The island of Mauritius, which is located in the Indian Ocean, almost a thousand kilometers east of Madagascar, has pyramids. The most interesting thing is not even that they are located on a small island of volcanic origin, lost in the vast ocean expanses, but that they are almost an exact copy of the Guimar pyramids, located on the other side of Africa, on the island of Tenerife. The pyramids are very similar, both in appearance and in the method of manufacture. This gives every reason to assume that the structures on both islands are the result of the activities of the same builders.
The pyramids in Mauritius were known at the beginning of the 20th century. But they became known to the general public in 2008 after several expeditions visited there. The main research was carried out by Antoine Guigal with a group of archaeologists. They discovered several pyramids, half buried with earth, and the remains of other cyclopean structures. According to various estimates of scientists, the age of the pyramids may be 10,000 - 20,000 years.
In 1502, the Italian Alberto Cantino first mapped the island of Mauritius, and in 1507 the first Portuguese sailors visited it. There is an assumption that in the 10th century Arab navigators might have known about the existence of the island. Later, they called the Mascarene Islands Dina Margabin, Dina Harobi and Dina Morare (respectively Reunion, Mauritius and Rodriguez). Theoretically, the ancient Phoenicians could know about Mauritius - a fearless people who made long sea expeditions. Periplus tells the story of Hanno (Hannan), a Carthaginian navigator who lived in the 5th century BC, whose ships, having passed the Strait of Gibraltar, set off to explore the African coast of the Atlantic Ocean.
Herodotus describes a Phoenician expedition that left the Red Sea and, bypassing the "sea to the south" by order of the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II (610-595 BC), entered the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar. This means that the expedition went around Africa.
One way or another, but at the time of its discovery in the early 16th century by the Portuguese, Mauritius was uninhabited. In 1598, the island was occupied by the Dutch and was named after the Latin form of the name of Moritz of Orange. Initially, the island only served as a temporary stopover for merchant ships. The first Dutch settlement on the island appeared in 1638, and Simon van der Stel is considered the first child born on the island. Gradually, plantations of sugar cane, cotton, tobacco and livestock were created in Mauritius. For this, slaves were brought from Madagascar.
The pyramids are located in a compact group among deserted fields, 10 minutes' drive from the airport. No tourists are taken to the pyramids, there is not a single mention of them in guidebooks, in films about the island, and nothing is said about the pyramids. The locals are also not particularly drawn to this topic. At first, the government gave the pyramids a protective status, which they later practically lost. This is due to the change of government in 1968, as a result of which Mauritius ceased to be a British colony.
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Now some researchers argue that the pyramids are not pyramids at all, but heaps of stones that were laid by local peasants, clearing fields for sugarcane. But in order to lay such a "pile" they would need to have an engineering project, 30,000 tons of stones and a sufficient number of workers. Here I just want to recall the words from the famous song: "But we know that this island is uninhabited." To put one such "pile" 100 men would have to work continuously for at least 5 years.
Of course, the version of a pile of stones is completely absurd, especially from the point of view of engineers and geologists. The precision of the angles and baselines created from raw stone is clearly visible even from space. Undoubtedly, this is the work of experienced architects, not slaves clearing plantations. On the other hand, why was it necessary to collect all the "heaps" in one place? To maintain moisture in the fields, say people who cannot believe the pyramids were built before the island was discovered. Heaps of rocks do exist in many places in Mauritius, but they look very different.
Most recently, the pyramids were examined by Sam Semir Osmanagich, who discovered the Bosnian pyramids. After his expedition, he supported Antoine Guigal and is also inclined to believe that the pyramids of Mauritius are of ancient origin.
The pyramids on the island of Mauritius have a clear rectangular base and stepped edges. The number of steps is different - from 6 to 13. The height of the pyramids does not exceed 12 meters. The largest is a pyramid with a base width of 26x26 meters. Just like in Tenerife, the pyramids of Mauritius are built of untreated volcanic rock without the use of mortar or other binders. These are rather complex engineering structures that require great knowledge and skill from builders.
Some of the pyramids of Mauritius have a platform at the top that may have been used for astronomical observations. One of the pyramids even has a central staircase to access the top. The passage is made of a slightly lighter stone, which makes it clearly visible.
Another striking circumstance, perhaps, connects the Guimar complex in Tenerife with the pyramids of Mauritius. It is known that on one of the pyramids of Guimar on the day of the summer solstice one can observe an unusual phenomenon - a double sunset, which first sets behind one of the nearby mountain peaks, then reappears on the horizon and sets again. Preliminary calculations, which scientists are going to check in the near future, show that the same phenomenon should be observed on the pyramid number 2 of Mauritius. On the day of the summer solstice, which occurs in the southern hemisphere on December 21, the first sunset will be behind the Creole Mountain, and the second - beyond the neighboring Puma.
If we compare photographs of the pyramids of Tenerife and Mauritius, it is outwardly difficult to determine their belonging. This amount of overlap suggests that there is a community between the islands that goes beyond chance.
In the immediate vicinity of the pyramids, on an area of about two square kilometers, the expedition of Antoine Guigal also discovered other impressive structures associated with the pyramid complex. “Huge stone walls, paved and planned roads, terraced hydraulic systems, created from the same material and using the same technology, undoubtedly belong to the same era as the pyramids,” says Antoine Guigal.
In the vicinity of the village of Plaine Magnien, there are massive stone walls, built with the utmost care from the same material as the pyramids. At the top, the walls are 70 to 90 centimeters wide and 1.5 to 2 meters high, with a much wider base. In some places, the width of the base of the wall reaches 5 meters and consists of monoliths with a volume of about two cubic meters. One of the walls is over 600 meters long and stretches from pyramids # 1 and # 2 to the village of Mare d'Albert. Another wall is erected right at the edge of a cliff that drops into the sea, and resembles an observation deck. There are two more walls to the northeast of this platform that extend out to sea. Undoubtedly, the walls and other structures are parts of the same ancient complex, and modern residents, as far as possible, simply adapted them to their needs.
There are also ancient roads in Mauritius that connect the pyramids and some other structures. The roads are carefully planned, well-shaped and built with such quality that modern trucks passing through them several times a day do no harm to them. The ancient roads are in stark contrast to the island's modern road infrastructure, which requires constant maintenance and high financial costs. The width of the roads ranges from 2 to 5 meters. In some places, the roadbed is raised above the ground to maintain horizontal alignment. One of the roads, 5 to 10 meters wide, starts right at the pyramid complex and, without interruption for more than 2 kilometers, stretches to the sea.
Further south are the remains of a huge hydraulic system, which was supplied with water by a powerful underground source in a nearby valley. The system begins with a channel of the first pool, about two meters deep, the bottom of which is lined with flat stone slabs. Another pool measures 100x26 meters and a depth of about six meters. The pool is bounded by massive walls, identical in characteristics to the walls of the pyramids.
Nearby, on the southern side of Bouchon beach, there is a platform that rises 30 meters. The platform consists of a huge wall 4 meters high and about 2 meters wide at the base. In the lower part, the wall is fairly flat and easy to climb. The whole structure resembles the body of a snake with a head - a flat platform at the top.
In a place called Pont Naturel, there are two unusual structures. One of them is a clearly rectangular hole in the rock. On one side, the opening is limited by an arch hanging 30 meters above the ocean.
The waves create air pressure, which, with terrifying sounds heard far away, breaks through this hole. Another structure is a sea geyser located on a rock protruding in the sea and connected to the coast by a narrow isthmus. There is a hole in the rock, and the ocean waves below it create pressure, throwing water up to 40 meters high.
The pyramid complexes in Sicily, the Canary Islands, and now in Mauritius, are similar as twins and indicate that we are dealing with an unknown seafaring civilization capable of creating such structures on different sides of the African continent. At the moment, nothing is known about the origin of the pyramids, or about the purpose of their construction, or about the builders themselves. One thing is clear, the pyramids were not built either by Europeans in the 16th-19th centuries, or by the Arabs in the 10th-11th centuries. But then by whom?