Yonaguni Island is located at the southern tip of the Ryukyu (Nansei) archipelago, about 120 kilometers off the eastern coast of Taiwan. The local scuba diver, Kihachiro Aratake, first discovered the ruins lying underwater in 1986. Not far from the shore, literally beneath the surface of the waves, he saw a huge stone monument stretching to the limits of visibility. Wide flat platforms covered with an ornament of rectangles and rhombuses turned into intricate terraces running down in large steps. The edge of the site drops vertically down a wall all the way to the bottom at a depth of 27 meters, forming one of the walls of the trench that runs along the entire monument.
The message of the continent My
The abundance of regular geometric shapes made one wonder about the possibility of their man-made nature, and Aratake decided to report his find to specialists. Japanese newspapers were full of sensational headlines. Journalists made fantastic assumptions that the structures found under water, reminiscent of the shape of pyramids and palaces, belong to the dead Pacific civilization My - the eastern counterpart of the European Atlantis, the legends of which exist in the culture of several Asian nations.
After analyzing the remains of marine vegetation, the scientists concluded that these ruins can not be less than 10 thousand years, and immediately cooled the ardent head of fans of sensations. Like there is no official confirmation that there was a hearth of a culture, the historians do not have. The stone slabs were created by the nature itself. Professor of the University of Ryukyu Masaaki Kimura at first was also skeptical about the find. However, after making many dives and mapping of what the geologist calls the city, the scientist came to the conclusion that what he saw can not be explained by tectonic processes alone. During his dives, he noticed more than once that some of the stones appeared to have been carved in quarries, and the rocks contained images of human faces or resembled the outlines of animal silhouettes.
He also discovered a large round stone resembling a human face, similar to the moai statues on Easter Island. Other divers and explorers have noticed script-like carvings on the rock, some claiming to have seen animals carved into the rock.
According to Kimura's map of the ruins, the underwater city includes a palace, a kind of triumphal arch, five temples and something resembling a stadium. One of the largest structures looks like a monolithic stepped pyramid about 28 meters high. All the structures are connected by roads and canals, and the city itself is surrounded by something resembling massive fortress walls.
"The rock fragments that I was able to extract from the water and restore in the laboratory prove that the culture whose bearers erected this city had Asian roots," the Japanese researcher reported. Thus, one of the sculptures (the so-called underwater sphinx) reminds him of images of the rulers of Okinawa.
However, the scientist could not find any irrefutable evidence of human habitation on this territory. There are no remains of its inhabitants, no fragments of crockery and other household items. There are no traces of wooden buildings, which the ancient city could not have.
Of course, the scientist had an explanation: neither wood nor pottery could not stay at the bottom of the sea for several thousand years.
Kimura made the assumption that this previously unknown hearth of civilization was destroyed by a major earthquake. After all, the Ryukyu archipelago is known as the area where the largest tsunamis in history have been recorded. In 1771, for example, the Yaeyama tsunami hit the islands of the archipelago with a wave estimated to be 40 to 80 meters high, killing more than 10,000 people. According to Kimura, such a tsunami could have washed away an ancient civilization overnight.
Scientific compromise
Then Professor Robert Schoch, a geologist at Boston University, became interested in the find. He is known primarily for his hypotheses that the real age of the famous Egyptian Sphinx is much greater than the official Egyptology believes. But his first conclusions disappointed the supporters of the man-made theory. The professor was convinced that the bizarre city and the pyramids arose under the influence of natural causes. According to him, structures that might appear to be pyramids or palaces are more like layers of sandstone, which are often fractured, forming bizarre facets and perfect right angles. As Schoch pointed out, this phenomenon is quite common in regions with high rates of tectonic activity. Holes in the ground, which Kimura considers the place of installation of wooden poles, the American scientist considers features of underwater relief. The lines are traces of natural marine life. Still, Schoch decided to meet with Kimura, who showed him some details that shook the professor's opinion.
For example, the Japanese underwater photographs clearly show an edge with sharp edges, round holes, a stepped descent, and a perfectly straight narrow trench. If the cause was just natural erosion, it would be logical to expect the same shapes in the entire piece of rock. But the fact that such different elements are side by side is a strong argument in favor of their artificial origin. Moreover, very close by, just a few tens of meters away on the same rock of the same rock, is a completely different landscape. There is no doubt that it was created by nature. But even the naked eye can see its sharp difference from the processed part of the rock.
The next argument: the blocks separated from the rock do not lie where they should fall under the action of Earth's gravity. Instead, they either end up clumped together in one place, or they are missing altogether. And finally, there are rather deep symmetrical trenches and other elements on the monument, the formation of which cannot be explained by known natural processes at all.
As a result of taking into account all the available facts both experts have agreed on a kind of "compromise" - they came to the conclusion that the monument belongs to the so-called "terraforming", that is the original natural "workpiece" has been further modified and refined by human hands.
After such statements of a scientific authority, an international group of specialists tried to uncover the mystery of the object. The group included geologists, underwater archaeologists, experienced divers, and even anthropologists and linguists. The participants spent 3 weeks of diving and research. And perhaps the results of the expedition are quite eloquent in the opinion of its leader, Professor Arbuthnot. "I became convinced of the processing of the Yonaguni site by human hands," he concluded. - We examined the natural geology near the find, but there are no such uniform external shapes, and so the likelihood of human handling of the monument is very high. There's also a lot of detail there that rules out a version of the object forming naturally." And soon the conclusion that the Yonaguni megalith is a trace of an ancient civilization was supported by the majority of Japanese scientists.
However, so far Japanese officials see no reason to include the formations found in the waters near Yonaguni in the list of important cultural sites.
The Stone Cipher
So what is the secret of Japan's waters? Perhaps the key to this clue should be sought on land. Especially since in the western part of the Japanese island of Okinawa, scientists have discovered stone writings in the form of flat tables. More than 10 of these stone books have been found, and the largest of them is called the "Rosetta Stone of Okinawa.
These messages are really mysterious and have nothing to do with the traditional Japanese hieroglyphic writing. What civilization created these images? Who did this stone library belong to and what information is it bringing us? Until now it remains a mystery.
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