Багама аралдарындағы Бимини жолының тас құрылымы

Underwater rock formation near North Bimini island in the Bahamas
The Bimini Road, sometimes called the Bimini Wall, is an underwater rock formation near the island of North Bimini in the Bimini chain of islands. The Road consists of a long northeast southwest linear feature composed of roughly rectangular limestone blocks. Various claims have been made for this feature being either a wall, road, pier, breakwater, or other man made structure. However, credible evidence or arguments are lacking for such an origin. 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:

Most of the blocks were now clearly resting on either the underlying bedrock or on smaller stones on the sea floor.|David Zink

This led him to conclude:

this fact had an important archaeological consequence: it meant that the idea (held by some Atlantologists) that the blocks now visible were only the top of a more complex structure was likely incorrect. In addition, early studies of the Bimini Road, i. e. Gifford and Ball 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 clearly 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.

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.

Although it is generally considered to be a naturally occurring geological feature, as a result of the unusual arrangement and shape of the stones, some believe 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 pulp 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 controversial book 1421: The Year China Discovered America and its accompanying documentary, 1421: The Year China Discovered America? amateur historian Gavin Menzies claimed that when Chinese admiral Zheng He's fleet was in the process of circumnavigating the globe in 1421 3, it stopped at Bimini – see 1421 hypothesis. 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.