Deep in the sea off Japan lie the ruins of a city built thousands of years ago by a lost civilization. The stone structures, dubbed 'the Atlantis of Japan', are located on Yonaguni Jima, Japan's westernmost inhabited island, according to sources. National Geographic. The ancient city was sunk by an earthquake 2,000 years ago, the newspaper said. It was rediscovered in 1987, when a local diver exploring off the coast of the Ryukyu Islands spotted a series of almost perfectly carved steps with straight edges.
An old one BBC A report suggests that the rectangular, pyramid-like monument is part of a long-lost Pacific civilization, possibly built by the prehistoric Japanese Jomon people who inhabited these islands as early as 12,000 BC.
However, some experts compare it to the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, whose thousands of interlocking basalt columns (all natural formations) were created by a volcanic eruption millions of years ago.
The underwater structure has arched entrances, narrow passages and is attached to a larger rock mass, the spokesperson said BBC report.
“I am not convinced that the main features or structures are man-made stairs or terraces, but that they are all natural,” Robert Schoch, a professor of science and mathematics at Boston University who has dived at the site, told me. National Geographic.
“It's the basic geology and classical stratigraphy for sandstone, which tends to break along planes and give you very straight edges, especially in an area with a lot of faulting and tectonic activity,” he added.
The structure has generated plenty of controversy over its origins, but neither the Japanese government's Cultural Affairs Agency nor the Okinawa Prefecture government recognize the remains at Yonaguni as an important cultural property.
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