Andros Platform

Andros is the largest of the Bahama Islands, south of Bimini, where an underwater
feature discovered in 1969 has been associated with Atlantean civilization
ever since. Floridians Dr. Gregory Little and his wife, Lora, found a sunken site in
Nicolls Town Bay, near the extreme northeast end of Andros 34 years later. They
learned of its general position from a former dive operator, Dino Keller, who
claimed to have navigated his boat inside a coral reef usually approached on the
outside. There, in 1992, Keller observed a large structure similar to the so-called
“Bimini Wall,” under some 10 feet of water.
Following Keller’s directions, in March, 2003, Dr. Little snorkeled about 600
yards from shore to find a 1,375-foot long, 150-foot wide arrangement of cyclopean
blocks in three well-ordered sloping tiers interspersed by two bands of smaller stones.
Although standing 15 feet beneath the surface, its top section is 10 feet deep, as
described by Keller. The large stones comprising the tiers average 25 × 30 feet, and
2 feet thick. Each of the three tiers is 50 feet wide. Some suggestion of a ramp was
discerned leading from the floor of the harbor lagoon to the top of the platform.
The feature’s regular appearance and almost uniformly square-cut blocks,
given its location at a natural harbor in the North Atlantic Current, suggest it
may have been a quay, breakwater, or port facility of some kind. Underscoring
this characterization, together with the ramp, are a number of 5-inch wide and
deep rectangles resembling post-holes cut into some of the cyclopean stones
just below the uppermost tier. These holes may have held mooring pylons used
to tie up docked ships. Most if not all of the blocks themselves appear to have
been quarried from local beach rock and deliberately set in place, a marine
construction practice common in the ancient Old World.
Dr. Little believes the formation could only have been built 10,000 years ago,
when sea levels were low enough for its creation. But archaeologists are certain
that nothing of the kind existed in the post glacial epoch. Sea levels would have
dropped sufficiently, however, between 1600 and 1500 B.C., during the middle to
late Bronze Age—a far more likely period for construction, if only because similar
harbor works were already in use throughout the eastern Mediterranean by that
time. Moreover, Lake Superior copper mining was simultaneously nearing the
zenith of its output. A port located off the North American coast, situated in the
heart of the North Atlantic Current, would have been a valuable asset for freighters
carrying cargos of mined copper back to their headquarters in Atlantis.
An Atlantean connection is, after all, suggested in the Andros platform’s six
alternating bands of stone: 6 was the sacred numeral of Atlantis, whose cityplanners
incorporated the holy number in the capital’s alternating stone walls,
according to Plato’s description of the sunken civilization.
(See Bimini Road, Kritias)