Sawse - Stir it Up!

Japan’s Underwater Ruins were discovered in March of 1995 when a sport diver unintentionally strayed beyond the standard safety parameter near the south shore of Okinawa. The island served as the battleground for the last land campaign of World War II, but this time around it was to become the scene of another kind of drama. As he glided through the unvisited depths some forty meters beneath the clear blue Pacific, the diver was all of a sudden confronted by what appeared to be a great stone building which was heavily encrusted by coral. As he approached closer, the colossal structure was black and gaunt, a bizarre sunken arrangement of monolithic blocks, their original configuration obscured by the organic accrual of time. After clicking several photographs and encircling the monument several times, he rose to the surface and swam for shore.

The rectangular stone ziggurat under the sea off the coast of Japan could be the first evidence of a previously unknown Stone Age civilization. The monument is 600ft wide and 90 ft high and has been dated to at least 8000 BC. The oldest pyramid in Egypt, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, was constructed more than 5000 years later. The structure off Yonaguni, a small island southwest of Okinawa, was first discovered 75ft underwater by scuba divers 10 years ago and locals believed it was a natural phenomenon. Professor Masaki Kimura, a geologist at Ryukyu University in Okinawa, was the first scientist to investigate the site and has concluded that the mysterious five-layer structure was man made. The fact that there is no debris from erosion around the structure is proof that it was certainly man-made. The discovery of what appears to be a pathway surrounding the structure is further proof that it was made by humans.

The structure looks like a series of huge steps, each about a meter high. Essentially, it’s a cliff face like the side of a steep pyramid. It’s possible that natural water erosion combined with the process of cracked rocks splitting created such a structure. Further evidence that the structure was man-made came with the discovery of several smaller underwater mounds nearby. These seem to be the mini-ziggurats and are made of stepped slabs and are roughly 10m wide and 2m high. Archaeologists say that it’s still too early to know who built the structure or for what purpose. Possible theories include it was an ancient religious shrine, celebrating an ancient deity resembling the god Nirai-Kanai , whom the locals say gave happiness to the people of Okinawa from beyond the sea. This could be evidence of a new culture as there are no records of a people intelligent enough to have built something like these 10,000 years ago.

This could have been accomplished only by people possessing a high degree of technology, coming from the Asian continent. There would have to be some sort of machinery involved to create such a huge structure of startling linearity. The fact that the structure dates back to 8000BC means that the land on which it was built must have submerged during the last ice age. The first signs of civilization in Japan dates back to the Neolithic period around 9000BC, the people at this time lived as hunters and food-gatherers. However, there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest the presence of a culture advanced enough to have built a structure like the ziggurat.

Next day, photographs of his find flashed in Japan’s leading newspapers. There were widespread whispers of the lost culture of Mu, the legendary Motherland of Civilization which perished in the sea long before the beginning of recorded time.

The structure looked ancient and man made. However, nature has this deceptive way of making her forms appear artificial. Popular and scientific debates concerning the structure’s origins were argued back and forth. Late in the summer of the following year, another diver in Okinawa waters came face to face with a massive arch of huge stone blocks beautifully fitted together and reminiscent of the Incan masonry. This time there was no doubt, the swift currents made sure that the coral had been unable to gain any foothold on the structure, rendering it unobscured in the 100-foot visibility of the clear waters. It was certainly man-made and very old. Fired up by the possibility of more sunken structures in the area, a team of expert divers fanned out from the south coast of Okinawa using standard grid-search patterns. They soon uncovered five sub surface archaeological sites near the off shore islands.

The locations varied in depth form 20-100 feet, but are all stylistically linked, despite the great variety of their architectural details. They are comprised huge altar like formations, grand staircases which lead to broad plazas and paved streets and crossroads. All the monuments appear to have been built from granitic sandstone, although no internal passages or chambers been found. To a degree, the underwater structures resemble ancient buildings on Okinawa itself, such as Nakagusuku Castle. Its builders and the culture it originally expressed are unknown, although the precinct is still regarded with a superstitious awe by local Okinawans. Other parallels with Okinawa’s oldest sacred buildings are found near Noro, where burial vaults that are designed in the same rectilinear style are still adored as repositories for the islander’s ancestral dead. Very remarkably, the Okinawan term for these vaults is “moai”, the same word Polynesians of Easter Island, more than 6,000 miles away, used to describe the large headed, long-haired statues dedicated to their ancestors. The discovery changed an awful lot of previous thinking of Asian history. It would put the people who made the monument on a par with the Indus and Mesopotamia civilizations.