Japan’s Atlantis? The unsolved underwater mystery

THE discovery of underwater monoliths, including a huge pyramid, raise a question that has never been answered: Are these the ruins of an ancient sunken city?

news.com.auSeptember 18, 20154:45pm


Six metres below the surface lay a series of monoliths that he described as appearing to be “terraced into the side of a mountain”. The huge rectangular formations had strikingly perfect 90 degree angles, including straight walls, steps and columns. Over the following years experts descended upon the site in a bid to determine whether the structure was natural or man-made. Yet to this day, it remains a great unsolved mystery. Initially it was proposed that the Yonaguni Monument was built when the area was above sea level some 10,000 years ago. So could ‘Japan’s Atlantis’ be a remnant of a preglacial civilisation that was eventually inundated? Or could it be the result of an earthquake, putting it at 2000-3000 years old? Experts disagree. As the structure was mapped out over the following years, more details came to light. Divers found what appeared to be a huge arch, as well as temples, carvings, paved streets and a large pyramid-like structure measuring 76 metres long at its base. Masaaki Kimura, a marine geologist at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan who has dived at the site more than 100 times over the past 20 years to measure its formations, is convinced they are the remains of a city that sunk due to seismic events. He has identified 10 structures off Yonaguni and a further five related structures off the main island of Okinawa, with the ruins spanning an area of 300 metres x 150 metres. “I think it’s very difficult to explain away their origin as being purely natural, because of the vast amount of evidence of man’s influence on the structures,” he said. “The largest structure looks like a complicated, monolithic, stepped pyramid that rises from a depth of 25 meters. “The characters and animal monuments in the water, which I have been able to partially recover in my laboratory, suggest the culture comes from the Asian continent. One example I have described as an underwater sphinx resembles a Chinese or ancient Okinawan king.” Other evidence that experts believe confirms it’s man-made include two round holes and a row of straight, smaller holes, which are interpreted as an attempt to split off a section of the rock. However, the Morien Institute, an archaeological non-profit research group, conducted an expedition there in 1997 led by Dr Robert M. Schoch, a professor of science and mathematics from Boston University. Dr Schoch, who has also conducted field research at sites in Pakistan, Egypt and the Canadian High Arctic, argues that it’s primarily a natural rock formation. “I’m not convinced that any of the major features or structures are man-made steps or terraces, but that they’re all natural,” he wrote in his book Voices of the Rocks. “It’s basic geology and classic stratigraphy for sandstones, which tend to break along planes and give you these very straight edges, particularly in an area with lots of faults and tectonic activity. “...The structure is, as far as I could determine, composed entirely of solid ‘living’ bedrock. No part of the monument is constructed of separate blocks of rock that have been placed into position. “This is an important point, for carved and arranged rock blocks would definitively indicate a man-made origin for the structure — yet I could find no such evidence.” He said it was possible that humans had since made modifications to the formations. “We should also consider the possibility that the Yonaguni Monument is fundamentally a natural structure that was used, enhanced, and modified by humans in ancient times.” Patrick D. Nunn, Professor of Oceanic Geoscience at the University of the South Pacific, has studied these structures extensively and also believed they were natural, saying: “There seems no reason to suppose that they are artificial.” This was backed up by archeologist Richard J. Pearson, who argued that while stone tools and small camps were found at Yonaguni possibly from the 2500 BCE, they were small communities who were “not likely to have had extra energy for building stone monuments”. Will we ever know for sure?

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