these towers when everyone just saw Atlantis the movie. What the headline fails to mention is that they are natural towers, not man-made. I was a little disappointed when I read the article, I was hoping for proof that I am the reincarnation of the high king of Atlantis, but I guess the proof will have to wait.

    =-=-=-=-=

  • Me, too... I think the key phrase is this one:
    "As you know, we have financing problems. This is a very expensive activity. They give us technology and financing. We provide historical and ocean expertise," said Eddy Fernandez, vice president of [ the Cuban partner company ] Geomar.
    Riiiiight...OK. I think I see how those sonar images might have been, uh, misinterpreted... Though if it really is a human settlement which is now 800m below sealevel, something we thought we knew is wrong.
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
  • I think Crete and Santorini are a considerably better bet if you're looking for the origins of the Atlantis myth.

    The Santorini/Crete is actually one of the most likely answers to the stories of Atlantis, both theese Islands once had some of the most important ports in the mediterraninan (how on earth is that spelled?). The Islands were very rich, and they had some of the most up-to-date technology of that time.

    Unfortunately Santorini blew up, and killed all of the Islands inhbitants. I guess that all the sailors that were going to Santorini got kind of surprised when they realised that Santorini had dissapeared (well almost) and killed of most of Crete as well..

    Santorini might also be responsible for drowning the Egyptian army that tried to catch Moses as well. Not that I am to interrested in religion, though.

    Sorry about my lousy english
  • It was at http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010514/lf/cuba_t reasure_dc_1.html

    Researchers found it off of the coast of cuba while looking for sunken treasure. National Geographic plans an expedition. Art Bell covered it fairly well when it happened.

    Hopefully someone will be able to find the link.

  • Great! (Score:3)

    by ez76 ( 322080 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMe76.us> on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @04:08PM (#90700) Homepage
    Now we just need to find the Perspex Pillar and the Golden Bail of Prosperity and the Wikkit Gate shall be restored!

  • Atlanta (Score:3)

    by Yorrike ( 322502 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @03:28PM (#90701) Journal
    It's the lost city of Atlanta.

    Just be thankful that Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, that guy who invented Coke, and a magician got out before it sank.

    ----------------------------------------

  • Um... (Score:5)

    by Flying Headless Goku ( 411378 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @02:56PM (#90704) Homepage
    Wouldn't it make more sense to call it "The Found City?"

    It's a bit pessimistic to start right off assuming we're going to lose it.
    --

  • Re:Um... (Score:3)

    by Boiling_point_ ( 443831 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @06:18PM (#90705) Homepage
    In fact, every sea-going european race extant at or a bit before plato's time talks about land to the far west of europe....

    Well, doesn't that make perfect sense, since they could (and did) strut about all over the land to the South, East and North? I mean, where else was there to put a mythical land, other than West?


  • Yeah sure, and that's not a penis [banzai.net] on the Little Mermaid promo poster... you work for Disney, don't you!

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