Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [30]
The "road" itself is quite impressive, and I can see why it would be misunderstood at first. It is a pair of semiregular strips running parallel to the shore, separated by some seventy feet and consisting of roughly rectangular blocks of highly varied sizes measuring from five to twenty feet on a side. Unless a geologist were consulted, one might easily believe them to be man-made. Actually, the "road" is made up of what is known to geology as "beach rock," and it is typical of such formations in many parts of the world. Beach rock is found as far away from Bimini as Australia and as close by as the Dry Tortugas. In fact, the south shore of Bimini itself is "paved" with such rocks.
Beach rock on the coast of Australia. Did Atlantis extend this far?
Beach rock is formed by a cementing process of nature. Grains of sand, washed by the tides over a period of as little as a few decades, can pick up calcium carbonate from the sea, mostly from the remains of shelled inhabitants. This substance is deposited between the grains like a cement. The resulting rock mass is quite hard (limestone and marble are composed of calcium carbonate) but it fractures readily. The shore of Bimini once extended to the "road," and beach rock that bordered that shore went through a process which is happening to the fresh beach rock on the present-day shoreline. Exposed to the sun, and undermined by slipping sand that is washed away from beneath the rock slabs, the mass cracks in rather straight lines, first in one direction parallel to the shore, then at right angles. The result is long strips of brick-like rocks weighing from one to ten tons each. Later the strips are submerged as the actual shoreline changes.
But, we hear the believers saying, beach rock would have been the most readily available material to build with. True, but it would have been an inferior material, and it would be quite strange to find that it parallels the shore, but is not found inland, leading to other wonders. And why are no other artifacts but barrels made of cement found near such a structure?
But we need not pursue that line of reasoning, no matter how productive, for a geology student, John Gifford, has conducted a series of tests and observations that have proved the "Bimini Road" to be perfectly natural and not at all man-made, and subsequent tests done by E. A. Shinn at a lab in Miami have clinched the case.
If the Atlanteans had chosen to construct the "road" with beach rock, they would of course have chosen the blocks that best fit together, and thus there would be no continuous consistency in the layering of adjacent blocks. Core samples taken from adjacent blocks by Gifford and Shinn and carefully analyzed show consistent layering and grain size, much as a ballistics test shows striations to be similar on bullets from the same gun. Carbon dating was used on shell material found embedded in the rock and showed it to be 2,200 years old—much too young for the mythical Atlantis, even if the rocks had been moved by man. And perhaps worst of all, though the Bimini beach rock on the present shoreline yields scraps of glass bottles, nails, and nuts that were incorporated in its formation, nary a trace of a TV set, laser tube, or any other artifact has been found in the "road" rocks. Edgar Cayce, the reputed visionary and prophet, tells us that these things were common in Atlantis.
So the "Bimini Road" is of natural origin, formed relatively recently and in no way an artifact of any lost civilization. Who is wrong? Certainly Berlitz is, concerning this piece of evidence. And so are some real scientists—Dr. J. Manson Valentine and Dr. David D. Zink, a marine archaeologist and a historian respectively. Funded by the Edgar Cayce Foundation, they came to a wrong conclusion in Explorer's Journal. They did not do the careful, methodical work that Gifford and Shinn did, both on the site and