Do you know the history of the Earth? At present, scientists have speculated that the earth we live on today was born about 4.6 billion years ago, and it was not until the Pleistocene of the Quaternary of the Cenozoic Era, that is, the Ice Age about 1.8 million years ago, that ape-man began to appear. According to some fossil studies, scientists believe that it was not until the Holocene, 12,000 years ago, that is, the last ice age, that the so-called social life and civilization began to exist, but these civilizations seem to have stayed in the Neolithic Age. The period of modern human history is defined as the record of the use of written symbols that began more than 5,000 years ago, and the period before that was prehistoric times.
However, to the surprise of scientists, the remnants of undersea civilizations that have appeared under many oceans have challenged this view of history. The builders of these underwater ruins seem to have not only mastered the level of craftsmanship and craftsmanship, but also knew how to use writing and had the ability to construct pyramidal buildings. If modern technology is used to estimate that the sea area where these underwater relics are located existed on the surface of the sea at least thousands of years ago, tens of thousands of years or even more ago, it can be clearly inferred that there was a highly developed human civilization in our unknown prehistoric era. And these civilizations are likely to suffer some changes, resulting in the history of their civilization cannot be continued and handed down, leaving only fragments of wreckage sunk in the sea, as evidence of their existence, telling fragments of prehistoric legends.
Half a century ago, divers at the southern tip of Yonaguni Island in Japan's Ryukyu Islands discovered the remains of man-made structures covering the sea, including coral-covered square structures, large angular platforms, and buildings such as streets, staircases, and arches. It is an altar-like ruin of an ancient castle that is about 200 meters long from east to west, 140 meters wide from north to south, and about 26 meters at its highest point.
Yonaguni Island Underwater Ruins in the Ryukyu Islands, Japan, with flat, right-angled stepped buildings (**Provided by: Professor Masaaki Kimura).
A huge platform with stairs built in the underwater ruins of Yonaguni Island (**Courtesy of Professor Masaaki Kimura).
In 1986, local divers named the underwater city the "Underwater Ruins Diving Tourist Area", which attracted the world's attention after a report. Later, the University of the Ryukyus established the Underwater Archaeological Survey Team to begin an eight-year survey, covering the seabed from the southeast of Shihuan Island to the east and west coasts, and successively discovered various stone buildings, pillar holes, human head statues, arches, stone tools, and geometric turtle sculptures. Line inscriptions in the shape of V and a stone carving in the shape of a cow with a diameter of 76 cm have also been found.
Looking down from the heights, the ruins are surrounded by towns and farmland, and the largest ruin, 100 meters long and 25 meters high, is made of huge rocks. According to a computer-generated three-dimensional map drawn by the University of the Ryukyus' submarine archaeological survey team, the ruins may have been a temple where the inhabitants of ancient civilizations gathered to worship. There are two semicircular pillars on the north side of the temple, which archaeologists believe to be places of bathing before ceremonies, and to the east of the temple there is an arched gate, near which there are two overlapping boulders, with rectangular artificial carvings left above, which are presumably the cornerstone of the processed castle.
Three-dimensional view of the site made of megaliths (**Courtesy of Professor Masaaki Kimura).
In addition, a statue of a human head several meters tall was found on the seabed under the famous Tatejin Rock on the southeast coast of Yonaguni Island, and its facial features and face were clearly distinguished. Later on the nearby Stone Stele Rock boulder, some undecipherable traces of carvings of similar characters were found.
A statue of a human head that is several meters tall on the seabed of Yonaguni Island (**Provided by: Professor Masaaki Kimura).
The stele rock, which is more than ten meters long, has been found on it that cannot be deciphered, and there are traces of carvings that resemble words. (*Provided by: Professor Masaaki Kimura).
In an interview in September 1999, Professor Kimura Masaaki of the Department of Geology and Geosciences at the University of the Ryukyus said that the ruins could be clearly identified by visual inspection, and that they were a combination of artificial. Various evidences suggest that the ruins were indeed man-made, including the distribution of the surrounding streets, the flat joints of the stairs at right angles, and the circular holes in the stone blocks that resemble the traces left by the insertion of stone pillars. The discovery of man-made objects and hieroglyphs has confirmed that the underwater ruins in the southern part of Yonaguni Island are indeed the sites of human civilization.
Robert Schoch, a professor at Boston University in the United States, said after diving to investigate the ruins that this series of huge steps composed of one-meter-high stones should be a kind of stepped pyramid. While it can be assumed that such a structure could have been created by natural erosion of water after the stone had been broken, he had never found any process that could produce such a sharp step section. Jim Mower, an archaeologist at the University of London, said that if the site was indeed man-made, the builders would have at least the same level of civilization as the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Indus.
Assistant Professor Teruaki Ishii of the Institute of Oceanography at the University of Tokyo pointed out that the land where the sea is located was exposed to the surface at least 10,000 years ago during the last ice age. According to the understanding of modern science, human beings 10,000 years ago were still in the Stone Age when primitive people chased wild beasts, and they were not capable of building such buildings at all. Some believe that this is most likely evidence left behind by an unknown human civilization. We can't help but ask: Is there really a thriving and advanced ancient civilization? Are Japan's underwater ruins a special case?