The Atlantis Encyclopedia

300 The Atlantis Encyclopedia

man-made stone structure not unlike the ruins of prehistoric citadels found on

Okinawa. The ruin, with a base 100 feet beneath the surface, may have been built

during an early phase of Japan’s Jomon culture, circa 10,000 B.C., when the site

was last above the surface of the ocean. Because evidence of seismic activity in the

area is insufficient, sea-level rise occasioned by the close of the last Ice Age appears

to be the only credible geologic mechanism for its inundation.

Yonaguni’s terraced feature, approximately 750 feet long and 75 feet high,

appears to have been terra-formed from the native rock into a ceremonial center,

judging from somewhat similar but much smaller Jomon building style elements

on the Japanese mainland, most notably at Masada-no Iwafune, Cape Ashizuri,

and Mount Nabeyama in Gifu Prefecture. The Yonaguni structure is not alone,

but part of a chain of known underwater ruins stretching for hundreds of miles on

the seafloor in an arc from off nearby Taiwan to Okinawa. Doubtless, more are

yet to be found. Some investigators conclude this collection of sunken monuments

is nothing less than the lost kingdom of Mu.

(See Horaizan, Nirai-Kanai, Mu)

Ys

Also known as Ker-is, the story of Ys is a pre-Celtic myth with a Christian gloss

through which Celtic details appear, famous throughout Brittany, and even the

subject of an evocative tone-poem for piano, Le Cathedrale Egoulte (“The Engulfed

Cathedral”), by Claude Debussy, which was later scored for full orchestra by

Leopold Stokowski. Eduard Lalo actually turned the legend into a grand opera,

La Roi d’Ys—“The King of Ys.”

Ys was an island kingdom in the North Atlantic ruled by Gradlon Meur; Meur

is Celtic for “great.” His capital was an ingenious arrangement of interconnected

Part of the underwater monument near Yonaguni.