The Yonaguni Monument

 

The Claim

There’s and ancient temple like complex thousands of years old under the sea off the coast of Japan, and no one has any idea who built it.

 

The Yonaguni Monument is located just over 60 miles east of Taiwan, just off the coast of Yonaguni, Japan’s southern most island in the Ryukyu island network.

 

It was first discovered a director of a local tourism company when he was searching out new diving spots to see sharks, and shortly after he found it Masaaki Kimura from the university of the Ryūkyūs led an investigation into the mysterious find.

 

 

The object itself appears to be made from high quality sandstone and mudstone, and interestingly enough seems to be mostly connected to the underlying bedrock, suggesting it was carved out of a single large rock as opposed to being built by stacking stone.

 

The center point of the monument is a 150 meter long by 40 meter wide rectangular formation standing 27 meters high, with its tip being just 5 meters below the surface.

 

The monument includes a 5 meter wide ledge that surround the monument on 3 side, a star shaped platform, a 7 meter high column and a rather odd large L-shaped rock.

 

Many people have dived down to the site since its was discovered and most seem to bring back new claims of its features. People have claimed to have found images of animals and faces in some of the stones, and researchers who have dated the monument claim it to be from around 8000 BC, making it 10,000 years old.

 

So who built it?

 

Not only does no one know, but no one seems to have any idea at all. There are those who argue that the monument has been formed naturally, with similar underwater marvels around the world holding some of the same features as this one, but the symmetry and appearance of carving marks makes this theory the least accepted.

 

The strangest thing about this one is the sea around the island isn’t thought to have been that low for many thousands of years before the object was built, suggesting that if it is indeed 10,000 years old, it still would have been built at least partially underwater.

 

The series of Japanese islands the monument is next to was once thought to have been connected to the rest of the continent of Asia, but sea levels began to rise rapidly around 10,000 BC during the start of Japans Neolithic age, which is not only 2000 before it was believed to have been built, but the people in the area at the time wouldn’t have even discovered pottery, making it almost impossible to create with their level of technology.