An expedition has discovered buildings in the Caribbean Sea so precise that they appear to have been built by an advanced civilisation. Their depth and age challenge everything archaeology thought possible Archaeology has been warning for decades that we still do not fully understand our distant past. But few discoveries have caused such a powerful mix of excitement, discomfort and scientific perplexity as the discovery of underwater structures in the waters of the Caribbean Sea, which, according to researchers, may be more than 6,000 years old… and have a level of urban planning that does not correspond to any known civilisation of the time. What began as a routine search led to a mystery that has had no definitive explanation for two decades.
Impossible patterns on the seabed
The story began when a team of naval engineers was scanning the ocean floor using sonar technology. They were looking for shipwrecks, but what appeared on the screens did not correspond to shipwrecks. The shapes were too organised, too symmetrical to be the result of chance.
The images showed what appeared to be:
- Large pyramidal structures
- Straight lines and 90-degree angles
- Perfectly clear circular patterns
- Alignments resembling avenues, squares and buildings
Even for experts accustomed to interpreting sonar images, this was intriguing. At a depth of almost 700 metres, in a place where an urban settlement should never have existed, the contours of what appeared to be an entire city stood out. The team described these formations as an “urban landscape” frozen in time. And then the problem arose: for these structures to be on the surface, the sea level would have to be hundreds of metres lower. This would mean that the settlement would have appeared long before the arrival of humans on the continent, according to accepted archaeological models. The chronology did not add up. And yet the patterns remained in place, clear, repetitive, harmonious with each other. Enough to spark one of the most controversial debates in modern archaeology.
An unexpected scenario: expedition off the coast of Cuba
It was there, on the Guanahacabibes peninsula, at the western tip of Cuba, that naval engineer Paulina Zelitzky and her team discovered these formations. They were working for a Canadian company specialising in underwater research and their task was to find colonial shipwrecks. Instead, they discovered what they described as “urban structures” at great depth. From that moment on, research divided into two main directions. On the one hand, there are the sceptics. Geologists and oceanographers claim that the blocks, lines and pyramids may be natural formations, the result of basalt faults, tectonic movements or prolonged erosion. They point out that the human brain tends to recognise familiar patterns even in random objects.
On the other hand, there are those who claim that the location of the objects seems too precise to be accidental. Following this line of thinking, the structures could belong to a civilisation that existed long before those we know and was destroyed by a catastrophic natural phenomenon, which coincided with the end of the last ice age. Many associate this with ancient Caribbean legends about islands that “disappeared under water”. The main difficulty is technical and economic in nature: at a depth of 600-700 metres, modern equipment, underwater robots and millions in investment are needed to carry out an exhaustive expedition. None of this has been done. And without physical evidence — rock samples, ceramic remains or any unambiguously human elements — the discussion has been left hanging, between mystery and science.
A mystery that has remained unsolved for two decades
Since 2001, no new official research has been carried out in this area. The images obtained at the time continue to fuel the current debate. Some archaeologists point to parallels with other controversial objects, such as Göbekli Tepe, which pushed back the chronology of the appearance of the first temples by thousands of years; the underwater monument of Yonaguni in Japan, with its platforms and straight cuts; and the submerged ruins in Greece, India or the eastern Mediterranean, where marine erosion makes interpretation difficult. But the Cuban case has an even more persistent component: depth. For geologists, it is extremely difficult to imagine that an entire city could be 600 metres underwater in just a few millennia. For proponents of the alternative hypothesis, the key may be a sudden tectonic lowering or collapse of the continental shelf.
Meanwhile, this discovery has become a scientific ghost. Some consider it a misinterpretation, others a missed opportunity that could rewrite the history of early human societies. So far, there is no consensus. There is no convincing evidence. There is no funding to continue the research. There is only a set of impossible patterns, recorded by sonar more than twenty years ago, and a question that remains open: do we really know when the history of our civilisation began? Archaeology has been warning us for decades that we still do not fully understand our distant past. But few discoveries have caused such a powerful mixture of excitement, discomfort and scientific perplexity as the discovery of several underwater structures in the waters of the Caribbean Sea which, according to researchers, may be more than 6,000 years old and display a level of urban planning that does not correspond to any known civilisation of the time. What began as a routine search led to a mystery that, two decades later, still has no definitive explanation.
