Happy New Year and Welcome Back!

You’ve probably noticed that there haven’t been any new posts here for quite a while. Part of the reason is that I’ve been busy finishing up the third (and last) novel in my Seeds of Civilization series and I’m happy to report that I completed that project on December 31st! The other reason is that there just hasn’t been any news relating to the search for ancient maritime cultures in MegaAmerica.

I did run across one interesting story about a month ago and I guess I’ll have to dig it out of my Pending file until something new comes in from Bill Donato or Greg and Lora Little. I’ve emailed Greg for a post-conference follow-up and I know Bill has some really interesting side-scan sonar images taken near Bimini, but so far I have nothing I can report on.

On December 17th, National Geographic News (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/) ran a story by Brian Handwerk titled Bahamas “Blue Hole” Yields Pre-Human Fossil Treasures. Naturally, the title caught my attention and it includes some facts that may support the work being done by Donato and the Littles.

The Bahamas are home to a large number of underwater cave systems called blue holes and many of them have never been explored. The NG article focuses on one particular site, known as Sawmill Sink, where the National Museum of the Bahamas has been recovering some remarkable fossils, including the remains of extinct species of lizards, snakes, bats, birds and plants. They’ve even found human remains that are more than a thousand years old!

Sawmill Sink, like many of the other blue hole sites, was once a dry cave system that flooded when the seas rose at the end of the last ice age. Many blue holes in the Bahamas contain stalagmites and stalactites, features than can only develop above the surface. If the sea levels rose approximately 10,000 years ago, MegaAmerica’s blue holes may soon provide clues to what – and who – inhabited the area in ancient times.

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