In the meantime I borrowed a DVC player and monitor from the film crew so that I could show Wolf some footage that Santha and I had shot during previous dives at Centre Circle, the largest of the group of structures that lay scattered around on the ocean floor beneath our boat. Every instinct in my body, for years now, had convinced me that these structures must be man-made, or at any rate could not have been made entirely by nature – they were simply too bizarre, unique and ‘designed’. But secretly I had some doubts. I’ve learned a fair bit about rocks and reefs underwater around the world since I took up diving, but I’m not a marine geologist and there’s a huge amount I don’t know. Could it be possible that the strange pillars, the clear pentagonal pathway around the central monolith, and the shaped rock-surround of Centre Circle had all come about as a result of some natural process of which I was ignorant?
I froze the frame at an oblique view from the north-western side of the circle, shot in mid-water about 10 metres above the tops of the megaliths, and pointed out the central monolith to Wolf.
GH: So this is the top of the central stone or whatever it is, which is then surrounded by a ring of …
Wolf: It’s a canyon. It’s a sort of canyon.
GH: It’s a sort of canyon, and it runs down into quite a clean-edged pathway round the bottom here at about 27 metres … it’s a curious mixture of pebbles and sand in the bottom. But it’s very clean; there’s nothing growing in the bottom at all.
Wolf [pointing out several of the monoliths): All these single structures are totally overgrown by organisms. So just to have an impression of how they could have been shaped or could have originated, you have to scratch lots off them … Do you have any impression about the core material of these?
GH: It seems to be a mixture of largish, I wouldn’t say pebbles, I’d say more like cobbles, you know …
Wolf: Rounded?
GH: Rounded … in a, in a sort of concretized mixture of something – I don’t know what it is – a rocky, stony mixture.
Wolf: A matrix.
GH: A matrix, yeah. And you can see —
Wolf: So the question to answer is – is the core material consisting of the same matrix and pebbles mixture? Or are the glued pebbles inside this matrix just an outer cover?
GH: On top of something else.
Wolf: Yes. And the only way to find this out is to make some core drillings or something like that. Another way to come closer to the solution of that riddle, that mystery, could be to scratch off the sand on the bottom to see how these structures are linked to the ground rock … But what you definitely have to see is the core, the base, of these single structures and how they are fixed to the ground —
GH: So shall we plan to go to the bottom first, and do some of that? You may find that there’s some samples that you can get. Have a close look at everything down there and, you know, see if you feel that these kind of curves – the way the outer and the inner curves of the big monoliths match each other – can be natural or can be man-made.
Wolf: So, as far as I can see now, I have really no explanation for this type of pattern.
GH: Here for example (pointing to screen). You can clearly see we’re looking down on two parallel curved walls …
Wolf: Right, right. That’s very amazing. So, is the distance between those two walls broad enough to let people walk through?
GH: Yes, yes it is. You can almost, in places, put two divers side by side, but not quite. Well, we’ll see when we get down there.
I played the tape forward a few frames, then stopped it at a change of scene -the second circle of great monoliths. Because it is of narrower diameter (not because of the size of its monoliths, which are much the same) local divers call it ‘Small Centre Circle’. It lies immediately north-east of and adjoins Centre Circle itself, creating in effect two interlinked rings, the first 8 metres across and the second 5 metres across, contained within what appears to be a huge keyhole-shaped enclosure hewn somehow out of the bedrock that now forms the floor of the ocean.
Wolf: So, how many circles are there in all?
GH: Well, there’s these two side by side; one large one and one slightly smaller one. Then there’s a third one I guess about 50 or 60 metres further to the north-west, but we don’t have shots of that.
Wolf: Yes. And are there other figures? Different from this circle?
GH: In the same area, about 40 metres away to the south, there are quite a number of other circles made of much smaller individual stones, most of them no more than a metre in length. We should be able to look at some of those circles too, on the same dive.
Wolf: But they are built up the same way, of the same material?
GH: Well, they look like some of the cobbles that are compacted into the bigger monoliths.
Wolf: Aha … aha.
GH: They look like that kind of —
Wolf: Single cobbles?
GH: Single cobbles.
Wolf: And then positioned …?
GH: But positioned in a ring.
Wolf: That’s strange.
GH: It is.
Wolf: Really strange.
I rewound the tape for a few moments then pressed ‘play’ again. There was one characteristic of Centre Circle which, though obvious enough, I’d so far forgotten to point out to Wolf.
GH: The other thing I feel about it is it’s on a human scale. It’s monumental, and yet the scale of the thing is human.
Wolf: I’m very astonished about that … about the structure, formation. You know, I haven’t seen anything like this before.
GH: In years of diving? And nor have I … never anywhere in the world.
Wolf: Not only in diving, but also on dry land. There’s some … some formations at least comparable a bit to this – so-called ‘rock castles’ or even a certain form of calcite weathering. But they look different. They look totally different and they don’t have these canyons with the straight walls going right down.
GH: With straight walls and running all the way round a central stone.
Wolf: Normal calcite weathering is different. It has different wall angles.
GH: You see it’s … every time I see that, that inner curve matching the curve of this and making this rather nice path, I feel …
Wolf: It’s very parallely shaped …
GH: Yeah, and it feels like a design thing.
Wolf: Strange, yes … strange.
GH: And no real research has ever been done here. Not even by Professor Kimura.
Diving on Centre Circle
Finally, in the early afternoon around 1 p.m., the buoy which had been dragged under the surface by the force of the current suddenly popped up again, the pressure on the fore and aft anchor ropes went slack, and it was time to go diving. We were already partially geared up, so it took only a few minutes for us to strap on tanks, fins and masks and jump into the water.
Tsukahara had positioned the boat well and Centre Circle became clearly visible beneath us almost as soon as we were under the surface. There was a small current still running, not strong enough to trouble us, and we allowed ourselves to drift slowly down the main anchor line towards the monolithic structures below.
The word ‘monolith’ means literally ‘single stone’ and is used to refer to ‘a large block of stone or anything that resembles one in appearance’.1 But what troubled me most about the monoliths of Centre Circle – a matter related to my secret fear of geological processes known to Wolf but unknown to me – was precisely the question of whether they were ‘single stones’ or not. I had never done what Wolf intended to do now, which was to scrape off some of the thick marine growth covering the monoliths to see what the core material was made of. But I had handled them many times and had vaguely arrived at the idea that they must consist through and through of the same sort of concretized or aggregated ‘matrix’ of rounded mid-sized stones – resembling river stones – that seemed to form their exteriors. The problem was I had absolutely no idea whether this was going t
o be good, or bad, for the proposition – my ‘theory’ if you like – that Centre Circle is a man-made structure.
In our conversation on deck Wolf had seemed genuinely mystified by the video footage I’d shown him. But perhaps once he was close up he would take one look at the monoliths, chisel out a few samples, and prove beyond argument that they had in fact been formed by entirely natural processes. Perhaps he would even slap himself on the brow as we got back in the boat and announce the obscure but correct geological name for this kind of ‘natural formation’. Or perhaps he wouldn’t. Either way, I’d know for sure in about an hour. That was when it really dawned on me, I think, that not only Kerama was on trial here but also my whole notion that a phase of higher civilization and monumental construction in Japanese prehistory might be attested by ruins underwater.
Fifteen metres above the top of Centre Circle, as we paused in neutral buoyancy to get a perspective on the edifice, I was glad I’d spent the last couple of hours going through our earlier video footage of the site – because it had forced me to think through issues that I had previously overlooked. It wasn’t just the crucial question of what the monoliths were made of that had to be addressed, but also Wolf’s observation that they were contained on the floor of something like a ‘canyon’.
Looking around from this bird’s eye view – for a diver does have some of the freedom of manoeuvre in the water that a bird has in the sky – I began to get a proper sense, for the first time, of the topography that surrounds the two great co-joined circles (Centre Circle and Small Centre Circle) and of how their keyhole-shaped perimeter is formed, and even of the relationships between the fully detached and ‘semi-detached’ monoliths that make up the circles.
All these structures occupy the summit of a very large, gently sloping outcrop of rock extending away in all directions, gradually disappearing into deeper waters. At the end of the Ice Age, when the outcrop last stood above sea-level, its highest point would have been the place now marked by the top of the central monolith of Centre Circle. From there you could have stood and surveyed the entire area around.
But then – it seemed inescapable – some powerful force must have intervened, perhaps organized human beings, perhaps weird nature, and carved out the flat-floored, sheer-walled, semi-subterranean, keyhole-shaped enclosure now containing the great rock uprights that form the two circles. Marine growth had gnarled and knobbled the contours of the uprights and it would not be clear until the growth was scraped off how smooth and clean-cut – or otherwise —they originally might have been.
I knew that Wolf would be looking for a natural explanation and supposed that much depended on the constitution of the rock. This, hopefully, we would soon be able to establish since he had brought along with him a fearsome little hammer and mesh bags for the collection of samples. Once we had a better idea of the core material, however, the question we had to address ourselves to – the only question in town really – was what sort of force could have produced an amazing ‘design’ like this. Despite lingering doubts, I felt a sudden surge of confidence that nature could not have done it – not unaided anyway. On the contrary, the pattern was a complex and a purposive one, rather difficult to execute in any kind of rock, and the more I studied it the more obvious it seemed that it was deliberate and planned.
With reference to photo 78 the reader will note that directly beneath the diver, on the north side of Centre Circle, is the smallest and lowest of the three completely free-standing uprights. What I noticed for the first time that afternoon was that this ‘broken monolith’, as I had thought of it before, forms the beginning of a definite anti-clockwise spiral extending through the top of the next monolith (much higher) and of the next (higher still), then winding around the west and south sides of the central upright, where it takes on the curve of the surrounding enclosure wall – itself not continuous but segregated into units separated by deep channels.
The dividing line between Centre Circle and Small Centre Circle is formed by the same low upright where the spiral begins. I swam over it now and looked down on it from the north side with Small Centre Circle just below me. I believe that it shows every sign, as does the entire structure, of having been carved and shaped by man. Though it is a small detail, I have always been impressed by the way it is curved on one side to match the outer curve of the big central upright to its south and on the other to match the curve of the only slightly smaller upright behind it to its north. It is also difficult to imagine how the narrow, clean-edged ‘second pathway’ that parallels the wider inner pathway around the central upright could have been cut so precisely by any natural force.
Just before we dropped down into the structure I noticed out of the corner of my eye, thanks to the exceptional visibility that afternoon, something I had not seen since our first dives here back in 1999. This was the existence, not far beyond the south-western perimeter of Centre Circle – on the slopes below the summit of the ancient mound – of other circles and ovals and spirals made up of individual stones, large cobbles, boulders, mostly a metre or less in length, all of them rounded and smoothed off at the edges, coiled and intertwined with each other like necklaces or the links of a chain strewn upon the ground. As I had told Wolf earlier, they looked a lot, though not exactly, like the ‘river stones’ that were also weirdly stuck, or aggregated (or formed part of the bedrock itself?) all over the uprights of Centre Circle.
I made a mental note that we should go and take a proper look at these nearby ‘river-stone’ or ‘river-boulder’ circles and try to figure out how they had been formed. Perhaps Wolf would have a sensible geological explanation. But seeing them again for the first time in two years, and having travelled widely overland in Japan since then, they instantly reminded me of the Jomon stone circles such as Komakino Iseki and Oyu that I had visited in the north of Honshu in May 2000. So far as I could remember, those circles too had been fashioned out of river stones and river boulders like these, and disposed upon the ground in exactly the same way.
It was potentially an important connection.
By now Wolf and I had reached the base of Centre Circle and were standing up on the inner pathway examining the monoliths. It was true, as Wolf had observed from the video footage, that they were completely overgrown with a fantastic menagerie of marine organisms. But at the same time, protruding out through them like a harvest of ripe fruit, was this peculiar matrix of individual river cobbles. One that I noticed in particular, about the diameter of a large dinner plate and probably weighing several kilos, jutted sideways from the top of the second monolith in the spiral as though reaching out towards the third. How was this to be explained?
Wolf took samples from some of the more prominent river stones plastered to the exteriors of the uprights, then beckoned me to join him at the foot of the second monolith under the overhanging cobble. This was going to be his attempt to find out what the core material of the monolith was made of – and he showed me how the marine growth thinned out then stopped altogether at the junction with the basal path. Immediately above the path it proved relatively easy -much easier than we had expected – to scrape away a large patch of organisms and begin to expose the core.
Wolf scraped and scraped. Scraped and scraped. And gradually what emerged was not, as I had feared, more of the same stony matix or aggregate that clung to the surface, but rather a hard, bright, white core formed unmistakably of the ancient coralline limestone of the Keramas and fully attached at its base to the bedrock. So far as we were able to make out, the monolith appeared to have been smoothly and perfectly cut down from top to bottom with a beautiful curve incorporated into it to match the curve of the pathways that were defined on either side of it and the curve of the central upright. I could even see, where Wolf had scraped away the growth particularly successfully, the original organisms that had fossilized millions of years ago to form the white coral rock out of which the entire perimeter of the circle and all its uprights had later been cut. Coral rock where it is
available is an ideal construction material – and from the little stone blocks used to build private houses in the Maldives today, to the massive ‘Trilithion’ of ancient Tonga, to the megalithic temples of Malta, you can see the use of white coralline limestones in which the structure of the ancient fossilized organisms can clearly be made out.
I was grateful to Wolf for having done this little and obvious thing – obvious, anyway to a professional geologist – i.e., for having established what the core material of Centre Circle’s monoliths actually is. Because this kind of coralline limestone, as well as being visually and aesthetically striking, is also extremely hard. For a natural force to have cut such a material in such a complex way with sheer walls 4 metres deep, and with parallel curves and pathways – the whole hewn out as a semi-subterranean enclosure in the summit of an ancient mound – was, it seemed to me, something that Wolf was going to find very difficult to explain.
Half an hour later we were back on the boat. The principal underwater camera that the Channel 4 team had been using to shoot the dive had malfunctioned, and the director needed us to do it all again. But it was now after 2.30, the current had returned with a vengeance during the last fifteen minutes of the first dive, and it didn’t look like we’d be able to get back in the water at all. We decided to sit at anchor until five. Diving much after that, with nightfall coming, would not be safe this far out in the open ocean and we’d have to return to Okinawa with what we’d got. But if the current slackened before, then we would attempt a second dive.
Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization Page 87
