Bimini Road

On September 2, 1968, while diving in 5.5 meters (18 feet) of water off the northwest coast of North Bimini, Joseph Manson Valentine, Jacques Mayol and Robert Angove encountered what they called a "pavement" of what later was found to be noticeably rounded stones of varying size and thickness. These stones form a northeast-southwest linear feature, which is now commonly known as either the "Bimini Road" or "Bimini Wall". Two similar linear features lie parallel to and shoreward of the Bimini Wall. The Bimini Wall and two linear features lying shoreward of it are composed of flat-lying, tabular, and roughly rectangular, polygonal, and irregular blocks. Descriptions of the Bimini Road found in various books and articles greatly exaggerate the regularity and rectangularity of the blocks composing these features. The Bimini Road, the largest of three linear features, is long, a northeast/southwest-trending feature with a pronounced hook at its southwest end. It consists of stone blocks measuring as much as in horizontal dimensions, with the average size being . The larger blocks show complementary edges, which are lacking in the smaller blocks. The two narrower and shorter, approximately -long linear features lying shoreward of the Bimini Road consist of smaller tabular stone blocks that are only in maximum horizontal breadth. Having rounded corners, the blocks composing these pavements resemble giant loaves of bread. The blocks consist of limestone composed of carbonate-cemented shell hash that is called "beachrock". Beachrock is native to the Bahamas. The highly rounded nature of the blocks forming the Bimini Road indicates that a significant thickness of their original surface has been removed by biological, physical, and chemical processes. Given the degree to which these blocks have been eroded, it is highly implausible that any original surface features, including any tool marks and inscriptions, would have survived this degree of erosion. states: This led him to conclude: In addition, early studies of the Bimini Road, i.e. Gifford and Ball and David Zink, report taking numerous samples and cores for examination. It is also safe to presume that a certain number of the innumerable visitors to the Bimini Road have chipped off pieces of it. Scientific sampling and souvenir hunting would have left behind modern "tool marks" on the various blocks composing the Bimini Road for later investigators to find. == Age ==

Attempts have been made to determine the age of this feature using different techniques. These include direct radiocarbon dating of the stones composing the Bimini Road and uranium-thorium dating of the marine limestone on which the Bimini Road lies. In 1978, the radiocarbon laboratory operated by the Department of Geology at the University of Miami dated samples from a core collected by E. A. Shinn in 1977 from the Bimini Road. In 1979, Calvert and others reported dates of 2780±70 yr BP (UM-1359), 3500±80 yr BP (UM-1360), and 3350±90 yr BP (UM-1361) from whole-rock samples; a date of 3510±70 yr BP (UM-1362), from shells extracted from the beachrock core; and dates of 2770±80 yr BP (UM-1364) and 2840±70 yr BP (UM-1365) from carbonate cementing the beachrock core. These dates are temporally consistent in that the shells composing the beachrock core from the Bimini Road dated older than the cement holding them together as beachrock. These dates can be interpreted as indicating that the shells composing the Bimini Road are, uncorrected for temporal and environmental variations in radiocarbon, about 3,500 years old. Because of time-averaging and other taphonomic factors, a random collection of shells likely would yield a radiocarbon date that is a few hundred years earlier than when the final accumulation of shells, which were cemented to form beachrock, actually occurred. The radiocarbon dates from the cement demonstrate that the beachrock composing the Bimini Road formed about 2,800 radiocarbon years ago by the cementation of pre-existing sediments that accumulated about 1,300 years earlier. Compared to the dates from the shells and the cement, it appears that the whole-rock dates reflect samples containing varying proportions of shell and cement without any significant contamination by younger radiocarbon. Both these dates and interpretation are consistent with the detailed research by Davaud and Strasser that concluded that the layer of beachrock composing the Bimini Road formed beneath the surface of the island and was exposed by coastal erosion only about 1,900 to 2,000 years ago. Proponents of the Bimini Road being a manmade feature argue that these radiocarbon dates are invalid because they were obtained entirely from whole-rock samples and subject to contamination from younger carbon. The background data reported by Calvert and others In their detailed research, Davaud and Strasser that underlies the beachrock that composes the Bimini Road. They described this sample as being "Whole rock marine limestone under beachrock off Paradise Point, North Bimini; some recrystallisation." This sample yielded a uranium-thorium date of 14,992±258 BP (7132-19/2). Supporters of the idea that the Bimini Road is a man-made structure frequently cite this date in support of its being artificial. The uranium-thorium date published by Gifford and Ball Finally, it is well documented that about 15,000 calendar years ago, sea level in this region was between below present sea level. As a result, the location from where Gifford and Ball collected the sample of limestone was between above sea level at the time indicated by the uranium-thorium date of 14,992±258 BP (7132-19/2). Therefore, it is physically impossible for the marine limestone underlying the Bimini Road to have accumulated around 15,000 BP. Thus, this uranium-thorium date is a meaningless, invalid date lacking any scientific significance. Because this date lacks any scientific meaning, geologists and archaeologists rarely mention it in their discussions of the Bimini Road. The marine limestone underlying the Bimini Road dates to the Sangamonian Stage, the last interglacial, when sea level was last high enough for the marine sediments, now lithified into limestone, to have accumulated. == Geological formation ==

The consensus among geologists and archaeologists is that the Bimini Road is a natural feature composed of beachrock that orthogonal and other joints have broken up into roughly rectangular, polygonal, and irregular blocks. The geologists and anthropologists who have personally studied the Bimini Road include Eugene Shinn of the U.S. Geological Survey; Marshall McKusick, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of Iowa; W. Harrison of Environmental Research Associates, Virginia Beach, Virginia; Mahlon M. Ball and J. A. Gifford of the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami; and Eric Davaud about the geology of the Bimini Islands. Calvert and others Eugene Shinn They include a popular tourist attraction, the Tessellated pavement of Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania; jointed bedrock that has been completely misidentified as a man-made "Phoenician Fortress and Furnace" in Oklahoma; a "tiled pavement" reported from Battlement Mesa in western Colorado; the tessellated pavement of the Bouddi Peninsula near Sydney, Australia; and Arches National Park in Utah. Natural beachrock pavements that are identical to the Bimini Road have been found eroding out of the east shore of Loggerhead Key of Dry Tortugas and submerged beneath of water at Pulley Ridge off the southwest coast of Florida. == Claims of a human origin ==

Although it is generally considered to be a naturally occurring geological feature, the unusual arrangement and shape of the stones have prompted some people to hypothesize that the formation is the remains of an ancient road, wall, or some other deliberately constructed feature. For example, articles published in Argosy (an American men's adventure magazine) and either authored or coauthored by Robert F. Marx, a professional diver and visitor to the Bimini Road, argued that the Bimini Road is an artificial structure. In a 1971 Argosy article, stated that there was "little doubt" that the massive stone blocks were cut by people. The same article noted that he was part of an expedition sponsored by North American Rockwell that included Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut, as leader; Dimitri Rebikoff; and "a number of psychics from the Edgar Cayce Foundation." Greg Little, psychologist; R. Cedric Leonard, anthropologist; and Dimitri Rebikoff, French marine engineer. All claim to have investigated the formations in person, and claim to have observed more than one horizontal layer of blocks, at least in places. However, multiple layers of block can result naturally from systematic fracturing of sedimentary rock where multiple layers of sedimentary rock lie on top of each, as can be observed in the case of the tessellated pavement of Tasmania exposed at Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman Peninsula. In his debunked pseudohistorical book 1421: The Year China Discovered America, amateur historian Gavin Menzies falsely claimed that when Chinese admiral Zheng He's fleet was circumnavigating the globe from 1421 to 1423, it stopped at Bimini. According to Menzies, half of the fleet, under the command of admiral Zhou Wen, was caught in a hurricane near Bimini and built the Bimini Road from beach rock and the ships' ballast as a slipway to haul damaged junks ashore for refitting and repairs of damage caused by the hurricane. There is no evidence for these claims. == See also ==