Where has all the debris gone?
We did get our second dive when miraculously, just after 4.30, the buoy popped up from out of the current again. The light below was surprisingly good and we spent a useful forty-five minutes underwater. Certain scenes were shot with me in which Wolf was not needed – during these he went happily off exploring on his own. In other scenes we repeated for the camera what we’d done for real the first time around. Again Wolf scraped off growth from the base of a Centre Circle monolith and exposed the sheer white coralline limestone beneath. Again I found myself fascinated by this bright underlying stone, cut from almost exactly the same sort of material as the most ancient and enduring megalithic structures of far-off Malta.
Indeed, by visualizing a Maltese temple like Hagar Qim or Gigantija in all its glory, its white coralline limestone megaliths reflecting the dazzling Mediterranean sunshine, I could begin to imagine how the two great rock-hewn circles of Kerama might have looked, in all their glory-, when all this area as far east as Okinawa was above water at the end of the Ice Age.
As you approached them from lower down the gentle slopes of the surrounding rocky massif – all of it formed out of the same 100-million-year-old fossilized coral reef-you would at first have not been aware that any structures were present there at all. Only from the rim of the enclosure looking down would you have suddenly found yourself confronted by a majestic and mysterious spiral of glowing monoliths, the tallest more than twice the height of a tall man.
Unlike the uprights of the great Maltese temples, however, which were quarried elsewhere and then transported and erected on the temple sites, these Centre Circle monoliths had been quarried in situ out of the bedrock of the ancient mound – to which they were still attached at their bases.2 That automatically classifies the whole edifice as a rock-hewn structure and, as at Yonaguni, one of the mysteries it confronts us with, if we are to imagine that the ‘hewing’ was done by natural forces, is – what happened to all the missing rock? The reader may easily verify from photos 78–80 that quite a large amount of this very hard rock would have had to be hewn out to free-up the monoliths and excavate the 4-metre-deep semi-subterranean enclosure in which they are confined. As the photographs also show, none of this excavated rock is present as any form of rubble or debris within the two circles. This is a very troubling anomaly if the circles were made by natural forces, but is exactly what one would expect if they are the work of human beings.
Wolf on Kerama
Much to my surprise – because I had become so used to his hard-nosed scepticism at Yonaguni – Wolf stayed as open-minded on the problem of Centre Circle after our two dives as he had been when I’d shown him the tapes before we got in the water. Moreover, he was able to carry out on-board chemical tests on the samples that he had taken both from the core and from the aggregate of river stones plastered to the outside of the monoliths.
The tests proved on camera – though it was already completely obvious to the naked eye – that these were two entirely different types of rock. The core, as we knew, was very ancient coralline limestone. The rounded cobbles caught up in the aggregate were sandstone and had, as Wolf judged:
been shaped by waters, by running waters; this is beyond every doubt. These sandstones all show a rounded-out shape, and this leads us to two possible origination processes for these stones: one would be riverine waters, and the other one would be coastline beach, pebbles or something like that, which have been rolled forward and backward to get this rounded shape.
Wolf added that during the second dive, while I had been working with the cameraman, he had explored outside the perimeter of Centre Circle.
What was special for me was to discover that these rather large cobbles, pebble stones, made of sandstone, which are glued to the uprights and inner formations, also appear in places outside the circle. So I dived a little sidewards – I don’t know the direction – and then I found a field of the same pebbles, not really pebbles, it was really big, big stones, but scattered in a very chaotic way over the surface of the coralline bedrock.
Wolf’s suggestion about these ‘pebbles’ of assorted sizes – which we also referred to in our conversations variously as boulders, cobbles and river stones – was the obvious one but, he warned, a pure guess. At some stage, probably millions of years after the fossilization and exposure of the ancient coral bedrock,
a river has carried his load here … So maybe it sometimes had water and sometimes it dried out, changed the bed, and left the stones in here … So it seems that parts of this old coral reef were covered by these boulders somehow transported by river, a very broad river, because the field seems to me to be very broad.
If it was a guess, it sounded like a good one.
But on the larger mystery of the monoliths and uprights of the rock-hewn circles Wolf admitted that he was completely dumbfounded – although he rightly cautioned that he could only speak from his own experience as a marine geologist. Perhaps other geologists had seen natural structures that were the same as or very similar to Centre Circle somewhere in the world and would be able explain the enigmatic curved parallel walls and well-shaped uprights. He could not, however.
Wolf: I have no explanation for these … for these …
GH: For the circles?
Wolf: For the circles, and for the structures inside them. For sure is that they must have been formatted after the pebbles were laid down on the coralline ground – because some of these pebbles are hanging over the canyons, so and they could not have come earlier … But I don’t see any force which could have shaped these —
GH: —any force of nature, which could shape the circles and uprights?
Wolf: Yes, of course.
GH: So that leaves us …
Wolf: At the moment …
GH: That leaves us with one option then? Man-made.
Wolf: I don’t know. I would not be …
GH: You wouldn’t rush so fast?
Wolf: I would not go so far. I mean you have to do really a lot of research to establish that. But what is really strange is these parallel walls running round. It is very strange because if, for example, the erosive force were water, the two edges of a river bed or something like that are not exactly parallel to each other like these. So this is what I can say. And even solution, chemical solution does not leave hints like this, of this accuracy.
GH: Paralleling of walls?
Wolf: Paralleling accuracy.
GH: So what can be said for sure about this structure? Can we be sure about anything?
Wolf: What is clear is that we have an ancient fossilized coral reef and we have these pebbles scattered on top of it which came later. And then a second force started. This was the erosive force which then carved these structures out of the ground – if man or if nature.
GH: Now, you geologists will say ‘carved by nature’ and we poets will say ‘carved by man’.
Wolf: I don’t say anything definite. Much more research must be done. But I agree that this is very amazing and very strange, even to me, how these structural buildings could be formed. I haven’t seen such structures done by nature. I won’t dare say anything else about human activities because I do not know anything about that.
From a geologist as instinctively cautious and phlegmatic as Wolf Wichmann this was as close as I was ever likely to get to a confirmation that the rock-hewn stone circles of Kerama really could be man-made. Still, I couldn’t resist pushing for more.
GH: I’ll tell you why I think it’s man-made.
Wolf: Yes, please.
GH: It’s not just the sense of organization of the structure itself. It’s the fact that we have an ancient culture on these islands which made stone circles. They are known to have made stone circles and some of those circles still survive – not like Centre Circle, smaller, with the largest blocks about half a tonne, and usually much less. But the idea of a stone circle and, indeed, of interlinked stone circles, was something they did. So you know, when we lo
ok at Centre Circle and Small Centre Circle -and we know that we’re on a set of islands where we have an ancient culture called the Jomon, who are known to have made stone circles -then to me it’s less extraordinary, in a way, to attribute it to them – to the Jomon – than it is to any unknown force of nature. I don’t deny that nature often provides a sense of organization, but it’s the unique character of this in a land where we have a very ancient culture, actually which existed from 16,000 years ago until 2,000 years ago, the Jomon, who made stone circles … you know, I start wondering.
Wolf: OK, I can follow your point. But still it has to be proven that this is really done by the Jomon.
GH: Yes, yes, I agree.
Wolf: And this is very hard to find. You have to scratch and you have to clean it to find marks or to find any evidence, maybe in a series of other monuments being proven to have been constructed by this society.
GH: Yes. Well, we have many stone circles that have been constructed by that society, but this … amongst their stone circles, this would rank as the largest and the most unusual. But I repeat, we’re on a set of islands here which had an ancient culture, the Jomon, that is recognized by historians. The earliest surviving work of that ancient culture goes back to the Ice Age, around 16,000 years ago. The Jomon were known to make stone circles. We have a stone circle at a depth that is likely to have been exposed at some point during the Ice Age. What’s the next logical step?
Wolf: No, no, I mean I agree to that, to that chain, to that chain – it’s clear. But the last point … this is the point that you must prove. A theory remains a theory unless you have proof.
What I had at that moment was a theory about possible Jomon origins for the underwater monoliths and circles of Kerama, hinting at an early and as yet undiscovered phase of monumental construction in Jomon prehistory. That theory had just passed a very important hurdle, since an on-site investigation by a sceptical marine geologist had been unable to produce any viable natural explanation for the structures.
But it was still a theory.
Komakino Iseki underwater?
Having completed our work at Kerama, we parted company with Wolf the next morning. He flew back to Germany, and Santha and I carried on with the film crew to the north of Japan. There, eventually, we found ourselves at the wonderful Jomon stone circle of Komakino Iseki (see chapter 25) near the big site of Sannai-Muryama in Aomori Prefecture. Though it was by now late March, the weather was still freezing in the north, old snow was still lying on the ground and the whole scene presented a huge contrast to the tropical warmth and blue waters of Kerama.
While the crew were setting up, I paced amongst the stones, shivering with cold. The distinctive, rounded river stones of Komakino Iseki. Boulders, pebbles, cobbles, arranged in a series of concentric circles, the largest with a diameter of 150 metres. And between the rings, groups of smaller circles, touching at the edges like the links of a chain …
I’d already made the connection underwater a few days earlier at Kerama. It had struck me as important then and I’d meant to look into it further with Wolf but had been prevented from doing so by shortage of time. It was the phenomenon that he had noticed independently when he’d gone off exploring on his own while I was working with the cameraman and which he’d later described as a boulder field – ‘big stones disposed in a very chaotic way over the surface of the coralline bedrock’. But if I was right, the disposal of these big rounded river stones was not nearly so chaotic as Wolf had thought. I was pretty sure that I had seen his ‘boulder field’ too, and even videoed it briefly in 1999, and glimpsed it again on the first of the two dives we had just completed.
And where he had seen chaos I had seen order. Because when I had filmed them in 1999 some of the big rounded river stones scattered across the coralline plain had definitely been arranged in circles, one stone laid lengthwise next to the other. As at Komakino Iseki, I remembered, these ‘circles’ were really more oval than truly circular in shape (though I shall continue to refer to them as circles for convenience). And as at Komakino Iseki, the stones had been medium-sized – typically around a metre in length or less.
So Kerama still wasn’t finished with me. On this latest trip, as on every previous trip, I had failed to do my job there properly. I’d been lured in by the glamour of the rock-hewn circles with their 4-metre-high monoliths. But I could see now how the proof of the Jomon connection I sought might all along have been lying in that humble ‘boulder field’ just beyond.
I was going to have to go back.
30 / The Shark at the Gate
The origin of maps and geographical treatises goes far back into former ages.
Phei Hsiu, Chinese geographer, AD 224–71
The earliest surviving reference to Taiwan in Chinese annals is in the Sui-Shu – the history of the Sui Dynasty, AD 581–618.1 There it is classified amongst the Lu-Chu islands – the old Chinese name for what is now (with the exception of Taiwan) Japan’s Ryukyu archipelago.2 Starting at Yonaguni in the south-west – within sight of the mountains of Taiwan on a clear day – the Lu-Chu/Ryukyus extend through the Keramas and Okinawa almost as far to the north-east as Kyushu, and have been under discontinuous Japanese hegemony since the fourteenth century. However, they did not officially become part of Japan until 1879.3 It is therefore intriguing that very ancient Japanese legends ‘definitely place R’yugu, the Sea King’s sanctuary, in the Lu-Chu Islands’.4
The Japanese notion of the Sea-King’s sanctuary, which the Nihongi calls ‘the Palace of the God of the Sea’5 and the Kojiki calls ‘the Palace of the Kami Great-Ocean-Possessor’,6 is a rather complicated one. As we saw in chapter 26, its primary mythical setting is underwater, amidst huge stone structures looming up from the sea-bed, in a place that can only be reached by diving. But it also has elusive connections to an enchanted ‘Spirit island’, accessed by a magical journey across the sea, where human life dilates towards immortality – or so we may gather from the story of the man who spent three years residing there and then returned to his home only to discover that 300 human years had passed. Last but not least, there seems to be an enigmatic link with the dark and terrifying Underworld of the Land of Yomi where the soul of Izanami fled after her death.7
When we turn to the traditions and mythology of ancient China we find the same ingredients – immortality, enchanted islands, the Underworld – often used in the same way. Thus, the oldest dynastic history, the Shih Chi (completed about 90 BC), tells us of voyages – sent to the same general area of the ‘Great Eastern Ocean’ that is occupied by the Ryukyus – in search of magical islands where the inhabitants were immortals thanks to their possession of ‘the drug which will prevent death’.8 And in another text, the Ling Wai Tai Ta, we read how ‘In the Great Eastern Ocean there is a bank of sand and rocks some myriads of li in length, and nearby is the Wei-Lei, the place where the water pours down into the Nine Underworlds.’9
Since a li is equivalent to 0.309 of a mile,10 then thousands of li (say 3000 of them?) must equal at least a thousand miles. One wonders where in the Eastern Ocean – i.e., the Pacific – such an enormous bank of rock and sand could have been located.
But perhaps it would be better to ask: when?
Abodes of the immortals
The Wei-Lei – which might be translated politely as ‘the ultimate drain’11 – has another, more beautiful, name in Japan. There it is called the Kuroshio, the Black Current or the Black Tide,12 and we saw in chapter 25 how serious scholars at the Smithsonian Institution led by Betty Meggers believe that it may have carried Jomon seafarers all the way across the Pacific to settle in the Americas more than 5000 years ago.13 There are even indications of earlier Jomon migrations to the Americas going back as far as 15,000 years ago.14
I first set eyes on the Black Current – and you really can see it; it’s an entity; it’s alive; it is, I guess, a Kami – from the heights of Cape Ashizuri on the Japanese island of Shikoku, where groups of great megaliths stand gazing down on
the rippling waters as though sharing a secret.15 We know already that from there the Kuroshio runs north past the rest of the Japanese archipelago and thence across the Pacific. South of Shikoku and Kyushu, however, it also flows past Taiwan and the Ryukyu islands immediately to the east of the Chinese coast – the region of the Pacific most directly accessible to Chinese mariners.16 Could it have been somewhere hereabouts that the ancient Chinese believed ‘the Wei-Lei drains into the world from which men do not return’?17 The distinguished Sinologist Joseph Needham thought it should be further east -perhaps even as far east as the Americas,18 a quasi-diffusionist view that was ahead of its time in 1971 when he expressed it. But there is no consensus.
Needham also attributed definite historicity to Chinese accounts of searches for magical islands.19 The Shih Chi reports the exploits of a mariner named Hsu Fu, in the late third century BC. Rather like Columbus petitioning the sovereigns of Europe 1700 years later to fund his voyages of discovery westwards across the Atlantic in search of Antilia,20 Hsu Fu petitioned the emperor of China in 219 BC with claims to have special knowledge of a wonderful domain of ‘magic mountain islands’ to the east of China in the Pacific: