Part 2 of my what the hell happened in series.

See Part 1, what the hell happened in Malta? here

The history of Japan is based on three texts.

The Kojiki, the oldest text in Japanese history, The Nihon Shoki, the second oldest text and the Man'yoshu

Before that there were barely any written records or statements.

To start this off lets talk about the Japanese peoples.

In the beginning, there was an unknown, unmentioned, group of peoples spread all over Japan whose name we don't know. The Mainstream Scientific Community, henceforth MSSC, has labelled these people the "Jomon.".

The Jomon were a fairly unadvanced peoples, simply assumed to be hunter-gatherers who lived in periods going back 12,000 years to 8000 years. One very interesting thing about them is their capacity for sudden technological advancements. In a few short periods, they developed quite quickly, leading many schoars to suggest a transfer of technology was in occurance.

The Jomon posses the claim to the earliest known pieces of pottery on Earth, some dating from 12,000 years and a few extraordinary pieces dating from as far back as 16,500 years from the Odamayamaoto no.1 Iseki site. The Jomon are famous in paleo-anthropological societies for using a technique known as "cording"in their pottery

No scholar takes into account the peculiar coincidence in dates between the earliest Jomon pottery about 16,500 years ago and the end of the LGM about 17,000 years ago. Followed by thousands of years of global sea level rises.

There exist pottery representations of the human form dating back 12,000 years. These earliest figures are referred to in the generic term “DOGU” There are some screaming human faced-dogu masks. Others are anthropomorphic, including a cat-human hybrid, exaggerated female figures with unnaturally long faces, including the infamous “ venus of Jomon “

Some time around 3000-1000-800 BC, another unknown group of people, this time the MSSC has referred to them as the "Yayoi" emigrated to Japan from Korea, China and according to some, Siberia.

So then what happened to the Jomon? The Jomon were not wiped out as there is no evidence of military conflict. Evidence suggests something more like effortless merging and mixing of peoples into the new synthesis.

A question arose, how did these primitive people discovered pottery? Professor Sahara Makoto DG of the National Museum of Japanese history believe that there "must have been some influence”. He drew a map of Siberia, Japan, and China and claims that there are still undiscovered ruins in both. However, archaeologist Douglas Kenrick points out that when the earliest pottery was being made, the sea levels rising had created a natural barrier between Japan and the mainland, therefore, unless the people who transferred this technological innovation to them knew the ways of sea-faring, this transfer is highly unlikely.

But is it really?

There is clear, concise evidence that the Jomon themselves knew how the traverse the waves. Evidence, I will talk about later.

But first, on the society of the Jomon.

They left behind quite a few markers of their existence. Such as that of :

• Sannai Maruyama, estimated at 4500 bc.

• In Akita Prefecture, there is an 80-meter mound the local refers to as " Mount Kuromata. The locals claimed that "it is a pyramid, and the ancients built it". Geologists were sceptical until a multi-disciplinary team from the Japan-Pacific rim Studies Association let by Prof. Takashi Kato produced detailed radar maps showing the interior of the mound. On top of the Pyramid, there is the Motomiya shrine, a shrine named after a physician who served Sadato Abe of 1019-1062 AD, so they dated it to that period, however, Shinto shrines are completely rebuilt according to a pre-existing patter every 20 years on sites that are in most cases have been sacred ever since records began. A member of the archaeological team mentioned above, Masachika Tsuji showed that 4 shinto shrines positioned around the base of Kuromata Yama lie in direct lines pointing North, south east and west from the summit and incorporate solstitial alignments datable through the accepted formula for changes in the obliquity of the ecliptic to 4000 years ago.

• The Uenohara site is a much older Jomon site on the Kyushu Islands. Kuzanori Aozaki states that it has been continuously inhabited for a period of 2000 years, from 9500-7500BC. More than 100 people lived here. It was a permanent settlement.

• The Ofune C Iseki site is incredibly important given the context of what we're talking about here. Hokkaido cultural heritage centre's chief archaeologist Chiharu Abe is convinced that the Jomon were morethan simple hunter-gatherers but that they were permanent settlers even farming had developed. “ They imported seeds from Honshu and then cultivated them here . Another intriguing discovery is that as far back as 8000 years ago, the Jomon were cultivating a non-indigenous plant, the bottle guard, which paleo-biological studies suggest must have been imported from Africa.. Imagine that. How were the Jomon to have obtained seeds from a plant no indigenous to their land?

• IThe Itazuke Fukuoka site](https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/DocumentaPraehistorica/article/download/34.1/1809/) is also incredibly important site because it was long assumed that Japan learned rice cultivation from the Yayoi, but evidence has been found that the Jomon themselves cultivated rice as well, from around 3200 years ago at Itazuke on the Island of Kyushu. Sahara Makoto DG of the national museum of Japanese History, even claims that evidence has been found that suggests that the Jomon had been cultivating rice as far back as 12,000 years ago. The MSSC try to explain these findings away in ridiculous manners. Like suggesting that rice grains found in pottery had gone in because of wind from China or on the feet of grasshoppers.

• At Sakuramachi near Oyabe City in western honshu, archaeologists have recently excavated examples of 4000 year old Jomon carpenter using complex joints, dovetails and corners of a type not previously thought to have been introduced to Japans before 700 ad.

• Iwakura, or big stones which persist in Japan even today are auspiciously shaped and positioned. Thought of as junctures between heaven and earth, There are famous ones in the district of Ena, in Honshu. There is a question of whether they were man made or man arranged or just random piles of rock. There is also a few structures undoubtedly the work of humans, incuding a bizarre chain of grey granite tetrahedrons up to a metre high that run in a straight line. And another man made Iwakura at Ena which was dated to the Jomon period by Ryuzo Torii professor of Archaeology at Imperial university of Tokyo, it consists of a parallel pair of Upright granite megaliths 1.6 metres high standing isolated in a forest on the slopes of Mount Nabeyama in the Ena basin. The megaliths have a gap of a few centimetres between them that is aligned with a spectacular effect on the summer solstice sunrise. A straight-line joining the tops of the two megaliths and extended northwards culminates at the sacred Kasegi mountain where numerous Jomon artefacts have been unearthed. An archaic ceremony of unknown origin that was conducted there until recent times includes a procession of a huge model serpent followed by villagers praying to some fake thing.

• Mount Haku, or White Mountain is a mountain in Western Honshu which is a focus of pilgrimage today, the roots of its sanctity appear ancient. It is at any rate a legitimate interpretation of recent archaeological evidence from the Jomon site of Chichamori Iseki near Kanazawa. There are two spacious wood-henges gets built by the Jomon at Chichamori-Iseki estimated at 3600 years old. The upright consist of a plot trunks of twelve huge chestnut trees arranged in a circle. Each one has a cermeonial entrance aligned exactly on Hakuzan.

• Komakino Site. It has several small circles arranged concentrically with smaller ovals touching the edges like links of a chain. It is thought to be 4500 years old. When it was first found, it was supposed to be buried along with other sites to make room for development but a decision was made to preserve theminstead. On the other hand, seven small stone circles had been uncovered by archaeologists at Jomon settlements at Sannai-Muryama. They had been measured, catalogued and buried again

• From Aomori further north to the island of Hokkaido, within half an hour’s drive of the port of Otaru, are three more circles Two of them, Nishizaki-Yama and Jichin-Yama are small, the third, Oshoro, is the largest intact circle in Japan with stones in the half tonne range, Oshoro is arranged in concentric circles.

• Far away in from Oshoro in Nara on the Island of Honshu, there is a mountain called Miwa Yama. Near the base at the side of the mountain path was a shrine consisting of megaliths, each weighing a tonne or more and some showing signs of having been quarried or cut. Surrounding Mount Miwa is the district of Asuka-a treasure of houses of tombs and ruins here there are hundreds of keyhole shaped mounds ,now as Kofun. The name Kofun is also applied to the culture that built them, the immediate successors of the Yayoi. The mounds are thought to have served as the tombs of the earliest members of Japan’s imperial family - roughly from the fourth to the eight centuries and of the nobility of that period. It is not permitted to exhume them so we can’t confirm. It is clear that all Kofun conceal an inner megalithic chamber and passageway oriented usually south. One of these is Ishibutai, thought to date to the seventh century and can be visited today because erosion long ago exposed and isolated its megalithic core. Nearby are dozens of megalithic ruins all of which are thought to date to the same period of 1400 years ago. one of these is Kameishi Iwa, a large rock carved into the shape of a turtle. Another is Sakafune-Ishi a granite slab which has been cut with remarkable precision with an undetermined purpose. A third example is the rock hewn tomb known locally as the Onino-Sechin, the devil’s toilet. And Onino-Manaita, the devil’s chopping board. The two were separated in an earthquake. But the most strikingly enigmatic of the Asuka megaliths is the masuda no Iwafune the boat stone which juts out from a densely wooded hillside. Weighing 1000 tonnes and ten meters long, 8 wide and 4 high. It appears rough and unfinished Its purpose remains a mystery. The fact that many look at it and perceiev it as a boat implies that the Jomon knew what a boat was. Of course that last point is all speculation.

  But I mentioned that the Jomon were mostly coastal people. Then surely there should be monument sof their existence under the sea.

There are.

• The Kerama stone circles

• The Yonaguni monuments and their nearby structures. I'll talk about these later

Remember When I mentioned that the Jomon had clearly traversed the waves?

To escape various floods, the Jomon may have travelled westward towards America. According to the findings of an international team of researchers led by C Loring Brace of the university of Michigan’s museum of anthropology, migrants entering North America across the Bering land bridge at the end of the ice age were “ people closely resembling the pre-historic Jomon of Japan “

In Valdivia Ecuador, pottery was found with the same coring pattern that the Jomon were famous for in deposits more than 5000 years old, Meggers et al made quite a convincing argument for this conection.

Jomon pottery has also turned up in the south pacific, in Fiji for example and at Vanuatu. According to professor “ Yoshihiko Shinto of the Bishop Museum of Hawaii: “ it is reasonable to conclude that the Jomon travelled very widely in the Pacific area. Of course they could have only done so by sea “.

One route of migration tat seems to have been open to them is the “black current: of the Cape Ashizuri-northwards-out past Kuryl and Aleutian island to North California and south along the pacific coast to central america.

Cape Ashizuri is surrounded by an extraordinarily dense forest, so muc hso that many megaliths have been found in side the forest, photographed then lost forever once again.

Archaeologists admit that areas that were flooded at the end of the ice age were almost certainly inhabited by the Jomon because the Jomon were coastal people. It is entirely possible that the rise on sea levels could have concealed parts of their society. Japan was almost one single Island before the flood of the caused by the Younger Dryas.

Now on to Yonaguni. The most compelling piece of evidence for an advanced ancient civilsation that roamed Japan and had sea-faring ways. As well as contact with other groups. Evidence for this part will come after.

Yonaguni monuments are extremely controversial, however, I am of the same opinion as that of Professor Masaaki Kimura, the professor of Marine Geology at the university of the Ryukus in Okinawa. He and his students have completed hundreds of dives around the main terrace monument at Yonaguni, as part of a long term project in which they have thoroughly measured and mapped it, produced a three dimensional model, taken samples of ancient algae encrusted on its walls for carbon dating, and sampled the stone of the structure itself. Professor Kimura's unequivocal conclusion, based on scientific evidence, is that the monument is man-made and that it was hewn out of bedrock when it still stood above sea-level, perhaps as much as 10,000 years ago. His evidence is the following:

1 - Traces of marks that show that human beings worked the stone.

1. There are holes made by wedge like tools called Kusabi in many locations.

2. Around the outside of the loop road there is a row of neatly stacked rocks as a stone wall, each rock about twice the size of a person in a straight line.

3. There are traces carved along the roadway that humans conducted some form of repairs.

4. The structure is continuous from under the water to land and evidence of the use of fire is present.

5. Stone tools are among the artefacts found underwater and on land. stone tablets with carving that appears to be letter or symbols such as what we know at the Plus mark + and a V mark were retrieved from under water.

6. From the waters near by, stone tools have been retrieved.

7. Two are for known purposes that we can recognize, the majority are not.

8. At the bottom of the sea, a relief carving of an animal figure was discovered on a huge stone.

9. On the higher surfaces of the structure there are several areas which slope quite steeply down towards the south, deep trenches appear on the northern elevations that could not have been formed by any known natural process.

10. A series of steps rises at regular intervals up the south face of the monument from the pathway at its base, 27 metres underwater, towards its summit less than 6 metres below the waves.

11. A similar stairway is found on the monuments northern face.

12. Blocks that must necessarily have been removed whether by natural or human agency in order to form the monument’s impressive terraces are not found lying in places where they would have fallen if only gravity and natural forces were operating; instead they seem to have been artificially cleared away to one side and in some areas are absent from the site entirely.

13. The effects of the unnatural and selective clean-up operation are particularly evident on the rock cut pathway that winds around the western and southern faces of the base of the monument.

14. It passes directly beneath the main terraces yet is completely clear of the mass of rubble that would have had to be removed in order for the terraces to form at all.

At a depth of 12 metres on the main monument at Iseki point approximately 150 metres east of the terraces, lies a formation that some could recognise as a rock hewn sea-turtle. A second, badly damaged when Yonaguni was struck by an unusually sever series of typhoons on august and september 2000 is found half a km due east of the terraces in about 15 metres of water. Consisting of a one-tonne boulder mounted on a 10 centimetre high flat platform at the apex of an enormous rocky slab almost 3 metes high, it has all the characteristics of a classic Iwakura shrine, part man-made, part natural. if this shrine were to be moved to the slopes of Mount Miwa it would blend in seamlessly with what is already there. Two other sites are located within half a km of Iseki point, one is the extraordinary stadium, a vast amphitheatre surrounding a stone plain at a depth of 30 metres. The other is a second area of very large steps - on similar scale and of a similar appearance to those of the main terrace at Iseki point, but much further out to sea.