Ancient World Review

The Yonaguni Monument: Japan's "Lost Atlantis" Or Natural Formation?

Video from 2017. Note the mention of artwork discovered on the formations.

"The Yonaguni-jima Kaitei Chikei, literally translated as 'Yonaguni Island Submarine Topography,' is an underwater mystery off the coast of the Ryukyu Islands, Japan. The massive underwater rock formation is speculated to have existed for more than 10,000 years, but whether the formation is completely man-made, entirely natural, or has been altered by human hands is still up for debate." Source: Atlas Obscura.

Many sources matter-of-factly describe the formations of the Yonaguni Monument as the ruins of an advanced prehistoric city which sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago. For instance, see the book Underworld by Graham Hancock, author of the classic work of alternate history "Fingerprints Of The Gods." This theory was first put forward by the Japanese professor and marine geologist Masaaki Kimura who began studying the monument in 1992 (the formation was first discovered by local divers in the 1980s).

Video from 2015.

After exploring the monument for around twenty years, Kimura "remains convinced that the site was carved thousands of years ago, when the land mass was above water. According to Kimura the Yonaguni’s numerous right angles, strategically placed holes and aesthetic triangles are signs of human alteration. He also claims that carvings exist on the monuments, resembling Kaida script. He believes that a pyramid, castles, roads, monuments and a stadium can be identified within the structure – which for him is evidence that the monument is what remains of the Lost Continent of Mu, the Japanese equivalent to Atlantis." (Atlas Obscura)

Note: Mu was also the home of the dreaded Ghatanothoa, an elder god so hideous that anyone who saw him (or an image of him, no matter how small) was instantly petrified, their skin turned to leather and bone while their brains remained alive and conscious forever. For more information on Ghatanothoa, see Out of the Aeons by H.P. Lovecraft.

The Yonaguni Monument could be part of a prehistoric city, I guess. It doesn't look natural to me -- there are two many straight lines and right angles and structures that definitely resemble loose blocks, stairs and what could be terraces or plazas -- but Kimura loses me when he claims that the monument originally stood on the Lost Continent of Mu. I'd like to believe in Mu and I suppose it's possible that lost continents once existed, but it would be nice to have some evidence other than ambiguous formations on the bottom of the sea.

Even if the monument is artificial, there are no signs (as far as I know) that it was ever inhabited. The top video mentions that artwork was discovered in the submerged "ruins," and Kimura claims in the next video that "tools and engraved stones" were discovered there, but I haven't been able to verify that these tools and engravings actually exist. The engravings may just be scratches in the rocks. To the best of my knowledge, no artifacts of any kind have ever been discovered in the Yonaguni Monument. In contrast, divers exploring the very real sunken town of Baiae off the coast of Italy have found all sorts of Roman statuary, mosaics, etc., lying around on the bottom of the Gulf of Naples.  There doesn't seem to be anything like that in this enigmatic site off the coast of Japan.

Mainstream archaeologists and other experts call Kimura's "sunken city" pseudoarchaeology, and they're probably right. If you believe the geologists, anyway,  this bizarre formation may not be all that bizarre after all:

"Some of those who have studied the formation, such as geologist Robert Schoch of Boston University, state that it is most likely natural. Schoch observed the sandstones that make up the Yonaguni formation to 'contain numerous well-defined, parallel bedding planes along which the layers easily separate. The rocks of this group are also criss-crossed by numerous sets of parallel, vertically oriented joints in the rock. These joints are natural, parallel fractures by which the rectangular formations seen in the area likely formed. Yonaguni lies in an earthquake-prone region; such earthquakes tend to fracture the rocks in a regular manner.' He also observes that there are similar formations on the northeast coast of Yonaguni. John Anthony West also reaches the same conclusion. Schoch also believes that the 'drawings' identified by Kimura are natural scratches on the rocks, and suggests that the 'walls' are simply natural horizontal platforms which fell into a vertical position when rock below them eroded, and the alleged roads are simply channels in the rock." (Wikipedia)

Earliest Bow & Arrow Use Discovered In Sri Lanka

2016 video from the outstanding Primitive Technology channel.

"The origins of human innovation have traditionally been sought in the grasslands and coasts of Africa or the temperate environments of Europe. More extreme environments, such as the tropical rainforests of Asia, have been largely overlooked, despite their deep history of human occupation. A new study provides the earliest evidence for bow-and-arrow use, and perhaps the making of clothes, outside of Africa ~48-45,000 years ago -in the tropics of Sri Lanka." Source: Science Daily.

"...At ~48,000 years old, these tools are earlier than the first similar technology found in Europe. Clear evidence for use on the preserved bone arrowheads shows that they were likely used for hunting difficult-to-catch rainforest prey. Not only that, but the scientists show that other bone tools may have been used for making nets or clothing in tropical settings, dramatically altering traditional assumptions about how certain human innovations were linked with specific environmental requirements."

Oldest Miniaturized Stone Toolkits In Eurasia Found In Sri Lanka (2019)

Video from 2017. Views of the cave begin at 0.47.

"Microliths - small stone tools - are often interpreted as being part of composite tools, including projectile weapons, and essential to efficient hunting strategies of Homo sapiens. In Europe and Africa, the earliest appearance of these lithic toolkits are linked to hunting medium and large-sized animals in grassland or woodland settings, or as adaptations to risky environments during periods of climatic change. Yet the presence of small, quartz stone tools in Sri Lanka suggests the existence of more diverse ecological contexts for the development and use of these technologies by some of the earliest members of our species migrating out of Africa." Source: Archaeology News Network (2019).

This report describes microliths discovered at the "cave site of Fa-Hien Lena (1) in the tropical evergreen rainforests of Sri Lanka." These stone tools "have been dated to between 48,000 and 45,000 years ago. This is as early, or earlier, than the well-known 'Upper Palaeolithic' technologies of Europe associated with Homo sapiens, and highlights that these sophisticated toolkits were a key part of our species' ecological flexibility as it colonized the Eurasian continent."

(1) I'm not sure about this, but I think that the Fa-Hien Lena cave mentioned in this article is the same as the Fa-Hien or Pahiyangala cave shown in the video above. According to Wikipedia, human remains found in the cave date back to "the same period as European Cro-Magnon man and other Late Pleistocene hominids in the Eastern Hemisphere."

The discovery of these stone tools provides yet more evidence that early humans migrated into the region much earlier than previously believed:

"...In the last decade, growing archaeological evidence has documented the use of tropical rain-forest resources by Homo sapiens in several locations in South Asia, South East Asia, and Melanesia between 45,000 and 36,000 years ago. This is much earlier than previously considered, especially given stereotypes that these environments were 'barriers' to human migration, with disease, dangerous animals, and limited resources all posing challenges."

Gobekli Tepe Built Along A "Grand Geometric Plan?"

"Hunter-gatherers might have built the world's oldest known temple on a precise geometric plan, according to new findings." Source: Live Science.

"The Neolithic site, known as Göbekli Tepe, is perched atop a limestone mountain ridge in southeastern Turkey. The site's T-shaped pillars, which are carved with mystic drawings of animals, abstract symbols and human hands [next video], are arranged in giant circles and ovals  — each structure is made up of two large central pillars surrounded by smaller inward-facing pillars."

In this study, researchers used a computer to analyze the layout of the site:

"They found that the two centermost pillars aligned exactly with the midpoint of the circular structures. What's more, when they drew an imaginary line connecting the centerpoints of three of the structures, they found that it made a nearly perfect equilateral triangle, or one with three equal-length sides.

"This suggests that these three structures were planned together in advance and built according to a 'geometric design,' [one researcher] said. Archaeologists believe that the hunter-gatherers must have excavated and moved the limestone rocks from a stone quarry nearby."

Video from 2011.

Comment: Gobekli Tepe is a very strange place. It dates back to the early Neolithic, before the rise of agriculture, the domestication of animals and presumably the first settled communities -- that seems to be well established -- but beyond that "all statements about the site must be considered preliminary, as less than 5% of the site has been excavated..." (Wikipedia) One way or another, the megalith isn't the kind of place you'd expect to find from that time period and it's still a mystery how it was constructed:

"The construction of Göbekli Tepe implies organization of an advanced order not hitherto associated with Paleolithic, PPNA, or PPNB societies ... Archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the heavy pillars from local quarries and move them 100–500 meters (330–1,640 ft) to the site. The pillars weigh 10–20 metric tons ... with one still in the quarry weighing 50 tons."

It's very hard to believe that primitive hunter-gatherers could have built a massive megalithic temple like this. If that's what happened, it implies that the hunter-gatherer bands in the area were either much larger than commonly believed [1] or that several of them joined together for this particular project, something that would be pretty remarkable considering their generally nomadic lifestyle.

[1] "Hunter-gatherer groups tended to range in size from an extended family to a larger band of no more than about 100 people." (National Geographic)

Small nomadic groups following a subsistence lifestyle would presumably have been spread out over a large area. You'd think they wouldn't have had that much contact with each other, but if they came together to construct Gobekli Tepe that means that they must have had enough contact to visualize and join together in a common purpose requiring a huge amount of time and labor. On the other hand, if one particular group of hunter-gatherers was large enough to build the temple (if it is a temple) on their own, does it make sense to call them "hunter-gatherers" anymore? Whatever the case, it's hard to understand how they could have acquired the knowledge of stonework and heavy transportation techniques that would have been required to quarry, move, raise and carve these gigantic stones, not to mention the knowledge required to design the site in the first place.

The improbability of all this has naturally led to speculation that Gobekli Tepe was by some lost civilization.

Normally I don't believe in the existence of lost, highly advanced (for the time) ancient civilizations, but Gobekli Tepe is so strange that it makes me wonder if something like what Graham Hancock is talking about in the above video might have actually happened.

Whatever the case, the existence of Gobekli Tepe proves without a doubt that something is wrong somewhere. Either the dating of the site is incorrect or the people who built it were a lot more advanced than we think, in which case our current picture of the early Neolithic, at least in this part of the world, is inaccurate. This one site could revolutionize our whole understanding of human development:

"Göbekli Tepe is regarded by some as an archaeological discovery of great importance since it could profoundly change the understanding of a crucial stage in the development of human society. Ian Hodder of Stanford University said, 'Göbekli Tepe changes everything'. If indeed the site was built by hunter-gatherers as some researchers believe then it would mean that the ability to erect monumental complexes was within the capacities of these sorts of groups, which would overturn previous assumptions. Some researchers believe that the construction of Göbekli Tepe may have contributed to the later development of urban civilization, or, as excavator Klaus Schmidt put it, 'First came the temple, then the city.'"

Ancient Marijuana High In THC

"The archaeological evidence for ritualized consumption of cannabis is limited and contentious. Here, we present some of the earliest directly dated and scientifically verified evidence for ritual cannabis smoking. This phytochemical analysis indicates that cannabis plants were burned in wooden braziers during mortuary ceremonies at the Jirzankal Cemetery (ca. 500 BCE) in the eastern Pamirs region. This suggests cannabis was smoked as part of ritual and/or religious activities in western China by at least 2500 years ago and that the cannabis plants produced high levels of psychoactive compounds." Source: Science Magazine (2019).

Video from 2019.

Marijuana Used As Incense In Burial Rituals In Western China 2500 Years Ago (2019) (Updated)

Video from June 2019.

"A chemical residue study of incense burners from ancient burials at high elevations in western China has revealed psychoactive cannabinoids. The finding provides some of the earliest evidence for the use of cannabis for its psychoactive compounds. " Source: Science Daily (June 2019).

"...The [2500-year-old] THC-containing residues were extracted from burners from a cemetery known as Jirzankal in the remote Pamir Mountains.

Note: "The 2,500-year-old Jirzankal Cemetery lies at nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 meters), in present day Xinjiang Uyghyr Autonomous Region, a large province in northwest China. Excavated tombs revealed mummies buried with wood containers, called braziers, used for containing hot coals. Researchers found that the braziers contained cannabis residue." Source: Glacier Hub (July 2019).

"...While modern cannabis is used primarily as a recreational drug or for medical applications, cannabis may have been used rather differently in the past. The evidence from Jirzankal suggests that people were burning cannabis at rituals commemorating the dead. They buried their kin in tombs over which they created circular mounds, stone rings and striped patterns using black and white stones." (Science Daily)

Also see: Chinese scientists say people smoked cannabis 2500 years ago (Chinese-language video. Good pictures of incense burners).

Video from 2017.

This isn't the first time evidence like this has been found in Asia. According to Science News (June 2019), "Cannabis remains of comparable age have been found in several other Central Asian tombs, including a site in Russia’s Altai Mountains located about 3,000 kilometers northwest of the Pamir Mountains. But the discoveries at Jirzankal Cemetery offer an unprecedented look at how cannabis was initially used as a mind-altering substance, the researchers say."

The Isle Of The Dragon's Blood Trees

"Socotra Archipelago, in the northwest Indian Ocean near the Gulf of Aden, is 250 km long and comprises four islands and two rocky islets which appear as a prolongation of the Horn of Africa. The site is of universal importance because of its biodiversity with rich and distinct flora and fauna..." Source: UNESCO.

Socotra was called Dioskouridou ('of the Dioscurides') or Dioscorida in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a first century AD shipping manual. According to the author of the Periplus, "Dioscorida ... is very large but desert and marshy, having rivers in it and crocodiles and many snakes and great lizards, of which the flesh is eaten and the fat melted and used instead of olive oil." Source: Fordham University Internet History Sourcebooks (paragraph 30).

Note: I'm not sure about this, but I think the Erythraean Sea is the old name for the Red Sea and at least part (?) of the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean. A map of the Erythraean Sea drawn in 169 BC by the Greek historian and geographer Agatharchides of Cnidus, can be found here. Socotra (lower right at the bottom of the map) was ideally located to be a jumping-off point for voyages to India.

Socotra has been called "the world's strangest place" with good reason. The plants on Socotra are truly bizarre, as can be seen in these pictures. The island's spectacular and alien landscape looks like something out of a science-fiction movie.

The ancient history of Socotra is obscure, but its inhabitants traded spices and the sap of their Dragon's Blood trees to Egypt and Rome. Its location near the mouth of the Red Sea made it an important stopover for cargo ships involved in the thriving maritime trade with the far east.

"The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all tapped the treasures of Socotra’s natural world: aromatic resins such as frankincense, medicinal aloe extract, and the dark red sap of the dragon’s blood tree, used for healing and as an artist’s color. Adventurers came to harvest the island’s wealth, despite stories that it was guarded by giant snakes living in its caves. The Queen of Sheba, Alexander the Great, and Marco Polo were among those who coveted Socotra’s riches." Source: National Geographic.

"The value of incense and dragon’s blood peaked during the time of the Roman Empire. Afterward, the island served mostly as a way station for traders, passing centuries in relative cultural isolation. Socotra’s residents lived generation after generation as their ancestors had: the mountain Bedouin minding their goats, the coastal residents fishing, and everyone harvesting dates. Island history was passed down through poetry, recited in the Socotri language."

According to Socotra Eco-Tours, Aristotle, Alexander the Great's tutor, selected a group of colonists to settle on Socotra. The idea was to harvest its myrhh, valued for its medicinal properties, and turn the island into a base for Alexander's invasion of India. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (1st cent BC) mentions Socotra as a major source of myrhh, labdanum (a kind of resin) and various aromatic plants. The island was an important way station where "[s]ailors and tradesmen not only bought precious resins and medical herbs...which they later on sold at markets in the Roman empire or the Indian kingdoms, but also gained strength and supplies necessary for their long journeys to the African coast, Madagascar or to Persia." Inscriptions in various languages have been found inside Hoq cave on the island. (See video below)

Considering the island's strategic location and valuable resources, I imagine it was fought over repeatedly by various empires in the ancient world. Most of this history, unfortunately, has been lost forever. 

Note: "In 1834, the East India Company, in the expectation that the Mahra sultan of Qishn and Socotra, who resided at Qishn on the mainland [southern coast of modern Yemen], would accept an offer to sell the island, stationed a garrison on Socotra. Faced with the unexpected firm refusal of the sultan to sell, however, as well as the lack of good anchorages for a coaling station to be used by the new steamship line being put into service on the Suez-Bombay route, the British left in 1835." (Wikipedia)

Sacred Prostitution In The Near East & Israel

"In the Ancient Near East, temple women, of whom one class was called qadištu, probably served as sacred prostitutes. Sometimes dedicated by their fathers to the deity, they had special statutes, and provisions were made for them by law (Code of Hammurapi). Customs connected with them are likely to underlie Herodotus' lurid and misleading statement that in Babylon every woman was to serve once as a sacred prostitute before getting married, thus sacrificing her virginity to the goddess Mylitta (Ishtar) ... In Israel the sacred prostitutes were condemned for their connection with idolatry. Deuteronomy 23:18–19 forbids Israelites, men and women alike, to become sacred prostitutes, and states that their wages must not be used for paying vows." Source: Jewish Virtual Library.

Astarte is the Greek name of the very ancient Mesopotamian goddess, Ishtar. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), Ishtar was the "goddess of love and war, variously described as [the] daughter of Sin (moon god) or of Anu (sky god) with various attributes according to different city traditions." All of Ishtar's temples, according to the OCD, were probably "centers for cult prostitution of various kinds."

Some modern scholars believe that sacred prostitution, as an institution, never actually existed, but it seems like it must have occurred in one form or another or it wouldn't have been mentioned in all the various sources.  If it did exist, however, it probably wasn't as widespread as previously believed. Herodotus' account, for instance, must be an exaggeration. It's hard to believe that every woman in Babylon had to serve once as a temple prostitute before getting married. If that was true, then the temples would have been swarming with them.

According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), "sacred prostitution is a strictly modern, not ancient, term and misleading in that it transfers to the institution, or rather a variety of institutions, an adjective [sacred] which in ancient sources denotes only the status of the personnel involved (sometimes also their earnings, which likewise became sacred on dedication.)." I've read this two or three times now and I'm still not sure what it means. If a prostitute is considered sacred and her earnings are dedicated to a god, then isn't she a "sacred prostitute" by definition? The term may be modern, but how is it misleading?

Sacred prostitution is apparently still practiced in parts of India.

Report from 1998.

5300-Year-Old City Ruins Discovered In China

"Archaeologists recently unveiled newly discovered city ruins in Central China, which reveal an ancient state dating back 5,300 years." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"The Zhengzhou municipal institute of cultural relics and archaeology announced on Thursday in the capital city of Henan province that the Shuanghuaishu site in Gongyi, on the outskirts of Zhengzhou, was the site of a 'huge settlement'. It was the highest-level residential complex ever found of its time along the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River.

"The ruins, with an area of 1.17 million square meters, lie two kilometers south of the Yellow River at Shuanghuaishu in the township of Heluo, Gongyi city. The ruins are one of the largest tribal clusters of the middle and late phases of Yangshao Culture, emerging around 7,000 years ago during the Neolithic Age."

Two "Warrior Women" From Ancient Mongolia May Have Helped Inspire The Ballad Of Mulan

"Archaeologists in Mongolia have found the remains of two ancient women warriors [? - see below], whose skeletal remains indicate that they were well practiced in archery and horseback riding." Source: Live Science.

"These two women lived during the Xianbei period (A.D. 147 to 552), a period of political fragmentation and unrest that gave rise to the Ballad of Mulan, the researchers said."

This is an interesting (though highly speculative) study despite the typical woke BS about "gender equality" and "bad-ass" women fighters, etc. that always seems to creep into stories like this.

Hua Mulan is a completely legendary / fictional figure, but it's possible that she was partly inspired by real-life female warriors of the time. Unfortunately for this theory, the researchers themselves admit that there's no hard evidence that these "ancient women warriors" were actually warriors:

"Of the two warrior women, one was older than 50 and the other was about 20 years old. It's possible they practiced archery and rode horses because these skills were needed during the political instability that following the collapse of the Han Dynasty in China in A.D. 220 ...

"Neither woman had signs of war trauma. This could be because both women were found in elite graves, and elite people may not have fought in battles ..."

Typically, that caveat is buried in the last paragraph of the article.