Wolf: I mean, if this was the case, then it would still be very useful to have a look on the core of these. It would tell us exactly what sort of material it was – was it soft sandstone, was it hard mudstone, or what else? And we would be possibly able to find any marks on them, which then would give us the clear proof …
GH: So what we have here is a bit of a puzzle which needs some serious research done on it.
Wolf: Correct. That’s what I would say.
The tunnel and the megaliths
On our second dive we visited the twin megaliths, weighing approximately 100 tonnes each, stacked side by side like two huge slices of toast in a west-facing alcove in the north-west corner of the main monument. As noted earlier, a prime side-on view of these hulking rectangular blocks unfolds from the top of the curved sloping ramp explored on the first dive. And we’ve seen that the ramp appears to have been cut down (either by natural or human forces) between two parallel walls out of a pre-existing rocky knoll.
The knoll in turn co-joins other massive, heavily overgrown structures presumed to be outcrops of natural bedrock which form an almost continuous barricade, 3 metres high and 5 metres thick, thrown out in a loose semi-circle in front of the megaliths – all at roughly 15–18 metres water depth. The barricade is penetrated at only one point, and there only by a narrow tunnel a little over a metre wide and about a metre and a half high through which a scuba diver swimming horizontally may pass comfortably.
The tunnel itself looks ‘built’ – as opposed to rock-hewn like so much else at Yonaguni – in the sense that each of its sides consists of two courses of huge blocks separated by straight, clearly demarcated, matching joints. There is insufficient room to stand up within the tunnel, indeed barely enough even to crouch, so when it was above water 8000 or 10,000 years ago any human entering it would have been obliged to crawl through to the other side. What is striking, then, as soon as you emerge, is the way in which you now find yourself directly opposite and beneath the twin megaliths which, from this angle, rear edge-on above you, are like the paired sarsens at Stonehenge or the pair of upright granite megaliths worshipped since antiquity in Japan’s Ena region as ‘the sacred rock deity, the object of worship’ (see chapter 25).
The swim ahead to the base of the megaliths is a matter of 20 metres and you observe immediately at this point that they do not stand on the sea-bed but are elevated about 2 metres above it, with their bases resting on a platform of boulders, and framed in a cleft. The side of the cleft to your right is formed by the rear corner of the main terraced monument; the side to your left is formed by a lower ridge of rock which also shows signs, though to a lesser degree, of terracing. Both megaliths slope backwards at the same angle against the cleft and both are the same height (just over 6 metres). The megalith to the right is distinctly thicker than its otherwise near ‘twin’ to the left. Both megaliths taper at top and bottom so that the gap between them, about the width of a fist at the midpoint, is not constant. Although roughened, eroded and pitted with innumerable sea-urchin holes, the megaliths can still be recognized as essentially symmetrical blocks, all the faces of which appear originally to have been smoothed off to match – although, again, whether the process that brought about this effect was entirely natural, or at some point involved the input of human skill and labour, remains thus far a matter of a very few contradictory professional opinions and no facts.
I allowed myself to float up, towards the surface, along the slope of the megaliths, resting my hand in the gap between them as a guide. The light was good and I could see right into the gap; looking back at me from the far recesses a plump red fish eyed me with horror and hoped that I would go away.
As I neared the top of the megaliths, submerged under just 5 metres of water, I began to feel the ferocious wash of waves pounding against the surrounding rocks. I clung on and for a few moments allowed my body to be tugged back and forth by the swell. Enshrouded in a cloud of foam I could see the north-west corner of the main monument still rising above me the final few metres towards the surface.
After the dive Wolf and I again discussed what we had seen and quite soon, after some fruitless trading of opinion, our argument began to focus around a single – potentially decisive – issue. Had these very striking parallel megaliths been quarried, shaped and lowered into position beside the north-west corner of the main monument by human beings? Or had they arrived there through wholly natural processes?
I had drawn another rough sketch map to which I now pointed:
GH: There’s the two blocks, and we see above them here, not very high above them, the mass of the structure which leads round to Iseki Point.
Explain to me how those blocks got there.
Wolf: OK. You have seen lots of blocks fallen down —
GH: All over the place.
Wolf: On the shoreline we saw from the ship —
GH: Many fallen blocks, yes.
Wolf: – lots of blocks have fallen down from higher parts —
GH: Agreed.
Wolf: - from beddings which have been broken, which were harder than the underlying layers; because what happens is that you get an undercurving and undercutting of softer material under harder banks. So in my belief, these two blocks have been once one block of two sandstone banks, with either softer material in between or nothing in between, just only the bedding limits.
GH: Well, I want to know how they got where they are now.
Wolf: OK. My opinion is that these blocks have fallen down from a very, very high level, relative to their present situation.
GH: But no high point overlooks them. You would have to go back -Wolf: Nowadays.
GH: Well, yes, fair enough, nowadays. Nowadays you would have to go back in a northward direction some 50 or 60 metres, maybe more, horizontally, before you reached the cliff.
Wolf: Right, that’s clear for nowadays. I’m talking about a time-range of at least 10,000 years … maybe more.
GH: That we agree on.
Wolf: So then there could have been places of a higher position from which these stones could have fallen down.
GH: So you are hypothesizing a pre-existing higher place from which these fell?
Wolf: What I’m hypothesizing is that they have fallen down, so … and this must have happened from a, let’s say, sufficiently higher place. So what this may be then —
GH: Do you agree with me that this place [indicates top of north-west corner of main monument 3–4 metres above top of megaliths) is not sufficiently high? The place we see immediately above it now?
Wolf: I don’t have it in mind clearly, so I just can imagine from —a
GH: But do you remember when we came to the top of these columns, of these blocks, we were coming close to the surface. You could feel the swell hitting you quite hard and the foam above your head very strong. In fact, it’s like looking into clouds almost. And you can see the mass of the rock above you, probably not more than another 4 metres above, and you’re going to hit the surface there.
Wolf: Yes, I would think this would not be high enough.
GH: No?
Wolf: No.
GH: So we need a hypothetical high place to do it?
Wolf: Yes.
GH: And I, of course, need a hypothetical civilization -Wolf: Yes.
GH: – capable of moving it here.
Wolf: Yes, of course, yes, yes … no doubt about it
GH: So we have two hypotheticals there.
Wolf: I’m not going to discuss any presence or absence of any civilization, because that’s not my field …
But the problem I feel – and shall continue to feel – is that the very odd combination of major stone structures lying underwater at Yonaguni, and the very odd combinations of characteristics found within every one of those structures, simply cannot be said to have been properly evaluated until the possible ‘presence or absence’ of a civilization – specifically the Jomon – has been very thoroughly taken into account.
The
path and the terraces
Our third and fourth dives were spent examining the ‘pathway’ or ‘loop road’ which runs along the base of the main monument directly beneath the terraces in its south face at a depth of 27 metres; and the terraces themselves, which begin 14 metres vertically above the pathway.
The terraces
At this level a spacious patio about 12 metres wide and 35 metres in length opens out and in its north-eastern corner, at depths decreasing from 13 metres to 7 metres, the structures known to local divers as ‘the terraces’ are found. There are two main ‘steps’, both about 2 metres high with sharp edges and clean near-right-angle corners. Above them there are then three further smaller steps giving access to the top of the monument which continues to rise northwards until it comes close to the surface.
Here, very clearly, I could see the basis for the argument advanced by Wolf in Der Spiegel that the whole mass of the structure – with all its striking and emphatic terraces and steps, its perpendicular and horizontal planes – could be explained by the effects of high-energy wave action on a large outcrop of naturally bedded sedimentary rock. When it first began to form, aeons ago, the sandstone (or more correctly in this case ‘mudstone’) of the body of the monument was deposited in layers of varying thickness and consistency, traversed ‘by vertical cracks and horizontal crevices’. As sea-level rose and turbulent waves began to strike progressively higher levels of the structure, these cracks and crevices were gradually exploited and opened up – with the softer layers separating into flat slabs of assorted shapes and sizes which could then be washed out by the sea. In such a fashion, explains Wolf, ‘perpendicularity and steps’ gradually developed in the fracture zones creating, entirely without human help, the most striking effects of the structure as we see it today.
According to this reasoning, therefore, I was to envisage the 12 × 35 metre flat-floored patio as having been cut out of the side of the original outcrop by wave action which removed the sedimentary mudstone layers in slabs – with the terraced sections being formed out of the surviving harder members of rock after the softer layers had been washed away.
I helped Wolf measure the two highest steps, then drifted off to the edge of the patio and looked down the sheer 14 metre wall that drops to Professor Kimura’s ‘loop road’ – the flat, rock-floored ‘pathway’ that runs along the bottom of the channel immediately to the south of the monument. Although 25 metres wide at the depth of the terraces, the channel narrows to a width of less than 4 metres at the depth of the path. Its north wall is the sheer south face of the monument; its south wall is at first not sheer but slopes for some distance further to the south at an angle of about 40 degrees before rising more steeply towards the surface. The 40 degree section is heavily but rather neatly stacked with blocky rubble that consists of an infill of smaller stones supporting a façade of a dozen much larger blocks arranged, as Professor Kimura points out, in a straight line ‘as a stone wall’. Kimura is in no doubt that this wall is the work of human beings.
Front view of the ‘stone wall’ surrounding Iseki Point (looking south from the patio). Based on Kimura.
Cross-section showing, from left (north) to right (south), the sheer edge of the patio, the ‘loop road’ and the ‘stone wall’. Based on Kimura.
But because it is 27 metres down, and our dive computers didn’t like the decompression implications of doing it as the fourth dive of an already hard day, we decided to leave it till the following morning.
The pathway
We dropped in near the twin megaliths, then followed the clearly demarcated rock-hewn pathway that seems to start (or finish?) here, veering to the left of the ‘entrance tunnel’ that we had passed through the day before, winding gradually to the south into deeper water around the western side of the main monument, then finally turning eastwards into the channel in front of the terraces at a depth of 27 metres.
As we entered the channel I pointed out to Wolf a pattern of three symmetrical indentations, each 2 metres in length and only about 20 centimetres high, cut at regular intervals into the junction of the northern side of the path and the base of the main monument. I also indicated two other details that I find particularly impressive in this area: (a) the way that the floor of the path appears to have been deliberately flattened and smoothed to give almost a paved effect; and (b) the way the path is completely free of any rubble until a point about 30 metres to the east of the terraces (where several large boulders and other stony debris have fallen or rolled).
When Wolf and I later discussed the path and the terraces he remained adamant that all the anomalies in these areas could have been produced by the effects of local erosive forces, mainly waves, on the ‘layer-cake’ strata of the Yonaguni mudstones. In short, while he could not absolutely rule out human intervention, he did not feel that it was necessary in order to explain anything that we had so far seen underwater.
At this point I drew his attention to a project done by Professor Kimura and his team from the University of the Ryukyus in cooperation with the Japanese national TV channel TBS. The result had been a high-quality six-hour documentary, aired over New Year 2001, that made many useful and original contributions to the debate on the Yonaguni controversy.15 I wanted to acquaint Wolf in particular with the comments and demonstrations of Koutaro Shinza, a traditional Okinawan stone mason who had shown himself to be an expert in exploiting the natural faults, cracks and layers in sedimentary rocks to facilitate quarrying. According to Shinza, whom TBS brought to Yonaguni,
When I saw the undersea ruins I knew instantly it was a stone quarry. I showed photographs to other stonecutters also and they all said the same. I conclude that it was done by human hands. It’s absolutely impossible for something like this to be produced by nature alone …16
Since Shinza’s technique of quarrying along the lines of weakness of existing joints and fractures is functionally identical to the ‘method’ used by the sea in Wolf’s scenario to break up and separate the Yonaguni mudstones into the terraces and steps we see today, I asked him whether he could be absolutely certain that he could tell the difference. He admitted that he could not be certain – although the fact that he had as yet seen no definite tool marks on any of his dives was another reason to assume that humans had not been involved.
a. Wooden wedges are driven into a natural channel in the stone bed. The wedges are then soaked with water, causing them to expand.
b. As the wedges expand, the stone block splits from its bed. A chisel is used to help split the block.
c. The block is removed leaving flat, smooth surfaces on the bed. A tell-tale tool-mark is left by the chisel on the edge of the upper bed.
GH: Kimura makes a lot of the tool marks issue. He says he has definitely found marks. But I wouldn’t be very hopeful after 10,000 years of submersion underwater to find tool marks. It’s a long time. This, of course, is hard stone.
Wolf: Very hard stone, yes. And it is heavily overgrown with organisms in many places. So we might find some marks, indeed, if we were looking a bit and if we knew where to look exactly and how to identify them clearly. But this I mean is necessary.
Had the sea randomly removed the rock layers to leave the terraces, or had it been ancient stone masons working to a plan? Neither scenario, we realized, could be unequivocally falsified – or proved – by the empirical evidence presently to hand. But there was another way to come at the problem which could at least test the logic of both propositions.
Part of Professor Kimura’s evidence for human intervention in the construction of the main Yonaguni monument is the stark absence of fallen stony rubble in the pathway beneath the terraces – which he suggests should be cluttered by debris, perhaps even completely buried under it, if the terraces had been cut naturally by waves breaking up the pre-existing bedding planes. Where we do see debris on the path itself it is in the form of a cluster of large boulders (not slabs) 30 metres to the east of the terraces. And the only other area that might be descri
bed as debris lies neatly stacked at an angle of 40 degrees against the sloping south face of the channel, touching but never trespassing the southern edge of the path. This is the embankment with a façade of a dozen megalithic blocks arranged in a row that Kimura has identified as man-made. I confess, however, that on all my many visits to Yonaguni – including these March 2001 dives with Wolf – I have regarded this embankment as nothing more than rubble fallen from the south side of the channel and thus paid no special attention to it. It has only been since March 2001, looking back at the photographs and video images, that I have begun to realize how odd it is that not a bit of the supposed ‘fallen rubble’ transgresses the path itself, how very ordered it seems to be in general, and how very probable it is that Kimura is right.
But on the trip with Wolf I focused only on the issue of the apparent ‘clean-up’ operation that had been done on the path. I began by reminding him of our earlier discussion about the twin megaliths, each 6 metres tall and weighing 100 tonnes, which he claimed had fallen from above into their present position on the north-west corner of the monument from some hypothetical former high point.