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The episode explores the mystery of the Bimini Road, a submerged rock formation off the coast of North Bimini in the Bahamas.
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00:00This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.
00:07The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations,
00:13but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.
00:17The waters off a tiny Caribbean island called Bimini
00:23cover a long stone structure that scientists have yet to explain.
00:28The stones appear to be so carefully placed, some people have concluded they are either a road or a wall,
00:43perhaps even a remnant of Atlantis.
00:48A nearby healing well is supposedly linked to the mystical springs of that lost civilization.
00:57While diving near Bimini, a San Diego physician claims discovery of a submerged pyramid,
01:04inside which he found a crystal ball.
01:10He says this crystal emits a power capable of repelling metal.
01:22Is it possible that the Bimini wall, the well and the crystal ball
01:27bear a common past with the legendary continent of Atlantis?
01:39The twin islands of Bimini, 60 miles east of Florida, are a tropical paradise, home for 2,000 people.
01:46The atmosphere is relaxed and happy.
01:50It seems difficult to imagine that these easy going people could be the descendants of Atlanteans,
01:56who purportedly have the power to rule the world.
02:01There is however evidence that alludes to that fact.
02:05Beyond the fashionable yachting docks in the dense undergrowth of the North Island is the figure of a fish etched in sand.
02:14Native lore gives no clue to what it represents,
02:17but it does lie close to a mysterious series of huge square rocks submerged in 15 feet of water off the coast.
02:26The blocks are so perfectly fitted together that some people have likened them to a Roman highway.
02:33No clues exist to the origin of the blocks.
02:38There are claims that they are ordinary beach rock which broke off from the Bimini coastline thousands of years ago.
02:45Such formations are common in tropical waters throughout the world.
02:50One of those who believes the wall is beach rock is Eugene Shin, a U.S. Geological Survey Team member,
03:00who conducted an analysis of the Bimini wall.
03:03We did two types of things.
03:05First, we cored the blocks and we determined that they were beach rock.
03:09And every geologist, and that's dozens of geologists have looked at those rocks,
03:12and everyone has come to the conclusion that it's beach rock because it's so easy to recognize.
03:16The question is, are those slabs of beach rock in place?
03:25Shin and a three-man diving team used hydraulic drills to bore through the rocks.
03:30Eighteen cores were taken.
03:33The goal was to determine if the stones had once been part of the coastline.
03:37If so, have they fallen into the sea or been carefully placed in position?
03:43After drilling down half a foot, the geologist removed the cores and examined them closely.
03:53The pattern of the grain indicated that the stones had formed naturally,
03:57and then at some later date became submerged.
04:00This finding led to Shin's own conclusions about the origin of the wall.
04:05I think that it's an entirely natural phenomenon, composed of beach rock, as I pointed out earlier.
04:15And a combination of a little rise in sea level and the scouring out of the sand underneath
04:20has caused the blocks to settle to the bottom.
04:23And all of the various shapes can easily be explained by well-known natural phenomenon familiar to all geologists.
04:31Shin points to a similar phenomenon occurring at the Dry Tortugas National Park, south of Key West, Florida.
04:38Could the constant attack of the surf have created the lines in the Bimini wall,
04:45just as it has created these individual blocks in the Tortugas?
04:49Other questions remain unanswered.
04:53How could the Bimini wall have dropped 15 feet when the natural erosion rates indicate
04:58that it should be no deeper than 3 feet below the surface?
05:03More importantly, how could part of the wall run perpendicular to Bimini's coastline?
05:09We are left to ponder the possibility that the Bimini stones were so carefully cut and aligned,
05:18they are in harmony with existing natural beach rock.
05:21This painstaking placement would require sophisticated mechanical tools.
05:26Such tools could only be designed and handled by people of superior intelligence.
05:31In the 1930s, psychic Edgar Cayce predicted that part of Atlantis would surface in the late 1960s.
05:43In 1968, the Bimini wall was discovered.
05:48Was it possible that the strange stone structure could be part of Atlantis or one of its outposts?
05:57Plato was the first to mention Atlantis.
06:00While chronicling aspects of the Atlantean people,
06:03he claimed that they controlled energy-charged crystals as well as healing wells possessing great curative powers.
06:11Healing wells do exist, according to Les Hemingway, author, explorer, and brother of Ernest Hemingway.
06:19He had heard of just such a well on Bimini.
06:22He and his daughter Hillary agreed to guide us to the site.
06:25A narrow inlet, approximately 300 yards long, leads into a mangrove swamp.
06:32The brackish water is populated by tiny sharks and rays.
06:40Some, like Hemingway, speculate that both plant and animal life thrive extremely well in the area,
06:49as a result of some peculiar qualities possessed by the well water.
06:58Admittedly, Hemingway is not an expert on the well's special properties as a result of direct personal experience.
07:05However, he has concluded that the well itself apparently possesses the power to heal.
07:10Here is where the actual fountain of youth is.
07:15The flow is thousands of gallons per day, and it's absolutely cold, pure, fresh water coming right up in a salt water pool.
07:23The water apparently has definite curative powers because various people who have both major and minor ailments have soaked in it and have experienced an amazing amount of ease from their problems.
07:38People who have gout, for instance, have found that the gout disappears in two or three soaking.
07:43Other people with small skin cancers and people who have skin inflammations have found that the inflammations and the small growths on their skins have literally disappeared as a result of poultices and soaking with water from this fountain.
07:59Surprisingly, Hemingway's claims have received some scientific support.
08:06Miami psychologist Adolfo Villasuso tested the well waters and found an unusual amount of a certain element.
08:14There were two water samples that I had analyzed in two local laboratories.
08:18One of them I took myself because I was kind of surprised at the high amount of lithium that was found in the well.
08:26It was a substantial amount.
08:27Laboratory analyses repeatedly revealed that the well water did have an extremely high content of lithium.
08:36Researchers within the last 10 years have found that lithium has been particularly useful in producing soothing reactions in both normal and disturbed people.
08:47Originally, before it was known that lithium exerted a calming, a therapeutic effect in people with manic depressive illnesses,
08:53there are stories in Roman times and the Middle Ages that people with this illness were sent to wells which were high on lithium and lo and behold they were cured.
09:03Did an ancient race know of Bimini's lithium well?
09:04If so, perhaps Plato's assertion that Atlantis possessed magical waters was correct.
09:14The way this well has been cut down through solid rock and the way this well seems to be so well hidden are two very different things.
09:26The hiding part I think may have developed in the last few hundred years and is a result of just local growth but the cutting down through solid rock is something that had to be done by intelligent beings who had access to great use of tools and most unusual tools.
09:42We don't know whether Atlanteans did this or not. I of course would like to think that they did and it's very possible that they did. It's just that none of us have been able to trace back prehistory to Atlantean days in this particular spot.
09:57From the air another peculiar fact about Bimini becomes apparent. Perfectly straight lines carved in the sand slice across the island. Most point directly to the well.
10:13Perhaps the lines, the Bimini wall and the well are linked by common ties to the people of Atlantis. Is it possible that further exploration around Bimini might reveal hard evidence of the brilliant but lost Atlantean civilization?
10:30The secrets of a bygone civilization are often not easily revealed. The discovery of structures built by the early Egyptians sometimes leave us more puzzled than satisfied. Great debates rage over how an ancient people accomplished such architecturally complicated buildings. And no one explanation satisfies the question why were the pyramids built?
11:00Equally intriguing are similar structures found throughout Central America. Could the construction of these pyramids be linked with those in Egypt?
11:12The many stone walls that survive today reveal a high level of workmanship. The complicated stone work produced by both cultures still bemuses modern science.
11:27The stones off Bimini bear remarkable resemblance to those in Egypt and Central America. Is it possible that Bimini somehow linked the two together?
11:39In 1972, Miami disc jockey Robey Yong and well-known psychic Irene Hughes launched a unique experiment here recreated for In Search Of. They hired a plane to fly over the waters surrounding Bimini.
11:54The purpose of the flight was to gain psychic impressions of the area to help uncover tangible evidence of the existence of an ancient civilization.
12:01Now we're not going to tell you where we're going. At all. We'll just sort of fly around. And if you get a feeling, we'll confirm.
12:16Now below us, you can see is just crystal clear water. The drop off of the Gulf Stream 3,000 feet down from then on east. What do you think?
12:29Well, I feel that it is all the way along, like a tunnel, you know, but I feel that we have to make this turn. And as we turn, we're going to see on the right hand side, we're going to see some blocks. And on the left hand side, we're going to begin to see gold color in different spots than the water.
12:48And I feel it's right over this way. And we're going to have to go that way and curve right back around that way.
12:55The plane crisscrossed the skies for more than two hours. Finally, Irene directed the search to an area where she felt something was buried on the ocean floor.
13:06It's a building, and I feel that it is pure marble, the most beautiful marble in the world. Similar to that, some of that that was used in the building of the pyramids in Egypt. I feel that it is inhabited by the voices and the images of ancient peoples.
13:23The spot selected by Irene became the subject of an extensive search. For two years, divers combed the sea, looking for evidence of an ancient civilization. They found the usual array of tropical fish and brilliantly colored coral, but nothing else.
13:42Finally, at the foot of a steep cliff, divers spotted a deeply encrusted object on the ocean floor. What he had found was the base of a marble column. After a series of unsuccessful attempts, divers finally brought to the surface a number of marble slabs, each weighing nearly a ton.
14:07The slabs had apparently been part of a much larger structure. Whether they were in the process of being transported and went down in a shipwreck, or had been constructed in an area that was later submerged, is unknown.
14:22The Bimini Atlantis connection might have languished, had it not been for Raymond Brown, a San Diego physician and adventurer. He believes he has found conclusive links between a Caribbean civilization and those of Egypt and Central America.
14:37Dr. Brown's story begins uneventfully on an expedition out of Miami in 1970. Here, recreated, Dr. Brown was headed for an area between Andros Island and the Berry Islands, approximately 100 miles from Bimini.
14:56His intention was not to prove or disprove stories about Atlantis, but rather to search for sunken treasure.
15:03We had been searching the area for a number of years for Spanish galleons, and had found several, and taken some of the treasure, and we were very excited when we found this area.
15:19They traveled to a spot near the tongue of the ocean. There, the bottom drops to 14,000 feet.
15:26Dr. Brown hoped that a recent storm might have shifted bottom sand in order to reveal the galleons.
15:34The water was very murky, and we didn't get to see all that we would like to have seen, but after the storm moved the sand forest that we'd been digging on for several years unsuccessfully, we found ruins and buildings everywhere.
15:59Much of Dr. Brown's photographic equipment was destroyed in the storm, thus making it impossible for a detailed record of the find.
16:14We really had no choice because if we had gone back for new equipment that we lost during the storm, if we hadn't got in the water even as murky as it was, the sand would have covered the buildings up and we would have lost the view.
16:30The ruins of the city Dr. Brown claims he found reflected a sophisticated level of architectural design.
16:37The buildings had somewhat of an Egyptian or classic look to them. The ground mass was rippled as though the area had been dropped into the ocean by some sort of cataclysmic action.
16:52Then, Dr. Brown reported that he came across the most magnificent find of all.
16:59In the murkiness, he spotted the tip of a submerged pyramid, barely visible above the ocean floor.
17:06Looking at the structure, shape, and the size, it would be approximately 400 feet tall.
17:13I went in an opening, and in this opening, in the center of the room, there was a pedestal, and on the pedestal were two human hands made of brass or bronze.
17:27And in the center of the hands was the crystal. My first impression in the room was the shaft that was metallic hanging straight down from the ceiling, pointing at the crystal, and it was gold color.
17:45I swam, because it was still, the room was full of water, I swam up to the ceiling and tried to pry the rod loose. It wouldn't budge, so I settled back down to the floor.
18:00And I reached my hand in between the fingers of the metal hands, and I found the crystal was loose. And it was the only thing in the room that I could take home.
18:10The crystal ball seems to possess powers that can repel a coiled stainless steel rod.
18:19We found a meter with a one and a half ounce weight, and it becomes sensitive to emanations, particularly magnetic emanations around people or things, if they are charged.
18:34We find that if we can hold it straight without allowing it to flip from side to side, some strong influences will actually raise the weight in the air.
18:46Now, as we bring something into the field of the crystal, the ions tend to repel.
18:52If I can keep it balanced and bring it directly into the field and not let it tip from side to side, the weight will then not go to the side if I can keep it centered.
19:03And it will, as I come higher, it will raise it and make it weightless and actually float in the air.
19:10Some historians say that crystals were the source of Atlantean power.
19:17Dr. Brown believes his crystal is evidence that such a culture existed and possessed powers unknown to modern man.
19:25Maybe the ancients knew more than we did about life forms and life forces, and we might discover their secret.
19:35In the last decade of exploration in the waters off Bimini, new finds cause us to question old theories.
19:43Atlantis has long been thought of as a myth, a figment of fanciful imagination, a tale told by Plato to amuse ancient Athens.
19:52But what of Dr. Brown's crystal?
19:56Dr. Marcel Vogel, a researcher at IBM, has devoted more than 20 years of investigation to determine the power of crystals and their effect on human potential.
20:07Throughout history, the earliest recorded history we have, there's been a deep respect for the shape of a ball and the use of a quartz crystal ball for probing in the mind of an individual.
20:24Now I've worked with Dr. Brown's crystal ball. I used his ball and I felt a tremendous energy burst coming from the crystal.
20:37The discovery of the crystal has spawned speculation that possible misuse of its powers by Atlanteans caused the great cataclysm.
20:47The island and all its buildings, it is said, were plunged into the sea.
20:52The Bimini wall, therefore, might be the last visible relic of that lost civilization.
20:57In Search Of, we'll continue in a moment, here on the History Channel.
21:08Divers have always searched for hidden treasures of the sea.
21:14In the waters off Bimini may lie the clues that not only unlock the mystery of Atlantis, but the secrets of the mind as well.
21:25For the present, however, we must content ourselves with the inconclusive bits of evidence so far uncovered.
21:32The origin of the Bimini wall seems destined to remain an enigma until more knowledge about Atlantis is revealed.
21:45Coming up next in Search Of continues with an exploration of the ancient city of Pompeii preserved under the ash of Mount Vesuvius.
21:53Then its crisis in space as 20th Century with Mike Wallace brings you the real story of Apollo 13.
21:59And all this week, it's Hot Dam Week as Modern Marvels brings you the design and construction sagas of some of the world's biggest dams.
22:07It continues later tonight with the story of the Hoover Dam at 10 here on the History Channel, where the past comes alive.
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