Article - Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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Article - Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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Chapter 28 As with all "preliterate" people, the only things we know about the Jomon is based on fragments of artifacts and the imaginative guessing of anthropologists and archaeologists. "Jomon" means "cord pattern," for these people put cord patterns on their pottery. Pottery is a characteristic of Neolithic peoples; the Jomon, however, were Mesolithic peoples (Middle Stone Age). The standard anthropological line on the development of human arts asserts that pottery-making developed after agriculture and is characteristic of a more sedentary culture. The Incipient Jomon, however, were hunter-gatherers who made pottery long before agriculture was introduced into Japan. In fact, the Incipient Jomon pottery-making dated to long before any human was introduced to agriculture. So, who were they? As in Malta, we have to go underwater again to find out. In 1987, Kihachiro Arataka, a scuba instructor and diving guide, was exploring the southeast coast of Yonaguni Island, the last island of the Ryukyu chain. This string of islands in the East China Sea curves from Japan south and west toward China. Aratake was looking for interesting dive sites for tourist expeditions when he came across a submarine cliff that appeared to be cut in a series of immense geometric terraces. Masaaki Kimura, a marine seismologist at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa heard about the ruins in 1990 and went to check it out. For the next seven years, Kimura dived on the site repeatedly, taking his students with him on many occasions, and assembling a portfolio of drawings, maps and models. He became convinced that the Yonaguni formation was fashioned by human hands. Based on well established studies of rises in the East China Sea during and after the last ice age, the Yonaguni Monument was last above sea level at around 6,000 to 8,000 BC. This means that it could represent an early, unknown civilization. Geologist Dr. Robert Schoch went to investigate, made six dives, and noted several interesting things about the site
Dr. Schoch was faced with an interesting problem in his examination of the Japanese underwater "city." Since the sea level sequences were so well established, to state unequivocally that the structure was man-made would have been a terrible blow to the currently accepted chronology of human history. It would have been far worse than his claims that the Sphinx is older than Egyptologist claim because that issue can be debated from now until the cows come home with no absolute resolution. Here, a declaration of human origin for these structures would be undeniable proof of an ancient civilization which built the monuments before the sea level rose. I have a great deal of sympathy for Dr. Schoch's position. What did Dr. Schoch determine about the Underwater city? Well, after having noted that he had never before, as a trained geologist, seen anything like this in "natural structures," he went looking and found a "tentative answer." He noted that:
Thus Dr. Schoch determined that, even if the underwater structure can be explained by natural forces, he leaves the door open to an ancient civilization that existed on Yonaguni Island over 10,000 years ago. Coming at the problem from another direction, we discover that about ten thousand years ago, a group of people lived in the northern part of Japan who were ethnically distinct from the rest of the Japanese population. They were named "Ainu," meaning human being or male in their own language. This word is remarkably similar to the words "Manu" and "Anu," which we will encounter more than once. The Ainu were generally assumed to be descendants of an ancient people referred to as Emishi in the famous Japanese chronicles called "Kojiki" and "Nihon-syoki." Today, the term Ainu is used to denote the indigenous people of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, as a single, integrated population, descendants of the Ainu of ten thousand years ago. The traditional Ainu lifestyle was hunting, fishing and gathering. Ainu religious beliefs center around the existence of another world of spirit essences subject to the same forces that control the visible world. The people worship animal gods, especially the bear, with ritual, song and dance. Even the Ainu language is unusual in its Asian environment. Although they possessed no system of writing, they created a rich oral tradition of stories and poems expressed in formal prose and verse. We of course, immediately think of the Bear cults of Europe, and the bear skulls found in the caves of France dating back in the tens of thousands of years. The Ainu are a morphological problem. The characteristics that differentiate them from Asians are their hairiness and their hair "form." The explanation is that there is a strong admixture of Caucasoid genetics in the Ainu. Some experts consider them to be related to the Australian aborigines, and others think that they represen an independent grouping altogether. So how are we to relate this "archaeology" of a "preliterate" culture to the fact that there is evidence of nearby remains of a former civilization far more advanced than the Jomon? I think that noting the dates might be important. It is as though the Jomon were survivors of a cataclysm. The infrastructure of their society may have been destroyed, along with many of the artifacts that might have been discovered by archaeologists of our day, and they began anew on a planet that had been swept clean - except for stone structures that survived the maelstrom. In January of 2002, a stunning announcement was made: Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old. The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years. These remains may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history. Well, I'm not going to hold my breath for them to "radically reconsider their views." We already see them digging their heels in the mud in response to Graham Hancock who opined:
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