The history of outstanding archaeological finds is developing in different ways. Sometimes experts have been looking for some treasure or civilization for decades, which disappeared from the face of the earth several millennia ago.
And another time a lucky diver needs to go down with a scuba diving under the water and - here you are, please - the remains of the ancient city appear before his eyes. This is exactly what happened in the spring of 1985 when scuba instructor Kihachiro Aratake dived off the coastal waters off the small Japanese island of Yonaguni.
ONE AGAINST ALL
Not far from the coast, at a depth of 15 meters, he noticed a huge stone plateau. Wide flat platforms, covered with ornaments of rectangles and rhombuses, turned into intricate terraces, running down in large steps. The edge of the object was cut off vertically down by a wall to the very bottom to a depth of 27 meters.
The diver told Professor Masaaki Kimura, a marine geology and seismologist at Ryukyu University, about his find. The professor became interested in the find, but most of his colleagues were skeptical about it. Kimura donned a diving suit, plunged into the sea and personally examined the object. Since then, he has completed over a hundred dives and has become a primary expert on the site.
Soon the professor convened a press conference, at which he authoritatively declared to the reporter: an ancient city unknown to science was found. To the attention of the general public, Kimura presented photographs of the find, diagrams, drawings. The scientist understood that he was going against the overwhelming majority of historians and risking his own reputation, defending the artificial origin of underwater structures.
According to him, this is a huge complex of buildings, which includes castles, monuments and even a stadium, connected by a complex system of roads and waterways. Massive stone blocks, he argued, are part of a huge man-made complex, carved right into the rock. Kimura also found numerous tunnels, wells, stairs, terraces, and even one pool.
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STONE OF STEP
Since then, scientific passions have not subsided around the underwater city off the coast of Yonaguni. On the one hand, these ruins are very reminiscent of megalithic structures in other parts of the planet, ranging from Stonehenge in England and the cyclopean structures left in Greece after the collapse of the Minoan civilization, and ending with the pyramids of Egypt, Mexico and the Machu Picchu temple complex in the Peruvian Andes.
The latter is related to both the characteristic terraced landscape and the mysterious statue resembling a human head in a feather headdress similar to those worn by the inhabitants of pre-Columbian America.
Even the technological features of the structures of the underwater complex are similar to those constructive solutions that the ancient Incas used to build their cities. This is quite consistent with today's beliefs that the most ancient population of the New World, which gave rise to the highly developed cultures of the Maya, Inca and Aztecs, came from Asia.
But why are scientists so fiercely arguing about the Yonaguni complex and there is no end in sight to these discussions? The whole catch lies in the estimated date of the construction of the mysterious city.
It does not fit in any way with modern historical theories. Research has shown that the rock in which it was carved went under water no later than 10,000 years ago, that is, much earlier than the erection of the Egyptian pyramids and Cyclopean structures of the Minoan era, not to mention the monuments of the ancient Indians. According to modern ideas, in that distant era, people huddled in caves and only knew how to collect edible roots and hunt wild animals.
And the hypothetical creators of the Yonaguni complex at that time could already work the stone, owned the appropriate set of tools, knew geometry, and this runs counter to the ideas of the adherents of traditional historical science. Indeed, it somehow does not fit into my head that the same Egyptians reached a comparable technological level only 5,000 years later! If we take the arguments of the supporters of Professor Kimura's version for truth, then it will be great to rewrite history.
Therefore, until now, most representatives of academic science prefer to explain the incredible relief of the underwater cliff off the coast of Yonaguni by the whim of natural elements. According to skeptics, the bizarre rock landscape is due to the physical characteristics of the rock that makes up the rock formation.
This is a type of sandstone that tends to crack along planes, which may well explain the terraced arrangement of the complex and the geometric shapes of massive stone blocks. But the trouble is that the numerous regular circles found there, as well as the symmetry characteristic of stone blocks, cannot be explained by this property of sandstone, as well as the strange binding of all these forms to one place.
The skeptics have no answers to these questions, and therefore the mysterious underwater city off the coast of the Japanese island of Yonaguni has long become a stumbling block for historians and archaeologists. The only thing that both supporters and opponents of the artificial origin of the rock complex agree on is that it ended up under water as a result of some monstrous natural disaster, of which there were many in the history of the Japanese islands.
A NEW WORD IN SCIENCE
The world's largest tsunami hit Yonaguni Island on April 24, 1771. The waves reached heights of over 40 meters. Then 13,486 people died from the disaster, 3,237 houses were destroyed.
Tsunami is considered one of the worst natural disasters that overtook Japan. Perhaps such a catastrophe destroyed the ancient civilization that built a city off the island of Yonaguni. Professor Kimura presented his computer model of the underwater ruins at a scientific conference in Japan in 2007. According to him, there are ten underwater structures near Yonaguni Island, and five more such structures are located near the main island of Okinawa.
The massive ruins cover an area of over 45,000 square meters. Kimura believes that the ruins are at least 5,000 years old. His calculations are based on the age of the stalactites found in underwater caves, which Kimura believes sank with the city.
Stalactites and stalagmites are formed only above water by an extremely slow process. Underwater caves with stalactites found around Okinawa indicate that most of this area was once on land.
“The largest structure looks like a complex stepped monolithic pyramid rising from a depth of 25 meters,” Kimura said in an interview.
Over the years, he created a detailed picture of these ancient ruins until he discovered similarities between the underwater structures and those found in archaeological excavations on land.
For example, a semicircular cutout on a rocky platform corresponds to the entrance to a castle on land. Nakagusuku Castle in Okinawa has the ideal semicircular entrance, typical of the 13th century Ryukyu Dynasty castles. Two underwater megaliths - huge, six-meter, vertically placed stones next to each other - also resemble twin megaliths in other parts of Japan, such as Mount Nabeyama in Gifu Prefecture.
What does this mean? It seems that the underground city off Yonaguni Island was a continuation of a whole complex of aboveground structures. In other words, in ancient times the ancestors of the modern Japanese built up the islands at their own discretion, but a natural disaster, most likely a giant tsunami, destroyed the fruits of their labors.
One way or another, the underwater city of Yonaguni turns our understanding of historical science upside down. Most archaeologists believe that human civilization began about 5,000 years ago, but few scientists believe that "advanced" civilizations may have existed as early as 10,000 years ago and were wiped out by some kind of catastrophe. And the underwater city of Yonaguni testifies to just that.
Lyubov SHAROVA