Japanese Underwater Pyramids: Natural or Manmade?, page 2

Masaaki Kimura is a Japanese marine geologist. He is the doyen of specialists who study undersea ruins. In the interview, Prof. Kimura was asked the following points; whether the ruins were artificial, and in what time period they were built.
"These are ruins, and to me, the fact has already been proved. *
The scientific conclusion is that the ruins are indeed artificial. A school of Japanese marine geologists agreed on this outcome. We found that the ruins are at least 6000 years old. ** It could go back another 4000 years when we consider the length of time before they sank into the water. "
Okinawa was once connected to the Chinese continent. Geologic chronology shows that the area in Yonaguni was already underwater 6000 years ago. Prof. Kimura says that when we try to figure out the time period that the ruins were built in, the estimate comes to about 10,000 years ago.
" I want the Okinawa Prefectural Government to set up an organization so that more specialists have a chance to investigate the ruins. I also want people around the world to see the site. It should not be a difficult task now to maintain its condition as a cultural asset, because access to the site is not easy for everyone. I want the local government to discuss the matter of maintaining the ruins as a world asset."
" Around the ruins, there are places that look like they were towns and farm land. The ruins over look these areas. We believe they might have been a castle or a shrine. Yonaguni Island was mountainous in the past.
The geography of the island matches the environment of the site. There was an organization to the town, and someone was leading it. This might be the birthplace of Asian culture."
The geography at the Machu Picchu ruins in Peru is similar to the one in Yonaguni. The solariums made from stone found at both sites resemble each other.

Dr kimura
The doyen of the group, and in my view the hero of the Yonaguni saga for his determination, persistence and refreshingly open-minded intellectual approach, is Dr Masaaki Kimura, Professor of Marine Geology at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa. He and his students have completed hundreds of dives around the main “terrace” monument at Yonaguni as part of a long-term project in which they have thoroughly measured and mapped it, produced a three-dimensional model, taken samples of ancient algae encrusted on its walls for carbon-dating, and sampled the stone of the structure itself. Professor Kimura’s unequivocal conclusion, based on the scientific evidence, is that the monument is man-made and that it was hewn out of the bedrock when it still stood above sea-level -- perhaps as much as 10,000 years ago. The principal arguments that he puts forward in favour of human intervention are on the record and include the following:

1. “Traces of marks that show that human beings worked the stone. There are holes made by wedge-like tools called kusabi in many locations.”

2. “Around the outside of the loop road [a stone-paved pathway connecting principal areas of the main monument] there is a row of neatly-stacked rocks as a stone wall, each rock about twice the size of a person, in a straight line.”
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3. “There are traces carved along the roadway that humans conducted some form of repairs.”

4. “The structure is continuous from under the water to land, and evidence of the use of fire is present.”

5. “Stone tools are among the artefacts found underwater and on land.”

6. “Stone tablets with carving that appears to be letters or symbols, such as what we know as the plus mark ‘+’ and a ‘V’ shape were retrieved from under water.”

7. “From the waters nearby, stone tools have been retrieved. Two are for known purposes that we can recognise, the majority are not.”

8. “At the bottom of the sea, a relief carving of an animal figure was discovered on a huge stone.” (1)

9. On the higher surfaces of the structure there are several areas which slope quite steeply down towards the south. Kimura points out that deep symmetrical trenches appear on the northern elevations of these areas which could not have been formed by any known natural process.

10. A series of steps rises at regular intervals up the south face of the monument from the pathway at its base, 27 metres underwater, towards its summit less than 6 metres below the waves. A similar stairway is found on the monument’s northern face.

11. Blocks that must necessarily have been removed (whether by natural or by human agency) in order to form the monument’s impressive terraces are not found lying in the places where they would have fallen if only gravity and natural forces were operating; instead they seem to have been artificially cleared away to one side and in some cases are absent from the site entirely.

12. The effects of this unnatural and selective clean-up operation are particularly evident on the rock-cut ‘pathway’ [Kimura calls it the ‘loop road’] that winds around the western and southern faces of the base of the monument. It passes directly beneath the main terraces yet is completely clear of the mass of rubble that would have had to be removed (whether by natural or by human agency in order for the terraces to form at all.(2)