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In July of 1986, Kihachiro Aratake, a diveshop owner on Yonaguni Island, a small Japanese island southwest of Okinawa, strayed outside of the safety perimeter to dive the unknown areas west of the island. What he found was nothing short of astonishing, something that has baffled geologists, archaeologists, and historians alike ever since.
Not far outside the perimeter, only 200 feet off of a set of sheer cliffs called Iseki Point, he stumbled across a low, rambling, monolithic structure that appeared, at least at first glance, to be a large, manmade temple complex or similar structure. The structure itself is roughly 240 feet long, 90 feet wide and is apparently only one of a complex of structures that dot the sea bed for hundreds of miles. Masaaki Kimura, a professor at University of the Ryukyus, Department of Science Faculty, has dated it as being anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 years old, based upon fossil remains found on the monument. Since Earth's oceans have risen over 120 feet in the past 10,000 years, from 6,000-10,000 years ago the Monument would have been well above water.
Most historians, archaeologists and geologists, including Robert Schoch — who is known for his redating of the Sphinx — have dismissed the "Monument" as purely natural. Schoch believes that the sharp right angles to be found throughout the site are part of the natural process of erosion, where the soft stone of which the "Monument" is composed tends to flake off along parallel lines, over time creating the angular features of the Monument.
Kimura and others disagree, however, pointing out that numerous features around the monument, including what appear to be "post holes", clearly defined stairways, and the structure's similarity to other aboveground structures on the island of Yonaguni, make it unlikely that the structure was purely natural. In the end, both Schoch and Kimura come to the conclusion that the structure was most likely "terraformed", where the builders worked around the Monument's natural features to adjust it to suit their needs.
