Category Archives: NORTH AMERICA

NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

The underwater city of Cuba- is this the lost city of Atlantis

The underwater city of Cuba- is this the lost city of Atlantis

Back in 2001, Pauline Zalitzki and her husband Paul Weinzweig came upon one of the most impressive discoveries of the 21st Century. While working on a survey mission with the Cuban Government she stumbled upon an interesting reading while exploring the coast of the Guanahacabibes Peninsula in the Pinar Del Rio Province of Cuba.

The structures appeared completely analogous against the barren ‘desert’ of the ocean floor and seemed to show symmetrically organized stones reminiscent of urban development. A media flurry soon ensued with news sites sporting headlines such as ‘Atlantis Discovered in Cuba’ and ‘Lost the City of the Caribbean Found’.

However, the finding also attracted the attention of the government, national museum, and national geographic, who all made promises to investigate the strange sonar images.  Now, ten years on, the story has disappeared into obscurity. Whatever happened to the sunken ‘ruins’ of Cuba? Were they ever fully investigated? And why has the media fallen silent on this unusual discovery? It is very enticing, and for the traveler, they may want to go to Cuba and see if they can explore it first hand. They will want to click here for some tips if they do decide to take that journey.

ADC was one of four firms working in a joint venture with President Fidel Castro’s government to explore Cuban waters, which hold hundreds of treasure-laden ships from the Spanish colonial era.

The team was using advanced sonar equipment to scan a 2 square kilometer area of the seafloor when they noticed a series of symmetrical and geometric stone structures resembling an urban complex.

Map showing location of supposed ancient city discovered by Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki.

Upon studying the sonar images, Zalitzki observed what appeared to be unusual formations of smooth blocks, crests, and geometric shapes. Some of the blocks looked like they were built in pyramid shapes, others were circular. 

In July 2001, they returned to the site with geologist Manuel Iturralde, senior researcher of Cuba’s Natural History Museum, this time equipped with a Remotely Operated Vehicle to examine and film the structures.

The images revealed large blocks of stone resembling hewn granite, measuring about 8 feet by 10 feet. Some blocks appeared deliberately stacked atop one another, others appeared isolated from the rest. Zalitzki said that the images appeared to reflect the ruins of a submerged city but were reluctant to draw any conclusions without further evidence.

“These are extremely peculiar structures, and they have captured our imagination,” said Iturralde, who has studied countless underwater formations. “But if I had to explain this geologically, I would have a hard time.”

Estimating that it would have taken 50,000 years for such structures to have sunken to the depth at which they were said to be found, Iturralde added “50,000 years ago there wasn’t the architectural capacity in any of the cultures we know of to build complex buildings.”

A specialist in underwater archaeology at Florida State University added “It would be cool if they were right, but it would be real advanced for anything we would see in the New World for that time frame. The structures are out of time and out of place.”

In the media storm that followed the announcement of the discovery, news sites were quick to draw parallels with the fabled lost city of Atlantis. However, Zelitsky and Weinzweig were unwilling to make such comparisons.  The story is a myth, said Zelitsky.

“What we have found is more likely remnants of local culture,” once located on a 100-mile “land bridge” that joined Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula with Cuba.  Iturralde added that there are local legends of the Maya and native Yucatecos that tell of an island inhabited by their ancestors that vanished beneath the waves. Nevertheless, Iturralde does not discount the possibility that the rock formations are merely the result of the wonders of Mother Nature. “Nature is able to create some really unimaginable structures,” he said.

Despite hundreds of media outlets reporting on sunken cities, advanced civilizations, the lost city of Atlantis, and submerged ruins, there are others who are not so willing to accept this point of view. 

Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews from the debunking website Bad Archaeology claimed that the depth of the alleged remains is the biggest problem for the sunken city proponents. During the Pleistocene, which was characterized by a series of ice ages, sea levels dropped significantly, but the maximum drop was around 100 meters.

“At no point during the Ice Age would it have been above sea level unless, of course, the land on which they stand has sunk. This is the claim made for Atlantis: according to Plato’s account, it was destroyed “by violent earthquakes and floods”. However, if we take Plato at his word – as we must if we assume Atlantis to have been a historical place – the violence of its sinking makes it improbable that an entire city could have survived to plunge more than 600 m into an abyss,” writes Fitzpatrick-Matthews.

If we assume that he is right and that these stone structures do not reflect an ancient submerged city but are simply products of nature, then surely geologists and other scientists would be quick to jump on the finding and investigate what freakish event of nature caused such peculiar formations. 

Strangely, however, there have been no reported follow-up investigations and news outlets have gone deathly silent on the matter. What happened to all the promises from the government, national museum, National Geographic, and other scientists to carry out further surveys?

The quick dismissal of the story has led some to question whether there has been a suppression of information regarding the finding. However, Fitzpatrick-Matthews claims the story simply went cold and that in the end experts were not convinced that Zelitsky had really discovered a sunken city.

CANADA, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

3,800-year-old Underwater Potato Garden Uncovered in Canada

3,800-year-old Underwater Potato Garden Uncovered in Canada

Hundreds of blackened potatoes were pulled out of the ground at a prehistoric garden in British Columbia, Canada. Dating back to 3,800 years before the present, the garden was once under water, in an ecologically rich wetland.

Submerged rock pavement (shown here) would have allowed the indigenous people to control how far their tubers grew, making for easier harvesting.

And it shows sign of sophisticated engineering techniques used to control the flow of water to more efficiently grow wild wapato tubers, also known as Indian potatoes.

Archaeologists led by Tanja Hoffmann of the Katzie Development Limited Partnership and Simon Fraser University in British Columbia excavated the garden during roadwork on Katzie First Nation territory just east of Vancouver, near the Fraser River.

The site had been waterlogged for centuries, resulting in good preservation of plant and other organic materials like wooden tools that would have normally disintegrated over time.

In all, the researcher counted 3,767 whole and fragmented wapato plants (Sagittaria latifolia). Today, these plant are found in wetlands across southern Canada and the United State.

The ancient garden was found during roadwork on Katzie First Nation territory just east of Vancouver, near the Fraser River.

Though they were not domesticated, the chestnut-sized roots had long been important to indigenous peoples, and they are mentioned in some of the 1st ethnographic accounts of the Pacific Northwest.

Explorer Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, for example, were offered wapato roots at a native village near present day Portland, Oregon.

Clark wrote in his diary that the plant resembled a “small Irish potato,” and after being roasted, had “an agreeable taste and answers very well in place of bread.”

The ancient tubers that were discovered in British Columbia had turned dark brown to black in color, and some still had their starchy insides preserved.

Ancient wapato tubers from the underwater garden site.

The garden had been covered in tightly packed, uniformly sized rock, leading the researchers to conclude that this was a man made deposit.

Wapato plants can grow far underground, but an artificial rock “pavement” would have controlled how deep the roots could penetrate.

This would have allowed the harvesters to more easily find the tubers and pull them out of the muck, Hoffmann and her colleagues wrote in their study.

Besides this waterlogged garden, the archaeological sites also had a dry area where people would have lived. The researcher also found about 150 wooden tools that would have been used to dig out the plants.

Radiocarbon dates from the burnt wood found at the site suggest it dates back to 3,800 years ago and was abandoned 3,200 years ago.

The site could represent the 1st direct evidence of wetland plant cultivation in the prehistoric Pacific Northwest, according to the report on this discovery.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

At least 200 mammoth skeletons discovered under the Mexico City airport site

At least 200 mammoth skeletons discovered under the Mexico City airport site

At an airport construction facility north of Mexico City, the number of mammouth skeletons recovered increased to at least 200 and still many are to be excavated, said experts on Thursday. 

Paleontologists work Thursday to preserve the skeleton of a mammoth discovered at the construction site of Mexico City’s new airport.

Archeologists hope the site that has become “mammoth central” — the shores of an ancient lake bed that both attracted and trapped mammoths in its marshy soil — may help solve the riddle of their extinction.

Experts said that finds are still being made at the site, including signs that humans may have made tools from the bones of the lumbering animals that died somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.

There are so many mammoths at the site of the new Santa Lucia airport that observers have to accompany each bulldozer that digs into the soil to make sure work is halted when mammoth bones are uncovered.

“We have about 200 mammoths, about 25 camels, five horses,” said archeologist Rubén Manzanilla López of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, referring to animals that went extinct in the Americas.

The site is only about 12 miles from artificial pits, essentially shallow mammoth traps, that were dug by early inhabitants to trap and kill dozens of mammoths.

Manzanilla López said evidence is beginning to emerge suggesting that even if the mammoths at the airport died natural deaths after becoming stuck in the mud of the ancient lake bed, their remains may have been carved up by humans. Something similar happened at the mammoth-trap site in the hamlet of San Antonio Xahuento, in the nearby township of Tultepec.

While tests are still being carried out on the mammoth bones to try to find possible butchering marks, archeologists have found dozens of mammoth-bone tools — usually shafts used to hold other tools or cutting implements — like ones in Tultepec.

“Here we have found evidence that we have the same kind of tools, but until we can do the laboratory studies to see marks of these tools or possible tools, we can’t say we have evidence that is well-founded,” Manzanilla López said.

Paleontologist Joaquin Arroyo Cabrales said the airport site “will be a very important site to test hypotheses” about the mass extinction of mammoths.

“What caused these animals’ extinction, everywhere there is a debate, whether it was climate change or the presence of humans,” Arroyo Cabrales said. “I think in the end the decision will be that there was a synergy effect between climate change and human presence.”

Ashley Leger, a paleontologist at the California-based Cogstone Resource Management company, who was not involved in the dig, noted that such natural death groupings “are rare.

A very specific set of conditions that allow for a collection of remains in an area but also be preserved as fossils must be met. There needs to be a means for them to be buried rapidly and experience low oxygen levels.”

The site near Mexico City now appears to have outstripped the Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, S.D. — which has about 61 sets of remains — as the world’s largest find of mammoth bones. Large concentrations have also been found in Siberia and at Los Angeles’ La Brea tar pits.

For now, the mammoths seem to be everywhere at the site and the finds may slow down, but not stop, work on the new airport.

Mexican Army Capt. Jesus Cantoral, who oversees efforts to preserve remains at the army-led construction site, said “a large number of excavation sites” are still pending detailed study, and that observers have to accompany backhoes and bulldozers every time they break ground at a new spot.

The airport project is so huge, he noted, that the machines can just go work somewhere else while archeologists study a specific area. The airport project is scheduled for completion in 2022, at which point the dig will end.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

A lost city discovered by Archaeologists when they explore a rural field in Kansas

A lost city discovered by Archaeologists when they explore a rural field in Kansas

In the Great Plains of Kansas, archaeologists have made an innovative and unlikely discovery: a vast town lost centuries ago. Donald Blakeslee discovered a few years ago the lost city of Etzanoa in Arkansas City, Kan, a Wichita State University anthropologist, and an archaeology professor. 

Anthropologist and archaeology professor Donald Blakeslee in one of the pits being excavated in Arkansas City, Kan.
Kacie Larsen of Wichita State University shakes dirt through a screened box to see what artefacts may emerge.

In that small city in south-central Kansas, local residents found the arrowhead and the gold mine underneath their town, pottery, and other ancient artefacts, for decades, in the fields and rivers of the region.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Blakeslee used newly translated documents written by the Spanish conquistadors who came across the land over 400 years ago to determine that these artifacts were once part of the Native American lost city of Etzanoa.

“‘I thought, ‘Wow, their eyewitness descriptions are so clear it’s like you were there,’” Blakeslee told the Times about reading the conquistador’s accounts. “I wanted to see if the archaeology fit their descriptions. Every single detail matched this place.”

The city of Etzanoa is believed to have been around from 1450 to 1700 and was home to approximately 20,000 people. Blakeslee said that the city was the second-largest settlement in the present-day United States at the time and spanned across at least five miles of the space between the Walnut and Arkansas rivers.

The 20,000 inhabitants of Etzanoa were said to have lived in “thatched, beehive-shaped houses.”

In 1541, conquistador Francisco Vazquez de Coronado came to the town hoping to discover its fabled gold but instead found Native Americans in a collection of settlements that he called Quivira.

Sixty years later in 1601, Juan de Oñate led a team of 70 conquistadors from New Mexico to Quivira, also hoping to find its gold but they ran into a tribe called the Escanxaques, who told them of the nearby city of Etzanoa.

Oñate and his team arrived at the city and were greeted peacefully by the inhabitants of Etzanoa. However, things quickly went south when the conquistadors started taking hostages, which then caused the city’s residents to flee in fear.

The group of conquistadors explored the vast area of more than 2,000 houses but feared an attack from the peoples they dislodged and decided to return home.

On their return trip, they were attacked by some 1,000 members of the Escanxaque tribe and a huge battle took place. The conquistadors lost and returned home to New Mexico, never to come back to the area again.

French explorers came nearly a century later to that part of south-central Kansas but did not find any evidence of Etzanoa or its people. It is believed that disease caused the untimely demise of the population.

However, traces of the people and their city would not stay hidden forever. Blakeslee and a team of excavators found the site of the ancient battle in a neighborhood in Arkansas City and found remanents from the battle.

Locals in the area had been uncovering artifacts from the lost city for decades but didn’t understand why until evidence of the city itself was discovered by Blakeslee.

“Lots of artifacts have been taken from here,” Warren “Hap” McLeod, a resident of Arkansas City who lives on the spot where the battle took place, told the Times. “Now we know why. There were 20,000 people living here for over 200 years.” One local resident said that the sheer amount of artifacts that people in the area have is mindblowing.

Russell Bishop, a former Arkansas City resident, shows off the arrowheads he found in the area as a kid.
Professor Donald Blakeslee of Wichita State University shows a black pot unearthed by student Jeremiah Perkins, behind him.

“My boss had an entire basement full of pottery and all kinds of artefacts,” Russell Bishop told the Times. “We’d be out there working and he would recognize a black spot on the ground as an ancient campfire site … I don’t think anyone knew how big this all was. I’m glad they’re finally getting to the bottom of it.”

The Great Plains were long-regarded as huge, empty spaces in ancient times that were populated mainly by nomadic tribes. But Blakeslee’s discovery of Etzanoa could prove that some of the tribes in the area weren’t nomadic and were actually more urban than previously believed.

Blakeslee has also discovered evidence that similar, large-scale lost cities could be located in nearby counties which might have been around during the time of Etzanoa. These latest groundbreaking archaeological finds are helping researchers fill in huge blanks in early American history.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

1.8-million-year-old skull gives a glimpse of our evolution

1.8-million-year-old skull gives a glimpse of our evolution

The finding of a 1.8 million-year-old skull from a human ancestor found in a medieval Georgian village is a dramatic example of early evolution and shows that our ancestral tree has fewer branches than some believe, researchers say.

1.8-million-year-old skull gives a glimpse of our evolution
A photo provided by the journal Science shows a pre-human skull found in the ground at the medieval village Dmanisi, Georgia. The discovery of the estimated 1.8-million-year-old skull of a human ancestor captures early human evolution on the move in a vivid snapshot and indicates our family tree may have fewer branches than originally thought, scientists say.

The fossil is the most complete pre-human skull uncovered. With other partial remains previously found at the rural site, it gives researchers the earliest evidence of human ancestors moving out of Africa and spreading north to the rest of the world, according to a study published in the journal Science.

The skull and other remains offer a glimpse of a population of pre-humans of various sizes living at the same time – something that scientists had not seen before for such an ancient era. This diversity bolsters one of two competing theories about the way our early ancestors evolved, spreading out more like a tree than a bush.

Nearly all of the previous pre-human discoveries have been fragmented bones, scattered over time and locations – like a smattering of random tweets of our evolutionary history. The findings at Dmanisi are more complete, weaving more of a short story. Before the site was found, the movement from Africa was put at about 1 million years ago.

When examined with the earlier Georgian finds, the skull “shows that this special immigration out of Africa happened much earlier than we thought and a much more primitive group did it,” said study lead author David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgia National Museum. “This is important to understanding human evolution.”

For years, some scientists have said humans evolved from only one or two species, much like a tree branches out from a trunk, while others say the process was more like a bush with several offshoots that went nowhere.

Even bush-favoring scientists say these findings show one single species nearly 2 million years ago at the former Soviet republic site. But they disagree that the same conclusion can be said for bones found elsewhere, such as Africa.

However, Lordkipanidze and colleagues point out that the skulls found in Georgia are different sizes but are considered to be the same species. So, they reason, it’s likely the various skulls found in different places and times in Africa may not be different species, but variations in one species.

To see how a species can vary, just look in the mirror, they said.

“Danny DeVito, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal are the same species,” Lordkipanidze said.

The adult male skull found wasn’t from our species, Homo sapiens. It was from an ancestral species – in the same genus or class called Homo – that led to modern humans. Scientists say the Dmanisi population is likely an early part of our long-lived primary ancestral species, Homo erectus.

Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, wasn’t part of the study but praised it as “the first good evidence of what these expanding hominids looked like and what they were doing.”

Fred Spoor at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, a competitor and proponent of a busy family tree with many species disagreed with the study’s overall conclusion, but he lauded the Georgia skull discovery as critical and even beautiful.

“It really shows the process of evolution in action,” he said.

Spoor said it seems to have captured a crucial point in the evolutionary process where our ancestors transitioned from Homo habilis to Homo erectus – although the study authors said that depiction is going a bit too far.

The researchers found the first part of the skull, a large jaw, below a medieval fortress in 2000. Five years later – on Lordkipanidze’s 42nd birthday – they unearthed the well-preserved skull, gingerly extracted it, putting it into a cloth-lined case and popped champagne. It matched the jaw perfectly.

They were probably separated when our ancestor lost a fight with a hungry carnivore, which pulled apart his skull and jaw bones, Lordkipanidze said.

The skull was from an adult male just shy of 5 feet (1.5 meters) with a massive jaw and big teeth, but a small brain, implying limited thinking capability, said study co-author Marcia Ponce de Leon of the University of Zurich. It also seems to be the point where legs are getting longer, for walking upright, and smaller hips, she said.

“This is a strange combination of features that we didn’t know before in early Homo,” Ponce de Leon said.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

When the Smithsonian discovered an ancient Egyptian colony in the Grand Canyon

When the Smithsonian discovered an ancient Egyptian colony in the Grand Canyon

At 277 miles (445 kilometers) long, up to 18 miles (28 kilometers) wide, and 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) deep, the Grand Canyon is one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring places in the United States.

The Zoroaster and Brahma Temples are seen in the distance from the South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon National Park

The Hopi Indians believe it is the gateway to the afterlife. Its sheer immensity and mystery attracted more than 6 million visitors in 2016.

But what those people probably don’t know is that the Grand Canyon might once have been the home of an entire underground civilization.

But where are they now? And why did they abandon the canyon? Hosts Matt Frederick, Ben Bowlin, and Noel Brown jump straight into the folklore, the legends, and of course, the conspiracies to find out what really happened to the Grand Canyon’s Lost Civilization in this episode of Stuff They Don’t Want You To Know.

In the article, a cross-legged idol resembling Buddha is described along with a large tomb filled with mummified humans: a veritable mash-up of Egyptian and East Asian cultures.

It all started in 1909 when purported Smithsonian Institution explorer G.E. Kincaid discovered strange caverns during an expedition directed by Smithsonian anthropologist S.A. Jordan. The entrance to the cavern was nearly inaccessible, but Kincaid was able to get in to make an incredible discovery.

The enormous caves, which radiated out from a center cavern-like spokes on a wheel, were full of artifacts, including statues, copper weapons, even granaries full of seeds. Its size indicated that 50,000 people could live inside comfortably.

But even more amazingly, the artifacts didn’t match up to anything in the known record. Rather than appearing to be of Native American origin, as one might expect, the objects had distinct Egyptian or Tibetan designs. Could there actually have been an entire civilization of Egyptians living there? If so, how did they get there?

The story caused a huge sensation when it broke in the Arizona Gazette in 1909, but was soon met with skepticism: The Smithsonian has no record of either of the scientists, nor their discoveries, and firmly quells any claims that Egyptian artifacts have been found in either North or South America.

And no one has been able to find these supposedly massive caves since. Was this some elaborate hoax, may be perpetrated by the Gazette to sell papers?

That’s certainly a possibility, but it doesn’t fly for many conspiracy theorists. Some argue that the Smithsonian Institution has purposely wiped Kincaid and Jordan from their records and actively destroyed artifacts that don’t agree with the “status quo story” of human history.

Others think the caves hold a passage to the fourth dimension, where the reptilians (yep!) who have secretly run the world for thousands of years emerge into our world. Still, others believe the area is top-secret and closely guarded, like Area 51.

So is this series of caverns proof of a long-lost, possibly Egyptian civilization that’s simply being covered up by the Smithsonian, or is it a passageway into this dimension for our reptilian overlords? One thing is for sure.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

400-year-old underground complex found in the Grand Canyon

400-year-old underground complex found in the Grand Canyon

Courtesy & Full Credit: The National Reporter

A group of hikers who had been exploring a virtually untouched area of the Grand Canyon happened upon an opening in the side of the canyon wall last July. Peter Marlington and his friends had discovered the entrance to an underground complex that has been estimated to be over four hundred years old and built in the late 1500s.

“It was hot as hell out and we were hiking up the side of the cliff to get into a wooded area for the shade.” Peter Marlington explained. “When we reached the shrub line we felt a cool breeze coming from the high weeds that were growing on the side of the cliff.  It seemed very odd that a cool breeze would be coming from nowhere like that,  so we poked around to see why.

When we pushed our way past the shrubbery we came to the entrance of a large brick-lined tunnel. We could tell right away that it was very old, but we had no idea that it would turn out to be as old as they say it is.”

400-year-old underground complex found in the Grand Canyon
The entrance to the complex has been cleared of the shrubbery that kept it hidden for 400 years.

“We were a little hesitant at first to go inside because we didn’t know what it was.  We thought it might be a flood tunnel and we could be drowned in a sudden storm came up.   And it was really kind of creepy too.   I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’ll tell you when you are staring into an old dark musty smelling tunnel like that, it will give anyone the creeps.  After a few minutes of debating whether or not we should go inside,  the spirit of exploration overruled our fears, out came our flashlights, and into the tunnel, we went.

It went for quite a distance all on very level ground. We knew that if it was a flood tunnel that it would be slopped upward, we were relieved when we realized that we weren’t going to be flushed out in a sudden deluge.  After a few hundred feet the tunnel stopped, it was boarded up.”
The National Reporter – Did you turn back?

“Oh, hell no.   We broke through.  We had to.  If we quit just because of some old rotten wood blocking our way and turned around,  we would have spent the rest of our lives going crazy wondering what was on the other side of that door.”

The National Reporter – I can understand that.  As a staff member of   The National Reporter, I would have continued on as well to satisfy my curiosity and to bring yet another award-winning news story to my readers.  So, What was on the other side of the wooden barricade?
“Another tunnel.  It was a lot smaller than the one we were in, it was more like a doorway in the wall.   It was pitch black inside and it smelled kind of funny, like something that has been dead for real long time, you know, like dried up and dusty smelling.   We made our way inside and soon came to another tunnel that went off to the right and another one about twenty feet ahead that went to the left.

We didn’t go down either of them, we just kept going straight.”

The first tunnel was covered with a wooden barricade. Inside were more tunnels that went off to the right and the left.

“We continued down the pitch-black tunnel until we came to a huge chamber.  Our flashlights were barely bright enough to light the entire area up because of its immense size.   Down below the brick floor looked like it had collapsed and there appeared to be some sort of tunnel system that had been exposed.  We had no idea what the tunnels were for, but they were definitely big enough for large groups of people to move through.”

The National Reporter Did you go down to see what was inside of them?
“We did after a while.   The other guys were getting kind of scared, I have to admit it was getting kind of creepy.   Graveyard creepy,..you know what I mean?”

The National Reporter – I know exactly what you mean. “I went down by myself, the other guys were too scared.   It took a few minutes to get down to the collapsed floor where the tunnels were.  It was pretty dangerous because the morter was all crumbled and powdery and the bricks were loose.    I figured that was why the floor had collapsed.   I entered the tunnel on the far left and walked for about fifty feet,  then it stopped at a bricked-up wall.  There was a loose brick in it, so I pushed on it and jiggled it around until it fell into the room on the other side.”

The floor of the immense chamber appeared to be collapsed revealing several passageways underneath.

The National Reporter – What was inside of the room?

“I don’t know, I couldn’t see.  “The hole wasn’t big enough to stick the flashlight in and look in at the same time, so I just put the camera into the hole and snapped a few pictures.  I had the weirdest feeling while I was doing it like there was something on the other side of the wall watching me the whole time. I’ll tell you this much, it spooked the hell out of me and I ran out of there with the hair standing up on my neck.”

The National Reporter – What did you do then?

“We left.” He said. “When I told my buddy’s that it felt like something was watching me from the other side of that wall, that was it.  We ran out of that place so fast nothing could have stopped us.” The National Reporter – What did you do when you exited the complex, Did you report finding it right away?

“Yeah, pretty much.   We went to the park rangers’ office and told them what we found.  Naturally, they didn’t know what we were talking about.  They checked their map and there were no tunnels or underground facilities in that area.  They thought we were making the whole thing up.”
The National Reporter – What did you do then?

“We took them out to the tunnel so they could see it for themselves.  They didn’t want to go at first because they still thought we were on something.  I guess I would have thought the same thing if I was in their position.  The whole thing sounds so made up.”

The National Reporter – I can understand that most people would think that you made this story up.  It’s a good thing you have photographs to prove it’s all true.  Your photographs coupled with the integrity and reputation of  The National Reporter as being one of the most reliable news sources in the nation is guaranteed to make believers out of many skeptics.

“I know, that’s why I contacted The National Reporter and not one of those silly tabloids who make up ridiculous stories.” The National Reporter – What did you think when you found out that the underground complex that you and your friends discovered was 400 years old?

“It blew our minds.   I mean,..who the hell built it?   The Indians sure as hell didn’t have the know-how to build something like that and there were no European settlers that far west at the time and even if there was, they sure as hell didn’t have the equipment to dig out an underground complex of that size and manufacture the millions of bricks it took to build it.”

The National Reporter – The complex was to be opened to the general public after your discovery, but those plans were quickly cancelled when a government agency closed it down suddenly for some unknown reason. Do you have any ideas on why they did that?

“I have my suspicions.   Remember when I told you about how I stuck my camera into the hole in the wall and snapped a few photo’s and it felt as though something was watching me?”

The National Reporter – Yes, was there something in the photographs?
“Take a look for yourself.” He said, handing it to me. “If this is 400 years old, then something really weird was going on back then that people don’t know about and they sure as hell aren’t going to find out what it was from reading their history books, I’ll tell you that.”

I took the photograph from him and to tell you the truth, I was speechless by what I saw. I could understand what Peter Marlington meant when he said something weird was going on back then. I won’t say anymore, I will just present you, readers, with the image Mr. Marlington captured on film and leave you to ponder on it.

GUATEMALA, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

60,000 Mayan structures preserved under dense Guatemalan jungle

Lasers Reveal 60,000 Ancient Maya Structures in Guatemala

Researchers have identified more than 60,000 previously unknown structures in northern Guatemala after extensive aerial LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) surveys.

Extensive LiDAR scans demonstrated that the region was more densely populated than previously thought

Their findings show that the region’s pre-Columbian civilization was “far more complex and interconnected than most Maya specialists had supposed,” according to National Geographic.

Scientists mapped more than 800 square miles of Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve and uncovered an extensive network of previously-unknown structures, quarries, farmland, and roads.

Based on the data, researchers believe that the region supported an advanced civilization on par with that of ancient Greece or China, rather than a series of isolated city-states.

Tulane University archaeologist Francisco Estrada-Belli says that the surveys reveal that the region was far more densely populated than previously thought: “it’s no longer unreasonable to think that there were 10 to 15 million people there,” even in areas that were thought to be uninhabitable.

Archaeologists will now study the data to refine their understandings of the region’s inhabitants. The surveys found more than just ancient structures: they found evidence of pits from modern-day looters.

LiDAR mapping has proven to be a useful tool for archaeologists in recent years, who have used the technology to penetrate the dense rainforests of South America to reveal human-made structures that have long been hidden.

The ancient Maya city of Tikal in Guatemala.
Extensive defensive systems and irrigation canals suggest a highly organised workforce.

Aircraft-mounted LiDAR sensors shoot lasers into the ground, which bounce back once they hit an object. While the lasers hit tree leaves and vegetation, they also hit the ground.

Once scientists peel back the forest canopy and underbrush, they’re left with detailed images of the ground.

Last year, author Douglas Preston detailed an expedition to Honduras in his book The Lost City of the Monkey God, where archaeologists used LiDAR to uncover a pair of ancient cities in the middle of an impenetrable rainforest.

The survey comes from The Foundation for Maya Cultural and Natural Heritage (PACUNAM), a Guatemalan nonprofit organization dedicated to historical preservation, archaeological research, environmental conservation, and sustainable economic development.

This project is just the first phase of a three-year project that’s expected to survey 5,000 square miles of the region.

According to Ars Technica, researchers on the project will be submitting their findings to papers soon, but they will be revealing some of their work in an upcoming National Geographic special.