Underworld Page 2

  Ken Shindo’s story

  In 1996, four years before my meeting with Rao, my book Fingerprints of the Gods became the number-one bestseller in Japan, a country that had fascinated me since childhood. The book’s success gave me my first opportunity to travel there.

  I visited Japan twice that year to give a series of public lectures about the issues I’d explored in Fingerprints of the Gods. On the second visit I was approached after a lecture by a photojournalist named Ken Shindo, who works for the influential Kyodo-Tsushin News Agency. He showed me striking under water pictures that he had taken of a bizarre terraced structure, apparently a man-made monument of some kind, lying at depths of up to 30 metres off the south coast of the Japanese island of Yonaguni. My central research and writing interest, for years, has been the possibility of a lost civilization destroyed in the cataclysmic global floods that brought the last Ice Age to an end. So I was immediately fascinated by Shindo’s story: ‘An underwater ruin here in Japan!’ I exclaimed. ‘Is it definitely man-made?’

  Shindo laughed: ‘Some people say it’s a freak of nature but they haven’t spent time on it like I have. I’m absolutely certain it’s man-made.’

  ‘Does anyone know how old it is?’

  Shindo told me that he had been working with Professor Masaaki Kimura, a marine seismologist at the University of the Rykyus (Okinawa), who had been studying Yonaguni’s mysterious underwater structure since 1994. Kimura too was convinced it was man-made. His extensive survey, sampling and measurement had shown that it had been hewn out of solid bedrock when the site was still above water. If sea-level rise were the only factor to take into account, then provisional calculations would indicate a date of inundation of around 10,000 years ago.

  That’s approximately 5000 years older than the oldest known monumental buildings on earth – the ziggurats of ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia.

  Davy Jones’ Locker

  I knew that I had to learn to dive and talked my wife Santha into doing lessons with me when we were on a visit to Los Angeles. We took our PADI Open-Water courses in the chill, kelpy waters off Catalina Island in November 1996.

  My first reaction to diving was that it was a weird and scary experience, contrary to the laws of nature, and that I was unlikely to survive it. I was wrapped up like the Michelin Man in a full-body neoprene wetsuit, and there seemed to be a ludicrous amount of equipment strapped, velcroed or clipped on to me.

  Let’s start at the feet. Here the diver wears short rubber boots tucked inside the ankle-cuffs of his wetsuit. The wetsuit works by taking in a thin layer of water between the skin and the suit; this is rapidly warmed to body temperature and remains warm for some time because the neoprene of the suit is an excellent insulator. Over the boots are strapped the diver’s fins, without which he would be almost as clumsy and immobile submerged as he is on land with all his gear on, and would unnecessarily waste a great deal of energy thrashing about. Strapped to his calf there should be a strong stainless-steel knife with a sharp blade – this can be life-saving if you get caught up in a drifting fishing net or some other equally uncompromising, usually man-made, hazard.

  Around the diver’s waist is a belt through which are threaded a number of lead weights to compensate for the natural buoyancy of the body and the additional buoyancy of the wetsuit. These days I can often get away with 2 kilos, but inexperienced divers need a lot more. On my first dives back in 1996 and into the first half of 1997, I remember having to use 12 and in one case even 14 kilos – a horrendous load.

  Moving on up the body, the next item of equipment the diver wears is a partially inflatable sleeveless jacket called a Buoyancy Control Device – ‘BCD’, or just ‘BC’ for short. The scuba tank which provides the diver with air to breathe underwater is strapped on to the back of the BC and typically comes in 10, 12 and 15 litre sizes. A mid-sized tank weighs more than 15 kilos and for most dives is filled with nothing other than normal air under enormous compression. This is delivered to the diver through two transformers which step down the pressure of the air to a level where it can be breathed easily. The ‘first-stage’ is mounted immediately on top of the tank and removes most of the pressure, from here a rubber hose leads to the ‘second-stage’, or ‘regulator’, which is placed in the diver’s mouth and provides air on demand. Three other rubber hoses also emerge from the first-stage. One of these connects to the BC, allowing the diver to power-inflate it direct from the tank. One leads to a dangling instrument-console usually containing a compass and gauges that tell you how much air you have left and how deep you are. The last, called the ‘octopus’, is a spare second-stage for use in emergencies – for example to provide air to another diver whose own tank is empty.

  Sometimes divers wear a rubber hood, since heat loss from the unprotected head is very rapid. A glass-fronted mask, without which the human eye can only perceive blurred images under water, covers the eyes and nose. The final major pieces of equipment are a small wrist computer, which can save your life by warning you if you are ascending too fast from depth, and a pair of gloves to keep your hands warm and prevent grazing or accidental contact with unpleasant marine organisms like fire coral.

  Wrapped up in all this stuff, with our total scuba experience at that time amounting to just three half-hour swimming-pool dives each, Santha and I contemplated the waters of the Pacific with certain misgivings. To be honest, we were afraid. It looked deep and dark and dangerous down there, down amongst the waving streamers of kelp, down in Davy Jones’ Locker … But if we wanted to see that incredible underwater structure in Japan for ourselves then we were going to have to do this. On our instructor’s command we jumped in and paddled out from shore.

  Four days later we were licensed but definitely not yet experienced enough to dive at Yonaguni.

  A generous offer

  I did not know when we would be able to organize a diving trip to Japan but knew only that it would be expensive. Then a strange synchronicity occurred. Out of the blue some time in January 1997 I received a fax from an American company representing a Japanese businessman. The fax said that the business man had read Fingerprints of the Gods and would like to invite Santha and me to fly first-class to Yonaguni at his expense to explore the island and to dive at the monument. He would ensure our safety by sending a group of top-flight diving instructors with us from the Seamen’s Club, a hotel and dive school on the neighbouring island of Ishigaki. He would also provide us with a fully equipped dive boat and all other facilities.

  There were no strings attached to this generous offer, which we accepted. In March 1997 we flew from London to Tokyo and then via Okinawa to Yonaguni to do our first dives there. This was the beginning of a long-term friendship with the businessman (whose privacy I protect) and of what began as an informal project to explore, document and try to understand the sequence of ancient and highly anomalous structures that have been found underwater at Yonaguni and at other islands in south-west Japan.

  Yonaguni

  The first anomalous structure that was discovered at Yonaguni lies below glowering cliffs of the southern shore of the island. Local divers call it Iseki Point (‘Monument Point’). Into its south face, at a depth of about 18 metres, an area of terracing with conspicuous flat planes and right-angles has been cut. Two huge parallel blocks weighing approximately 30 tonnes each and separated by a gap of less than 10 centimetres, have been placed upright side by side at its north-west corner. In about 5 metres of water at the very top of the structure there is a kidney-shaped ‘pool’ and near by is a feature that many divers believe is a crude rock-carved image of a turtle. At the base of the monument, in 27 metres of water, there is a clearly defined stone-paved path oriented towards the east.

  If the diver follows this path – a relatively easy task, since there is often a strong west-to-east current here – he will come in a few hundred metres to ‘the megalith’, a rounded, 2 tonne boulder that seems to have been purposely placed on a carved ledge at the centre of a huge stone pla
tform.10

  Two kilometres west of Iseki Point is the ‘Palace’. Here an underwater passageway leads into the northern end of a spacious chamber with megalithic walls and ceiling. At the southern end of the chamber a tall, lintelled doorway leads into a second smaller chamber beyond. At the end of that chamber is a vertical, rock-hewn shaft that emerges outside on the roof of the ‘Palace’. Near by a flat rock bears a pattern of strange, deep grooves. A little further east there is a second megalithic passage roofed by a gigantic slab that fits snugly against the tops of the supporting walls.

  Two kilometres to the east of Iseki Point is Tategami Iwa, literally ‘The Standing God Stone’, a natural pinnacle of rugged black rock that soars up out of the ocean. At its base, 18 metres underwater, there is a horizontal tunnel, barely wide enough to fit a diver, that runs perfectly straight west to east and emerges amidst a scatter of large blocks with clean-cut edges.

  A three-minute swim to the south-east brings the diver to what looks like an extensive ceremonial complex carved out of stone. Here at depths of 15 to 25 metres there are massive rectilinear structures with sheer walls separated by wide avenues.

  At the centre is the monument that local divers refer to as ‘the stone stage’. Into its south-facing corner either man or nature has carved an image that looks to some like a gigantic anthropoid face with two clearly marked eyes …

  Kerama

  At Aka Island in the Kerama group 40 kilometres west of Okinawa, local divers have been aware for some years of the existence of a series of underwater stone circles at depths of 30 metres. There are also associated rectilinear formations within the same general area that show some signs of having been cut and worked by human beings.

  Diving conditions at Kerama are atrociously difficult (as indeed they often are at Yonaguni too). There is a killer current, but this drops away almost to nothing for approximately an hour between tides. Only in that lull is it possible to get any serious work done and to gain a perspective on the enigmatic structures without constantly having to fight against the sea.

  Kerama’s most spectacular feature is ‘Centre Circle’, which has a diameter of approximately 20 metres and a maximum depth of 27 metres. Here concentric rings of upright megaliths more than 3 metres tall have been hewn out of the bedrock surrounding a central menhir.

  A second, similar circle, called ‘Small Centre Circle’ by local divers, stands immediately to the north-east. It is not noticeably smaller than the first.

  A little to the south is ‘Stone Circle’, which is made up of much smaller, rounded stones. It has a huge diameter of about 150 metres. Within it are subsidiary stone circles sometimes touching one another at their edges like the links of a chain.

  Aguni

  Aguni Island, 60 kilometres north of Kerama, has steep and forbidding cliffs. On the south-west side of the island these cliffs overlook an area of turbulent water that local fishermen call the ‘washing machine’. The turbulence is caused by the presence of a sea-mount that ascends from much greater depths to form a small plateau only 4 metres under the surface. This plateau, perpetually swept by strong currents, contains a series of circular holes that look initially like well-shafts.

  As they are lined with small blocks, there is little doubt that these shafts are man-made. The largest and deepest has a diameter of 3 metres and reaches a maximum depth (below the summit of the sea-mount) of about 10 metres. Others are typically 2 to 3 metres in diameter with a depth of less than 7 metres. A few are narrower and shallower. One has a small subsidiary chamber cut sideways into the wall of the main shaft.

  Chatan

  The coastline around Okinawa has been the subject of intensive development during the past half-century. Thirty kilometres north of the capital Naha, on the west coast of the island, is the popular resort area of Chatan. Here, less than a kilometre off-shore, at depths of between 10 and 30 metres, is strewn a looming underwater fantasia of ‘walls’ and ‘battlements’ and ‘step pyramids’. Are these weird submerged structures natural or man-made? And if they are man-made then when, and by whom?

  One possibility suggested to me by local fishermen is that the ‘structures’ could be artefacts of relatively recent military dredging. Certainly, several large US Air Force bases are located very close to Chatan and the site is constantly overflown by all kinds of American warplanes doing manoeuvres. I still remain open to the possibility that dredging could have produced some of the features to be seen underwater, but against this I have received a report from Akira Suzuki, a Japanese historical researcher, who has carefully investigated both US and Japanese archives in Okinawa and has been unable to find any record of such operations in this area.11

  The most striking of the Chatan structures is a wall with its base on the sandy bottom at a depth of 30 metres. It rises to a ‘battlement’ with a sunken ‘walkway’ about 10 metres above the sea-bed. At a certain point the walkway is broken by a vertical U-shaped shaft cut through the entire height of the wall.

  To dive at Chatan is to be reminded of an episode in the Nihongi, one of Japan’s most ancient texts, a chronicle of the earliest times. Here, in a long introductory section entitled ‘The Age of the Gods’, there is a passage that describes how a deity named Ho-ho-demi no Mikoto climbed into an upended waterproof basket and descended to the bottom of the sea. In this makeshift submarine ‘he found himself at a pleasant strand … proceeding on his way he suddenly arrived at the palace of the Sea-God. This palace was provided with battlements and turrets and had stately towers.’

  No doubt the many curious things that the Nihongi has to say about the Age of the Gods may all be explained as mythology and imagination. Still, I find it curious in Japan, where there are so many underwater ‘anomalies’, that such a venerable ancient text contains a clear tradition of submerged structures that can only be visited by divers.

  15,000 years

  Between 1996 and 2000, while I increased my practical diving experience of Japan’s underwater ruins, I several times got caught up in the virulent debate about their provenance. Some scholars and journalists think they are entirely natural or ‘mostly natural’ (Robert Schoch of Boston University, for example). Others, such as Professor Kimura and Professor Teruaki Ishii of Tokyo University, remain convinced that they are man-made but are uncertain as to their antiquity (in addition to sea-level rise, complex factors such as possible land subsidence – through volcanism, plastic flow or isostatic rebound – must be taken into account when determining the date of submergence of any given site).12 No early resolution of this debate can be expected, since we are dealing here as much with matters of opinion as with matters of generally agreed fact. Those who think the structures are natural are likely to go on thinking so no matter what the other side says – and vice-versa. It looks like a stalemate.

  Yet there is a potentially fruitful line of inquiry, capable of shedding light on this problem, which neither side has yet considered. Whether they were flooded by rising sea-levels or because of some form of land subsidence into the sea (quite possible in an area of great seismic instability like Japan) all the underwater ruins were above water at some point between 17,000 years ago (the end of the Last Glacial Maximum) and 2000 years ago – the latest date that anyone has suggested for their submergence.

  What happened in Japan during this 15,000-year period? Could it be that there is something concealed in the remote prehistory of these islands that would provide a context and perhaps even a completely rational explanation for the underwater ruins?

  Alexandria

  During 1998 and 1999 the Egyptian Mediterranean city of Alexandria was much in the news. French archaeologists, led by the melodiously named Dr Jean-Yves Empereur of the National Centre for Scientific Research, had announced the discovery of submerged ruins, complete with underwater columns, sphinxes and granite statues. In the same location they also claimed to have found the remains of the famed Pharos, or Lighthouse – 135 metres tall and one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world13
– that had overlooked Alexandria’s Eastern Harbour from the point where the fort of the Mameluke sultan Qait Bey now stands. Though it was thought to have been built in the early third century BC, historical reports suggest that at least part of the giant lighthouse remained intact until 8 August AD 1303, when a tremendous earthquake struck the Egyptian coast.14

  Researching my earlier books had given me little reason to go to Alexandria. During a decade of travels in Egypt my focus had always been on the oldest sites – those going back to the third millennium BC and perhaps further – sites like Giza, with the three Pyramids and the Great Sphinx, Saqqara, where the remarkable Pyramid Texts are inscribed inside the tombs of Fifth and Sixth Dynasty Pharaohs, and Abydos, with First Dynasty boat graves and the mysterious Osireion.15

  Since it was common knowledge that Alexandria had not existed until 332 BC, the date of its foundation by Alexander the Great,16 I had always felt that it was unlikely to hold much of interest to me. I was vaguely aware that it had been built upon the site of an earlier settlement named Rhakotis or Raqote, but since this was usually described as ‘an obscure fishing village’,17 I never suspected for a moment that there might be significant traces of earlier monumental constructions in the area.

  None of the underwater discoveries that were made public at the end of the 1990s did anything to change my view. They too belonged to what is called the Ptolemaic period of Egypt, named for the ruling dynasty – of which Cleopatra was the last monarch – established soon after Alexander’s death by his general Ptolemy. I was at first intrigued to learn that inscriptions belonging to much earlier Pharaohs had been found amongst the underwater ruins – the cartouche of Rameses II (1290–1224 BC) on pink-granite ‘papyriform’ columns from Aswan, an obelisk of his father Seti (1306–1290 BC), a sphinx from the time of Senuseret III (1878–1841 BC) and numerous other artefacts and objects bearing ancient inscriptions.18