Atlantis found???

I don't know why it's so hard for everyone to find this place, it's a very nice hotel in the Bahamas!

I'm a little late getting this posted, it seems that has been my theme for the last couple of months, a day late and a dollar short. OK, a week or two late and several dollars short! I'm only human you know.

Homer sent this one to me about two weeks ago and I just haven't had the time to get through all of my e-mails every day. The National Geographic channel did a show on this find and even though the show ran a couple of weeks ago you know they will run it over and over again. So if you didn't already know about it you might take a peak. One of these days somebody is going to get it right and Atlantis will be found.

I know this isn't your standard treasure hunting story but again, it's one of those things that has intrigued me since I was a teenager and I thought some of our readers might have the same curiosity.

From the web:

Was Lost City of Atlantis Found in Spanish Marsh?

Crime solvers follow the money, but experts searching for the lost city of Atlantis? In archaeology, "you should follow the stones," Richard Freund said.

Freund, a University of Hartford professor, believes he and his research team have found the legendary island-city described by Plato in about 360 B.C. as having "in a single day and night ... disappeared into the depths of the sea."

Using satellite photography, ground-penetrating radar, underwater technology and some old-fashioned reasoning, Freund said his team pinpointed the city in a vast marsh in southern Spain that dries out one month a year. Their findings are featured in a National Geographic special premiering tonight, "Finding Atlantis."


"'Follow the stones' means that you have to find the artifacts," he told AOL News in a telephone interview today. "And certain types of stones give you clues about where certain types of things came from."

His team's search began in 2008 with a space satellite photograph showing what looked to be a submerged city in Spain's Dona Ana Park. In 2009 and 2010, Freund's researchers worked with Spanish archaeologists and geologists to explore beneath the mud flats using radar and imaging.


The discovery was clinched, Freund said, with the later find of "standing stones" and a series of memorial cities in central Spain built in the image of Atlantis.

"We found something that no one else has ever seen before, which gives it a layer of credibility, especially for archaeology, that makes a lot more sense," Freund told Reuters.

The memorial sites are significant to Freund's theory because refugees from the lost city would have built smaller-scale versions in tribute. And so when a Spanish scientist led him to ancient sites surrounded by concentric moats -- and a museum featuring standing stones with a symbol similar to Plato's drawing of Atlantis -- Freund was convinced these were commemorations of the destroyed city.

"There are more than 100 of them, and they come from all different places in the area," Freund told AOL's local news site Canton Patch.

"In crime, you follow the money," he told Patch. "In archaeology, you follow the stones."

His team also found ancient wood dating back to 440 B.C. A core sample taken at the marsh showed a layer of methane -- an indication to Freund that a lot of living things all died at once.


His team also found ancient wood dating back to 440 B.C. A core sample taken at the marsh showed a layer of methane -- an indication to Freund that a lot of living things all died at once.


"Finding this one layer of methane is a very telltale sign of a society that is destroyed in one fell swoop," he told the Hartford Courant. "This was in the middle of nowhere, and there was no methane layer found in the area except where we were working."

Explorers looking for Atlantis previously have focused on the Mediterranean Sea as well as the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The lost city has been "found" many times over the years, including by Russian scientists who pinpointed a ruined town in the Black Sea; an American who found man-made walls a mile deep in the Mediterranean; and Swedish researchers who found it in the North Sea.
The lost city even was proclaimed found when people searching Google Earth spotted lines resembling a city street grid in the ocean off the coast of Africa. Google squelched the revelation when it explained the lines actually were left by a boat collecting data.

Researchers plan more excavations at the Spanish site, and Freund agreed his current findings won't put a definitive end to the debate.

"It's never like finding the Titanic. It's never like finding Tutankhamun's tomb. That's the way, in the best of all circumstances, that you find something intact," Freund told the Courant.

"You'll not be able to convince all the people all the time," he said.

Gold cross and chain from the Atocha found

The ocean floor off the Florida Keys never seems to stop giving.


Diver Bill Burt with Mel Fisher’s Treasures was looking for a section of the sunken Spanish galleon, Nuestra Senora de Atocha, this week. Instead, he came across a 40- inch gold chain shimmering on the sandy ocean floor about 30 miles from Key West.


The chain, which is believed to have come from the Atocha, contains a gold medallion and a gold cross. The cross appears to be, according to the salvors, inscribed with Latin letters. It is estimated to be worth $250,000.


Mel Fisher’s team found a portion of the Atocha and $450 million worth of artifacts and treasure in 1985. But the contents of the Atocha’s sterncastle, a wooden, fort-shaped area at the back of ship, have never been recovered. The Atocha sank during a hurricane in 1622. A second hurricane is believed to have torn the sterncastle from the Atocha and carried it miles away.

The payday

I would like to thank Rob for sending me this story. This is a follow up to a story I had posted early about a gold nugget that had been found.

Just in case you have a lot of money just laying around (don't we all?), the owner of the nugget also owns the land the nugget was found on and is auctioning that off too. 180 acres, maybe there's another huge nugget just waiting to be found!

Bidder pays $460K for roughly 8-pound gold nugget


SACRAMENTO, Calif.



A bidder has paid $460,000 for a roughly 8-pound gold nugget found in Northern California's Gold Rush country.


Spectrum Numismatics came away with the nugget on Wednesday after a feverish two minutes of bidding at the Golden West Auction in Sacramento. The company was bidding on behalf of an anonymous buyer.


What may be the biggest California gold nugget in existence was found in the unincorporated town of Washington in Nevada County last March with a metal detector.


At current gold prices, the nugget would have fetched less than $138,000. But auctioneers say its connection to the 19th century Gold Rush helped boost its value.


Auctioneer Don Kagin says the person who found the nugget also plans to auction the 180 acres where it was discovered.

The Gold Cube

For those of you that like to find your gold in it's original form, you might want to take a look at this video. Rob sent this to me (since we are thinking about doing a little panning of our own) and I thought I would share it with our readers.

The find of a lifetime, made twice!

OK, so maybe for some people this isn't that exciting but as treasure hunters, I can't believe this wouldn't be of interest to everybody.

I have been interested in the crystal skulls for a long time, even before they were made popular by Indiana Jones!

This skull has been lost and found, or hidden and found, twice. Once by the Mayans and once by the Nazis.

I was made aware of this story from a forum I am a member of and I would like to thank the man who posted it for bringing it to my attention.

From the web:

Mayan crystal skull believed to have been owned by SS chief Heinrich Himmler discovered in Germany


A crystal skull believed to have occult powers that was part of a treasure trove of architects held by S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler has been unearthed in Germany.

The skull, found resting in an attic in the roof of a house in a small Bavarian village, has excited treasure hunters who say it was with a list showing it was part of a larger trove of booty once owned by the most sinister man in the Third Reich.

Early indications are that it is part of a series worshipped by ancient Mayan cultures in what is now Mexico which, legend has it, are vital to stop the world from ending next year.

The Mayans believed that after a ‘Great Flood‘ destroyed Atlantis, the survivors wished to preserve their wisdom. They shaped thirteen crystal skulls; nine were coloured and represented the races of men and four were as clear as glass to represent ``the beasts that walk, crawl, slide and fly."

They were then sent to their place of "birth" until such a time when all are needed to avert the catastrophe that man will wreak on the planet.

The Mayans were a race of highly gifted astronomers and mathematicians.

Using their knowledge of planetary and galactic progressions, the Mayans were able to record a time and date for this ‘end of days‘ - the winter solstice, 21st December 2012.

Himmler, who ran the modern industrial-scale murder programme of the Jews, was also spellbound by myths and legends all his life. He financed expeditions to far-flung corners of the earth by Indiana Jones-type S.S. men seeking proof of the supremacy of Ayran man - ie, the Germans.

The skull, which weighs nearly 20lbs, is of the same design as the death’s head which adorned the uniforms of his killers. It was found in a wooden and leather box in the home of an old lady and it is now in the hands of Swiss journalist Luc Burgin.

With it, it is claimed, was a list of 35 treasures which the S.S. was seeking to bring back to Germany from Sudetenland on the border with Czechoslovakia as the Reich crumbled in 1945. Part of it reads;"Nr. 14; the crystal skull - 263-2 RFSS Collection Rahn, No 25592, leather case, crystal death‘s head, South America."

RFSS referred to Reichsfuehrer-S.S. - Himmler‘s official title in Nazi Germany While Rahn referred to Otto Rahn, an S.S. officer and chief occultist for Himmler who has been described as as the inspiration behind the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, although neither George Lucas nor Steven Spielberg have never spoken of him.

Burgin says he is commissioning experts in the coming weeks to examine the skull to try to prove its authenticity. He said; "I am 99 percent sure that this is one of the skulls of the Mayans, but we need clarity and all available tests will be carried out to ascertain authenticity."

A footnote on the box stated; "Do not open! The personal property of the Reichsfuehrer-S.S.!"

The old lady who handed it over in a village near Munich was once married to a high ranking S.S. officer.

The full details of the booty on the list found along with the skull haven‘t been revealed but are thought to include details of S.S. silver rings worth 50 million pounds in today‘s money.

They are said to be buried in the hills surrounding the eerie triangular-shaped castle of Wewelsburg near Paderborn. Himmler used the castle as a Black Camelot for his knights-of-the-dark-side.

As the Reich crumbled he abandoned Wewelsburg. Some 9,280 special S.S silver rings struck for his men, and returned on his orders to him after death, were stashed in secret cave in the nearby hills.

Pirate treasure found!

Aaaaaaarrrrgggg!!

Oh come on, you can't seriously be tired of me doing that everytime I mention a pirate treasure can you?

This is another story from the web that I have to thank Rob and Homer for sending to me to share with our readers.

This isn't treasure in the truest form but to me, finding anything left behind by a pirate is treasure.

From the web:





Captain Morgan's Cannons Found

What may be the first artifacts from legendary pirate Henry Morgan's shipwrecked vessels near Panama were recently discovered.


Scuba diving archaeologists recently found six cannons from Morgan's vessels that sunk on a mission to capture a fort in the 17th century, the Los Angeles Times reported.


Morgan is a legend in Panama. He's commonly thought of as a pirate, but he was what's called a privateer — a legal pirate. He was paid by the English crown to defend its Caribbean colonies.


The cannons, if truly Morgan's, would be the first artifacts of his that have been found near Panama.


As the story goes, Morgan, along with three ships carrying 470 men, set out to take over a fort guarding the entrance to Panama City. Morgan was sailing on the Satisfaction, his flagship, but all four ships crashed on Lajas Reef in shallow water. Despite losing their ships, Morgan's men still were able to paddle ashore and capture the fort.


The ships were abandoned, and treasure hunters have picked through the reef over the years. The cannons were found covered by layers of sedimentary rock in the shallow water. At least two other guns are buried nearby, as well as an anchor, ceramics and bottles. Metal detectors indicated that more artifacts may be buried deeper.

Mayan treasure found?

I would like to thank two of our readers for this one. Homer and Rob both sent me this story and a few others on the same days. Keep them coming guys!

The good news with this story is that someone may have cracked a code leading to EIGHT TONS of gold! The bad news is that if they are right, it's at the bottom of a lake!

From the web:

Cracked Mayan Code May Pave Way to Lost Gold

Led by Joachim Rittsteig, an expert in Mayan writing, a group of scientists and journalists left Germany Tuesday, on a mission to Guatemala in search of a lost Maya treasure allegedly submerged under Lake Izabal.

According to the German newspaper Bild, which sponsored the expedition, the expedition includes two reporters from the publication, a photographer, a television camera, and a professional diver who will submerge into Lake Izabal in an attempt to find eight tons of gold said to have been lost there.

The expedition is led by Joachim Rittsteig, an expert in Mayan writing, who claims to have cracked the famous Dresden Codex and discovered specific information in one of its chapters that leads to a treasure in Lake Izabal.

"The Dresden Codex leads to a giant treasure of eight tons of pure gold," said Rittsteig, who has spent more than 40 years studying the document, to Bild.

A professor emeritus at Dresden University and author of various publications about the Maya culture, Rittsteig stressed that "page 52 talks about the Maya capital of Atlan, which was ruined by an earthquake on October 30th in the year 666 BC. In this city, they kept 2,156 gold tablets on which the Maya recorded their laws."

The treasure sank, along with the city, into the waters of Lake Izabal, located in eastern Guatemala. But the German academic claims to have found the remains thanks to radar images taken in the area.

Rittsteig calculates that "just the gold in the tablets is estimated to be currently worth up to 211 million euros (290 million dollars)."

The Dresden Codex, drafted in the year 1250 AD by Mayan priests, is one of the four major documents that remain from that culture. It has been housed by the Saxon State Library in East Germany for the last 272 years.

The code was discovered in 1739 in the possession of a wealthy man in Vienna, though no one knows how he got a hold of it. He then donated it to the Dresden Library, where it is kept under bullet-proof glass in a room with other treasured documents.

Joachim Rittsteig has dedicated most of his entire life to decoding the codex, which is composed of 74 pages, 3.56 meters long with 74 distinct hieroglyphics.

The Dresden Codex contains much of what is known of Mayan Culture, including their understanding of astrology, medicine and even the end of the world. In the last chapter, the codex describes the coming apocalypse, which it says will take place on December 12th, 2012.