Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
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June 16, 2001 Washington, D. C. - Astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins, Ph.D., educated at Manchester University in England and now retired in Washington and Virginia, wrote a book in 1973 entitled Beyond Stonehenge. The Daily Express in London wrote about it, "If Hawkins is right, and most experts now agree that he must be, then Stonehenge is the Eighth Wonder of the ancient world."
June 13, 2001 Havana, Cuba - When I reported last month on COAST about the Cuba discovery, I had an interview with Barbara Moffet, Director of Plans and Programs at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D. C., who confirmed that the Society was aware of the deep water mystery off the western tip of Cuba. She said NGS was communicating with Paulina Zelitsky and her husband, Paul Weinzweig, partners in Canada's Advanced Digital Communications company, known as ADC. Last month, National Geographic was trying to decide whether to help fund a dive in a remotely operated vehicle with cameras to see what is down there. Today, I talked again with Barbara Moffet and she confirmed that National Geographic has now made an agreement for exclusive magazine coverage.
June 9, 2001 Washington, D. C. - This week President George Bush heard his own personally hand-picked scientific panel tell him that global warming is real, man-made, poses threats in the future and that the global temperature could rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit over this century. When Bush created the panel in March, the President said he was unsure that global warming was a real phenomenon. Now his own panel of climate experts, including a Nobel Prize winner and members of the National Academy of Sciences, has answered with these sobering words:
June 2, 2001 Tempe, Arizona - Unusual surface features on Mars imaged by the Global Surveyor continue to provoke controversy among scientists and civilians. One such image looks like a female face taken a year ago in May 2000 in the valley of Libya Montes near the Martian equator, but not publicized until the New York Post featured the image on May 9 after a press conference by astronomer Tom Van Flandern, Ph.D. and former astronaut Brian O'Leary. This week I discussed the face image with planetary geologist, David Nelson. Mr. Nelson is a Research Specialist in the Department of Geological Sciences at Arizona State University in Tempe. His current work is to study the Mars Global Surveyor images and to contribute ideas about where the next NASA Mars Excursion landing sites should be in January 2004. Two rovers are planned for that mission and one likely exploration site will be near sedimentary deposits in the walls of Valles Marineris, the 3000 mile long canyon that runs near the Martian equator.
News Update - May 24, 2001 Lexington, Kentucky - Tonight laboratory experts confirmed that liver enzymes which indicate cyanide poisoning were confirmed in pathology analyses of aborted fetuses and foals. The main suspect for the cyanide source remains the Eastern Tent Caterpillar combined with the cyanide in wild cherry tree leaves containing more cyanide than normal because of the freeze after record high temperatures in mid-April. Still unknown is exactly how the caterpillar cyanide gets into the pregnant mares. While scientists begin more tests on pasture grasses, Lexington horse breeders are going to cut down wild cherry trees near their pastures and spray the Tent Caterpillar moths before they lay eggs that would hatch next spring.
"We are the first people ever to see the bottom of Cuban waters over 50 meters...It's so exciting. We are discovering...even possibly a sunken city built in the pre-classic period and populated by an advanced civilization similar to the early Teotihuacan culture of Yucatan."
- Paulina Zelitsky, ocean engineer, Advanced Digital Communications, May 2001
May 18, 2001 Washington, D. C. - Reporter Andrew Cawthorne reporting from Havana, Cuba for Reuters bylined a May 15 story entitled "Explorers Comb Cuban Seas for Treasure, Mysteries." (See complete text below.) He interviewed ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky, employed by Advanced Digital Communications and based in Tarara along the Cuba coast east of Havana. According to the article, Ms. Zelitsky said, "We are the first people ever to see the bottom of Cuban waters over 50 meters. It's so exciting. We are discovering ...even possibly a sunken city built in the pre-classic period and populated by an advanced civilization similar to the early Teotihuacan culture of Yucatan. ...Researchers using sonar equipment have discovered at a depth of about 2,200 feet (700-800 meters) a huge land plateau with clear images of what appears to be urban development partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resemble pyramids, roads and buildings. "
May 16, 2001 Lexington, Kentucky - Seventeen thousand thoroughbred mares live in the Kentucky blue grass fields around Lexington, the largest racehorse breeding area in the United States. Since the end of April 2001, pregnant mares have lost 477 fetuses and stillborn foals. Last year, only 46 aborted foals or fetuses were reported to the University of Kentucky Livestock Disease Diagnostic Center. That means something has caused a 700% increase in fetal deaths.
May 6, 2001 Caral, Peru - Archaeologists reported in the April 27, 2001 journal Science that the mounds and ruins in the Supe Valley 120 miles north of Lima are as old as the pyramids. Now Caral, Peru is the oldest city in the Western Hemisphere. Even though the site and seventeen others were first discovered in 1905, age was never precisely dated. Now Jonathan Haas, Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago and co-author of the report, says that disintegration of carbon in plant fibers in the ruin walls definitely date between 2627 B.C. and 2020 B. C. That makes the Peruvian Supe Valley home to a civilization as old and advanced as those in Egypt where the pyramids were being built, to Mesopotamia where the Sumerian culture dominated, to the Indus Valley, China and the newly discovered Central Asian civilization near Iran and Afghanistan which was making fine ceramics and had its own independent writing symbols. See: Earthfiles Science report 05-05-01.
May 5, 2001 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - A large, sophisticated civilization equal to Sumeria and Mesopotamia and thriving at the same time at least 5,000 years ago was lost in the harsh desert sands of the Soviet Union near the Iran and Afghanistan borders. But now details are beginning to emerge. This week I visited archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. There he has some exquisite pottery shards the Russian government gave him permission to bring back to the United States from his recent excavations in the Kara Kum desert of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on the Iran and Afghanistan borders.