It was isolated from mainland China by rising sea-levels at the end of the Ice Age when huge areas to its west, south and north were massively inundated.
It has rich and extensive indigenous flood myths.
It has megaliths more than 5000 years old positioned on a highly significant geodetic location.
It has underwater ruins.
I will not delay the reader with lengthy quotations from the very many Taiwanese flood myths that were collected from amongst the indigenous population, primarily by Japanese scholars, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.39 Typically they tell a story of a warning from the gods, the sound of thunder in the sky, terrifying earthquakes, the pouring down of a wall of water which engulfs mankind, and the survival of a remnant who had either fled to mountain tops or who floated to safety on some sort of improvised vessel.40
To provide just one example (from the Ami tribe of central Taiwan), we hear how the four gods of the sea conspired with two gods of the land, Kabitt and Aka, to destroy mankind. The gods of the sea warned Kabitt and Aka: ‘In five days when the round moon appears, the sea will make a booming sound: then escape to a mountain where there are stars.’ Kabitt and Aka heeded the warning immediately and fled to the mountain and ‘when they reached the summit, the sea suddenly began to make the sound and rose higher and higher’.41 All the lowland settlements were inundated but two children, Sura and Nakao, were not drowned: ‘For when the flood overtook them, they embarked in a wooden mortar, which chanced to be lying in the yard of their house, and in that frail vessel they floated safely to the Ragasan mountain.’42
So here, handed down since time immemorial by Taiwanese headhunters, we have the essence of the story of Noah’s Ark, which is also the story of Manu and the story of Zisudra and (with astonishingly minor variations) the story of all the deluge escapees and survivors in all the world.43 At some point a real investigation should be mounted into why it is that furious tribes of archaeologists, ethnologists and anthropologists continue to describe the similarities amongst these myths of earth-destroying floods as coincidental, rooted in exaggeration, etc., and thus irrelevant as historical testimony. This is contrary to reason when we know that over a period of roughly 10,000 years between 17,000 and 7000 years ago more than 25 million square kilometres of the earth’s surface were inundated. The flood epoch was a reality and in my opinion, since our ancestors went through it, it is not surprising that they told stories and bequeathed to us their shared memories of it. As well as continuing to unveil it through sciences like inundation mapping and palaeo-climatology, therefore, I suggest that if we want to learn what the world was really like during the meltdown we should LISTEN TO THE MYTHS.
If you do that you cannot fail to notice, across the 600 or so ancient flood myths known to scholarship, that the events they describe, again and again, were truly terrifying ones. Terrifying. And while we must accept, because the archaeologists say so, that humanity 16,000 or 12,000 years ago was made up entirely of ‘primitive’ hunter-gatherers, the myths themselves often tell a very different story – when they speak, for example, of the antediluvian cities of the Sumerians or of the Atlanteans before the Fall. If the myths are important memories repackaged as narratives that could be passed down from generation to generation, then what are we to make of memories such as these?
Along with growing numbers of people today I have the uneasy sense that science has not fully understood the peoples of the flood epoch – and that some global cultural development of great significance may have been underway at that time which was lost or severely dislocated in the inundations. Above all else it is hints and clues, first to the existence of this lost episode of cultural development and secondly to its character, that I have sought in the geographical anomalies of ancient maps – which are not anomalies if they chart the effects of changing sea-levels at the end of the Ice Age – and in my global search for underwater monuments that were submerged at the same time. I propose that the consistent patterns of map anomalies that we have documented – from Hy-Brasil to India to Japan – bear mute witness to an ancient science of cartography and navigation that explored the world and charted it accurately over a period of several thousand years during the post-glacial meltdown.
The longitudinal distances, in degrees, from Giza to Tiruvannamalai, Angkor and point ‘D’ appear to be based on geometric and astronomical constants.
Nor are the maps the only evidence of that conjectured lost geography. Another point that I have touched on from time to time is relevant here. This is the apparently planned construction all around the world of sacred, often megalithic, sites on specific relative longitudes. I have commented in this book on the intriguing longitudinal relationship that exists between the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the great temple of Arunachela at Tiruvannamalai in south India and the temples of Angkor in Cambodia (Arunachela is 48 degrees of longitude east of Giza; Angkor is 24 degrees of longitude east of Arunachela; 48 ÷ 2 = 24; 48 + 24 = 72; 5 × 72 = the 360 degrees of a circle). As I have indicated, these numbers, and others in the same sequence, turn up repeatedly in ancient myths from all parts of the world.44 The sequence bears a relationship, which may or may not be causal, to the astronomical phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes (which proceeds, in round numbers, at the rate of 1 degree every 72 years).45 But all the numbers that compose the sequence in the myths also have something else in common – literally their lowest common denominator. They are all divisible by 3.
The number 90 = 30 × 3. In terms of the circle (of which it is exactly one quarter), of geometry (the right angle), and of navigation, there is no doubt that 90 degrees is a significant figure. If point ‘A’ is 90 degrees of longitude away from point ‘D’ then the two longitudes (‘A’ and ‘D’) are, literally, a quarter of the earth apart from one another. And if there is a sacred site on point ‘A’ – the Pyramids of Giza -and a sacred site on point ‘D’ as well, then you would have to be really bad at mental arithmetic not to notice the peculiar longitudal relationship, based on the lowest common denominator of 3, that seems to link both of them to Tiruvannamalai and to Angkor within the same quadrant. Whether it is by accident, or it is the result of some ancient geodetic survey that founded marker shrines on key longitudes that were later elaborated into monuments, the following 3-based relationships do exist: Tiruvannamalai with its Siva cult is 16 × 3 degrees (i.e., 48 degrees) east of Giza, Angkor is 24 × 3 degrees (i.e., 72 degrees) east of Giza; point ‘D’ is 30 × 3 degrees (i.e., 90 degrees) east of Giza. In addition, point ‘D’ is 6 × 3 (i.e., 18 degrees) east of Angkor and 14 × 3 (i.e., 42 degrees) east of Tiruvannamalai.
So what and where is this mysterious point ‘D’ so intricately linked by base-3 geodesy to Angkor, Giza and Tiruvannamalai? It is a spectacular megalithic site in central Taiwan, up in the mountains where the flood survivors went – up on the Wuhe plateau of the central highlands. And not only is it 90 degrees east of Giza. An additional bonus, as I was to discover when I checked its bearings on my GPS, is that it lies almost exactly on the Tropic of Cancer, where at midday on the summer solstice a gnomon – or vertical upright – will cast no shadow.
I didn’t even know point ‘D’ existed when we started our trip to Taiwan in August 2001 – but I had asked our local contacts there to introduce us to any interesting megaliths on the island. They took us to the Wuhe plateau, where by far the most spectacular and truly monumental of Taiwan’s many megalithic sites is to be found at Sao Pa, ringed by distant peaks and overlooking a river valley of stunning, simple beauty.
Although folklore has it that two other megaliths originally stood at Sao Pa, only two have come down to us today. Carved in one piece out of black slate, both are classic stele or menhirs, tall and narrow, the larger 7.4 metres in height and the smaller just over 5 metres high. Both show a clean-cut horizontal groove at ‘neck’ level which is indeed somewhat suggestive of a neck and gives the menhirs a statue-like form.
In round numbers of degr
ees and minutes the present latitude of the Tropic of Cancer is 23 degrees 27 minutes north. The location of the Sao Pa menhirs is 23 degrees 28 minutes north. The difference between the two is therefore one minute – i.e., 1/60 of a single degree.
In round numbers the longitude of the Great Pyramid of Giza is 31 degrees 07 minutes east (i.e., east of the arbitrary and recent Greenwich Meridian); the longitude of the Sao Pa menhirs is 121 degrees 21 minutes east of Greenwich – the difference between the two is therefore 90 degrees, within 14/60 (i.e., less than a quarter) of a single degree.
In summary, if we impose on a map of the earth a ‘world grid’ with Giza (not Greenwich) as its prime meridian, then hidden relationships become immediately apparent between sites that previously seemed to be on random, unrelated longitudes. On such a grid, as we’ve just seen, Tiruvannamalai stands on longitude 48 degrees east, Angkor stands on longitude of 72 degrees east and Sao Pa stands out like a sore thumb on longitude 90 degrees east – all numbers that are significant in ancient myths, significant in astronomy (through the study of precession), and closely interrelated through the base-3 system.
So the ‘outrageous hypothesis’ which is being proposed here is that the world was mapped repeatedly over a long period at the end of the Ice Age – to standards of accuracy that would not again be achieved until the end of the eighteenth century. It is proposed that the same people who made the maps also established their grid materially, on the ground, by consecrating a physical network of sites around the world on longitudes that were significant to them. And it is proposed that this happened a very long time ago, before history began, but that later cultures put new monuments on top of the ancient sites which they continued to venerate as sacred, perhaps also inheriting some of the knowledge and religious ideas of the original navigators and builders.
And the original navigators and builders themselves? What direct traces of their civilization are to be found?
This brings us back to the underwater quest – for the traces, anywhere and everywhere around the world, of submerged structures that do not make sense within the current paradigm of prehistory. We’ve followed those traces from the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, through the Mediterranean, into the Atlantic and now finally to the underworld of the East China and Yellow Seas that is bounded in the north by the Korean peninsula and Kyushu, in the east and south-east by the arc of the Ryukyu archipelago, and in the south by Taiwan.
Having explored other anomalous submerged sites in the same region – Aguni, Kerama, Chatan, Yonaguni – I was intrigued, but not surprised, when I first heard that a strange underwater structure had been found off Taiwan’s Pescadores islands.
Diving at Tiger Well
I will not repeat the inundation history of the Pescadores given in chapter 28 or of the former island that lay to their north near the spot marked by Ymana on the 1424 Antilia chart. Irrespective of the Ymana issue, however, it is obvious that the Pescadores in their own right – located on the tip of a strategic peninsula of mainland China 13,500 years ago, then later one island, then later still the 64 tiny remnants that are seen today – are a plausible location in which to search for underwater ruins from the flood epoch.
They are plausible for another reason too. Ancient myths of the Pescadores speak of a great castle with huge ‘red’ walls that lies submerged somewhere amongst the islands. It was precisely these myths that led a government official to ask the brilliant Taiwanese diver Steve Shieh to look for underwater ruins if he happened to be working in the area. Over a period of several years, Steve complied, searching the waters around most of the islands. Eventually he was rewarded with an extraordinary discovery off the island of Hu-ching (‘Tiger Well’). This happened more than twenty years ago and has received no attention or publicity in the West. Luckily for me, however, TBS, a large Japanese TV station, ran a report on Steve and his discovery as recently as January 2001. The report was seen by several Japanese friends, who drew it to my attention.
We did two days of diving with Steve Shieh off Hu-ching island at the end of August 2001.
The structure that he showed us consists of two immense walls, hundreds of metres in length, one running due north-south and the other running due east-west, crossing the north-south wall at right angles. At the east end of the east-west wall is a large circular enclosure, part of which has completely collapsed. The east-west wall is in relatively shallow water – 4 to 6 metres depth. The north-south wall starts at 4 metres depth but can be followed down to 36 metres depth. All the walls are a consistent height of 3 metres from the base to the top of the wall; however, some sections are broken.
In a volcanic, earthquake-prone area such as Taiwan one must be conscious of the possibility that such walls could be natural features – specifically basaltic dykes (quite common around the Pescadores). Such dykes form when a wall-like mass of igneous rock intrudes into cracks in older sedimentary rock.46
Despite extremely strong currents flowing unpredictably from eight different directions (why are there always currents around underwater monuments?), I was able to examine the walls quite thoroughly. My initial impression is that they are not basaltic dykes. This is mainly so because, after scraping off marine-growth from several sections of the walls, Steve showed me courses of individual blocks laid tightly together side-by-side. The joints between the blocks in some cases admit the point of a knife and it was possible for me to work the knife blade in as far as the hilt and move it entirely around individual blocks. In addition the nice north-south and east-west orientation of the walls, though possible naturally, is a strong indicator that humans were involved. Finally, there is that ancient local legend about a ‘castle’ that vanished beneath the sea …
But here, as everywhere else, more research – much more research – is needed to settle the matter. Any such research should also investigate the submerged bank further north that may be all that remains of the antediluvian island of Ymana marked on the 1424 chart.
One amongst many underworlds
They say that the Kingdom of the Sea God has a gateway that is guarded by a shark. So having never once seen a shark at the stone circles of Kerama I did take it as a good omen when one appeared on my last dive there. It was a sleek reef white-tip, not too fearsome, since it was less than 2 metres long, and it patrolled Centre Circle for several minutes, quite untroubled by our presence.
That was at the beginning of September 2001, after Santha and I had completed the dives in Taiwan and flown up to Okinawa to rendezvous again with Isamu Tsukahara and his team. Shun Daichi, who had been with us in Taiwan, also accompanied us to Kerama, and Kyoshi Nagaki joined us there as well.
We had allowed four days minimum, and assumed we might need more, since September is the typhoon season, but in the end Kerama gave me what I needed in just two dives on the first day.
It gave me Komakino Iseki, 30 metres underwater – not just one but a series of ovals of huge diameter made up of hefty rounded river stones sprawled around Centre Circle on the ancient rocky outcrop at the bottom of the sea. I believe that the similarities evident in photos 73 and 74 speak for themselves, needing very little commentary. Type and size of stone, the method of laying the stones to form the great ovals, the shape of the ovals themselves, the construction of banks consisting of two or three courses of stones piled on top of one another, and the use of patterns of ‘chained’ interlinked ovals are all identical at Komakino Iseki and underwater at Kerama.
In my view it is necessary for the site to be protected by the Japanese government now, and for excavations to be conducted there as soon as possible by competent marine archaeologists to ascertain whether any pottery fragments and other typical artefacts of the Jomon period are present amongst the stones. I suspect they will be.
But the real mystery that archaeology needs to solve is the relationship between the large-diameter ovals of river stones that are typical of other Jomon spiritual sites like Komakino Iseki – though at this depth they must be at least
5000 years older than Komakino Iseki – and the very different and much more ambitious project represented by the weird semi-subterranean complex of Centre Circle and Small Centre Circle.
Logic suggests that the Jomon must have made both the river-stone ovals and the rock-hewn circles, and that if we look we are likely to find other such man-made sites underwater in the region which will further testify to this lost architectural episode in their prehistory.
What else was lost then, in that epoch when we dropped the silver thread of memory that connected us to our own past?
An underworld, I suspect, is truly about to be revealed.
One of many.
Postscript 1 / The Underworld in the Gulf of Cambay
In chapter 14 I reported the claimed discovery by India’s National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) of an extensive urban complex underwater in India’s Gulf of Cambay. The discovery was announced on 19 May 2001 by Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi with the suggestion that the structures dated to the Harappan period of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization. I pointed out that inundation science firmly indicates the Gulf of Cambay to have been submerged in pre-Harappan times and specifically in quite a narrow time-window between 7700 years ago and 6900 years ago. From this it follows, if the structures that have been identified are indeed man-made, that they must date from a rather early phase of the pre-Harappan period. Moreover, a date of submergence between 7700 and 6900 years ago only tells us that the city was built at some time before then – not how long before. Since the geometrical structures identified by the NIOT’s side-scan sonar readings extend over more than 9 kilometres of the sea-bed, and since a city on that scale could not have grown up overnight, logic suggests that it is likely to be significantly more than 7700 years old. I wrote in chapter 14: ‘A city 9 kilometres in extent and more than 3000 years older than Harappa and Mohenjodaro would rewrite not only the history of the Indian subcontinent but of the world.’
Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization Page 90