The underwater ruins at Yonaguni's Iseki Point meet the powerful Black Current head on. If they have been there for any length of time, anything light or portable will have washed away. It goes without saying that anything that could be dissolved in water or eaten away by marine life would also be gone. Only stone remains.
A typical feature of the ancient castle/fort/shrine structures known as gusuku in Okinawa is a surrounding wall made of piled up rocks and a stone-paved road. (see the photo from Shuri Castle in Naha) Underwater surveys of Iseki Point show a loop road with a retaining wall made of boulders held in place with smaller rocks.
The loop road and wall are good reasons to believe that Iseki Point was once part of a gusuku complex.
Showing posts with label Iseki Point. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iseki Point. Show all posts
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
Yonaguni NPO Annual General Meeting
June 7 was the big day. Membership is up. Sponsorship is up. What's more, media interest in Yonaguni is still strong. One of the attractions at the meeting was a screening of Discovery Channel's program on unsolved mysteries which featured Yonaguni's Iseki Point along with a site off Great Britain's Isle of Wight and another submerged site along the Indian coast.
Dr. Masaaki Kimura, chairman of the NPO Marine Cultural Heritage Research Association, is fond of quoting his favorite professor's advice to look for traces of the world's most ancient civilizations under water. The world's coastlines have changed drastically over the eons, and what used to be prime real estate is now submerged. He heard that advice some 40 years ago, and chose to act on it. It was interesting that the Discovery Channel program ended with the comment that future discoveries concerning mankind's past will not be made on land; they will be made at the bottom of the sea.
That means the relics at Yonaguni are part of the world's cultural heritage. If they are as old as many experts suspect--dating from 10,000 years ago--Iseki Point may be where the world's oldest building stands.
Dr. Masaaki Kimura, chairman of the NPO Marine Cultural Heritage Research Association, is fond of quoting his favorite professor's advice to look for traces of the world's most ancient civilizations under water. The world's coastlines have changed drastically over the eons, and what used to be prime real estate is now submerged. He heard that advice some 40 years ago, and chose to act on it. It was interesting that the Discovery Channel program ended with the comment that future discoveries concerning mankind's past will not be made on land; they will be made at the bottom of the sea.
That means the relics at Yonaguni are part of the world's cultural heritage. If they are as old as many experts suspect--dating from 10,000 years ago--Iseki Point may be where the world's oldest building stands.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Homemade Submarine
The submerged ruins at Yonaguni cover so much area that a diver cannot take in the entire panorama in a single view. A scuba diver has a little more than half an hour to see what he can, but a snorkeler or skin diver has only a minute or so.
One skin diver who made many dives at Yonaguni's Iseki Point was the man with the world's breath holding record, Jacques Mayol. He came up with a unique way to get a feel for the immense scope of the ruins in a single dive.
Jacques didn't like to be encumbered with scuba gear. On the other hand, he also acknowledged that even he--the dolphin man of the diving world--had limits to how long he could stay underwater without breathing. So what he did was design a board that he could hang on to and also steer up and down as he sped past the ruins at the end of a rope towed by a motorboat. He called the board his "bargain submarine". No windows, no seats, no periscope. Just a high-performance fin.
Because Yonaguni, as the first island to stand in its way, takes the brunt of the ferocious Black Current, even scuba divers have a hard time getting where they want to go at Iseki Point. So Jacques' feat was awesome in the extreme.
Between the violent current, the huge scale of the ruins, and the hammerhead sharks, I think I will wait until someone institutes tours by glass bottom boat.
One skin diver who made many dives at Yonaguni's Iseki Point was the man with the world's breath holding record, Jacques Mayol. He came up with a unique way to get a feel for the immense scope of the ruins in a single dive.
Jacques didn't like to be encumbered with scuba gear. On the other hand, he also acknowledged that even he--the dolphin man of the diving world--had limits to how long he could stay underwater without breathing. So what he did was design a board that he could hang on to and also steer up and down as he sped past the ruins at the end of a rope towed by a motorboat. He called the board his "bargain submarine". No windows, no seats, no periscope. Just a high-performance fin.
Because Yonaguni, as the first island to stand in its way, takes the brunt of the ferocious Black Current, even scuba divers have a hard time getting where they want to go at Iseki Point. So Jacques' feat was awesome in the extreme.
Between the violent current, the huge scale of the ruins, and the hammerhead sharks, I think I will wait until someone institutes tours by glass bottom boat.
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