The history of archaeological finds is very diverse. Experts often search for traces of vanished civilizations for decades. And other times it is enough for the diver to dive, and if he is lucky and is in the right place, the remains of an ancient city (so-called fraudulent buildings) will appear before his eyes. This is exactly what happened to diving instructor Kichachiro Aratake in the spring of 1985, when he made a dive in coastal waters off the small Japanese island of Jonaguni.

Self against all

Near the shores, at a depth of 15 meters, he noticed a huge stone plateau. The wide straight slabs, covered with ornaments in the form of rectangles and rhombuses, merged into an intricate system of terraces that ran down large steps. The edge of the building "fell" through a vertical wall to the bottom, to a depth of 27 meters.

Diver o his discovery was informed by Professor Masaki Kimuru, a specialist in marine geology and seismology from Ryukyu University. The professor was fascinated by the finding, and although most of his colleagues were skeptical, Kimura put on a wetsuit and went to sea to explore the object. Since then, he has made more than hundreds of dives and is today the greatest expert in this field.

Professor soon organized a press conference announcing that an unknown ancient city has been discovered, and presented to the general public photographs of the find, diagrams and drawings. The scientist understood that when dealing with underwater structures, he went against the vast majority of historians, thus betting his scientific reputation.

According to him, it is a gigantic complex of buildings that includes castles, monuments, and even a stadium connected to each other by the road and road system. Massive stone blocks, he argued, are part of a vast array of artificial structures carved into the rock. Kimura has also found plenty of tunnels, wells, staircases, and even a pool.

Stumbling-block

Since then, research on the city at Jonaguni has continued. These ruins are very reminiscent of megalithic structures in other places - Stonehenge in England, the remains of Minoan civilization in Greece, the pyramids in Egypt, Mexico and Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes.

They share terraces with the latter and a mysterious image reminiscent of a human head with a feather headdress.

Even the technological "peculiarities" of underwater structures resemble structural solutions in Inca cities. This is fully in line with current notions that the ancient inhabitants of the New World, who laid the foundations of the Mayan, Inca, and Aztec civilizations, came from Asia. But why are scientists leading such persistent and never-ending controversy over Jonaguni? The problem is obviously in estimating the time when the city was built.

Underwater discovery does not fit into contemporary history

This the discovery by no means fits into the current version of history. Surveys have shown that the rock into which Jonaguni is carved was flooded at least 10 years ago, so long before the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and Cyclops of Minoan culture, not to mention the buildings of the ancient Indians. According to official history, people lived in caves at that time and had just managed to collect plants and hunt game.

However, the hypothetical creators of the Jonaguni complex were already able to work the stone at that time, for which they had to have the appropriate tools and master the geometry, which is contrary to the traditional notion of history. The Egyptians reached the appropriate technological level 5 years later, and if we accept Professor Kimura's version, history will have to be rewritten.

A so today most scholars prefer the version that the strange coast at Jonaguni is a work of natural forces. In the opinion of the skeptics, all this has been due to the special characteristics of the rocks of the rock from which objects emerge.

The characteristic of the sandstone that it splits longitudinally can explain the terraced arrangement of the complex and the geometric shapes of the massive stone blocks. The problem, however, is the multiple regular circles that have been found there, as well as the symmetry of the stone blocks. This cannot be explained by the properties of sandstone, as well as the concentration of all these formations in one place.

Skeptics have no answers to these questions, and so the mysterious underwater city becomes a stumbling block for historians and archaeologists. The only thing that both supporters and opponents of the artificial origin of the rock complex agree on is that it was flooded as a result of a natural disaster, of which there were many in the history of Japan.

A fundamental discovery

The largest tsunami in the world hit the island of Jonaguni on April 24, 1771, the waves reached a height of 40 meters and then died 13 people, destroyed 486 houses.

This tsunami is considered one of the biggest natural disasters to hit Japan. It is possible that a similar disaster destroyed the ancient civilization that built the city on the island of Jonaguni. In 2007, Professor Kimura presented a computer model of underwater structures at a scientific conference in Japan. According to his assumption, there are ten of them on the island of Jonaguni and another five on the island of Okinawa.

The massive ruins cover an area of ​​more than 45 square kilometers. The professor estimates that they will be at least 000 years old. It is based on the age of stalactites, discovered in caves, which, he assumes, were flooded together with the city.

Stalactites and stalagmites form only on land and are the result of a very lengthy process. Underwater caves with stalactites, which were found around Okinawa, prove that this area was once a mainland.

"The largest building looks like a complex multi-stage monolithic pyramid and is 25 meters high," says Kimura in one of the interviews.

The professor has studied these ruins for many years, and during their exploration he has noticed similarities between underwater structures and those discovered during archaeological excavations on land.

Ruins and their significance

One of them is a semicircular cutout in the rock slab, which corresponds to the entrance to the castle on the mainland. Nakagusuku Castle in Okinawa has an ideal semicircular entrance, typical of the 13th-century Ryukyu Kingdom. Another is two underwater megaliths, large six-meter blocks, set in a vertical position next to each other, they also coincide with double megaliths in other parts of Japan, such as Mount Nobeyama in Gifu Prefecture.

What does it say? It looks like the city on the seabed near the island of Jonaguni was part of a much larger complex and the continuation of the mainland. In other words, the ancient ancestors of contemporary Japanese have arranged and built buildings on the islands according to their ideas, but a natural disaster, probably a very strong tsunami, has destroyed the fruits of their work.

Whatever the case, the underwater city of Jonaguni changes our view of history as a science. Most archaeologists believe that human civilization originated about 5 years ago, but some scientists believe that advanced civilizations may have existed on Earth 000 years ago and were swept away by some natural disasters. The city near Jonaguni is proof of that.