Swimming among sharks along the street of a drowned city? Some people have strange ways of enjoying themselves! STRANGE ISLAND Have you heard of Pohnpei Island? It lies about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) north east of Papua New Guinea. On this small volcanic island sits Nan Modal, a mysterious dead city covering 11 square miles (28 square kilometres). It is made up of immense blocks, some of them 25 tons in weight. Some of them were hauled up to 60 feet as high as a 6-story building). But how? This was done either with advanced technology or with a population of tens of thousands, all of whom would have to be housed and fed. Today, there is just not enough land there for so many people. Its structures continue off the land into the sea and eventually disappear in the depths of the Pacific. In fact, there is evidence of yet another large city nearby, drowned in the sea. Japanese pearl divers claim to have seen buildings, streets and sunken columns encrusted with coral in the deep waters. In recent years, the Universities of Ohio and Oregon and the Pacific Studies Institute (Honolulu) have undertaken expeditions. Giant stone columns were discovered submerged, as well as a system of tunnels through the coral reef. Swimming along the underwater streets among sharks, author and adventurer David Childers found columns up to four stories high in 60 to 100 feet of water. RUINS 200 FEET UNDER WATER There was evidence of ruins descending to depths of over 200 feet. His team discovered underwater inscriptions – “geometric designs such as crosses and rectangles.” Aerial photographs reveal straight lines running hundreds of metres and turning at right angles in the coral reef, forming what appear to be city blocks encrusted with coral. Divers have been able to walk on the bottom on well-preserved streets, which are overgrown with coral and mussels. They report carved stone tablets hung on the remains of clearly recognisable houses. UNDERWATER COFFINS There are also pillars and stone vaults. Japanese pearl divers with modern equipment reported finding watertight platinum coffins. They brought up bits of platinum day after day, as well as pearls and bars of silver. DEGENERATION The stones for ancient Nan Madol were transported by sea. But when this island was discovered in modern times, natives were not known to have had ocean-going canoes. Something else. Pottery shards have been found in the ruins of the old city. But pottery was not used by the natives at the time of European discovery. Moreover, the natives now living in grass huts could no longer build structures out of rocks weighing 20 to 50 tons. Here is evidence of cultural regression. John MacMillan Brown of the University of New Zealand collected evidence on the island of Loeai in Western Micronesia of a former written language. This had since vanished. More evidence of cultural regression. (Brown, The Riddle of the Pacific. Auckland, 1924) In 1773, Captain James Cook visited Easter Island. He wrote compassionately about the people, who were as poor as the arid earth on which they lived. Expressing astonishment, he contrasted this with the superior civilisation that had made the enormous statues. Someone long ago had fashioned megalithic stone blocks of incredible perfection (as witnessed at Vinapu). But the natives now lived in reed huts. ROADS DISAPPEAR INTO THE OCEAN In the same Micronesian group as Pohnpei, the small island of Palau has its “sunken city”, off the northern coast. And west of Okinawa, off the islands of Aguni, Kerama and Yonaguni, Japanese divers in 1995 discovered stone carved pyramids and terraces that go down to depths of 80 feet or more. On low, barren and uninhabited Malden Island in Kiribati are pyramids, platforms and megaliths, as well as roads that disappear into the ocean. On this remote island, the remnants of 40 stone \ temples show off the same architecture as on Pohnpei, 3,400 miles away. The Marquesas Islands, like Easter Island, are full of gigantic platforms. Some of the smooth-sided, oblong shaped stones are up to 15 feet long and 5 to 6 feet thick… single stones! Some of the platforms are so big that whole villages once stood on them, with each individual house likewise constructed of massive stones. (Robert Suggs, The Hidden Worlds of Polynesia. NYC.: Harcourt Brace, 1962) “LAND THAT IS GONE” Easter Island legends recall that “King Hout-Matua… saw that the land was slowly sinking in the sea.” (Francis Maziere, Mysteries of Easter Island. NYC.: W.W. Norton, 1968) Easter Island was once much larger. And a tradition has it that Motu Motiro Hiva, an islet about 100 miles away, was once part of it. The land “slowly sinking” suggests that the sea level was slowly rising. Evidence of rising sea is seen in drowned roads. For example, divers have followed a road that leads off Easter island into the ocean. A former Pacific empire? The Easter Islanders claimed that Hiva was the name of the original Pacific continent. “Hiva is a land that is gone. Now it is below the Pacific Ocean.” (David Hatcher Childress, Lost Cities of Ancient Lumeria and the Pacific. Stelle, Ill.: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1988, p.293) The evidence does suggest that: 1. there was either a large continent, or groups of small “continents” throughout the Pacific, before the sea level slowly rose to drown it. 2. there was once an extremely sophisticated nation which covered the Pacific. Tongatapu is thought to have been its capital. It sent huge ships to trade with other nations – and built gigantic pyramids, monuments and roads. Colleges were operated for instruction in astronomy, climatology, navigation and theological history. And there are clues that this great trading empire spanned the entire Pacific from India and China to the great civilisations of Peru and Mexico. (David Hatcher Childress, Ancient Tonga and the Lost City of Mu’a. Stelle, Ill.: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1996) For several hundred years the people lived an idyllic existence, and then the Polynesian culture fell into decline. On most islands of Polynesia and Micronesia are remains of cities, temples, harbours and statues, whose size and elaborate architecture indicate a civilisation incomparably more advanced than exists there today. PACIFIC SEA LEVEL RISE We noted that according to some oceanographers and geologists, the ocean level may have been as much as 500 feet lower than today. This would have allowed a large section of the Pacific to be above water. New Zealand’s continental shelf shows evidence that it was once dry land with forests and rivers. And on the opposite side of the Pacific, places like the Cobb Seamount would have been habitable. In fact, students from the University of Washington, have made this location a special project. The Cobb Seamount is a flat-topped mountain 120 feet below the surface of the ocean, just off-shore from Washington state. Dives to the “drowned city” on its summit have produced pottery and evidence of a culture that mummified animals. I am told that several years ago, some divers found a number of buildings off the west coast of Vancouver Island, submerged in about 80 feet of water, close to the town of Uculet. Oh, there’s so much more,
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 22:02:01 +0000
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