> a massive arch or gateway of huge stone blocks which appeared to fit together perfectly, right angled joins, carvings and what appeared to be stairways, paved streets and crossroads
Where are the photos of this marvelous arch, the carvings and paved streets? All we've ever seen are photos and scale models of the "stairways" rock formation. If the idea that these are manmade is as popular as the article suggests, why leave out the best evidence?
The scale model of the formation makes me feel confident that it's a natural formation. It just doesn't look like something people would design, nor even a quarry that makes any logical sense.
This article really works to present the manmade view as dominate, which doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Seems like a fun site to read and imagine though.
I've dived at the Yonaguni Monument, and one thing that's usually not clear from breathless hype like this article is that the site is both quite deep (mostly 10-30m underwater), a fair distance from the shore (hundreds of meters, IIRC), and that said shore consists largely of steep cliffs.
I've yet to hear even the most rabid "lost continent of Mu!!!1!1" enthusiast propose any sort of plausible mechanism to explain how a manmade monument could somehow have moved hundreds of meters diagonally from above sea level into the bottom of the ocean without getting completely destroyed in the process.
It wouldn't have to. 10k years ago, the sea level was way lower. At the end of the ice age, the sea rose by about 100m. The Dover strait was dry land during the ice age. So if those places were built long enough ago, they would have been over the sea level.
Note that the only proponent of the man-made theory mentioned is Graham Hancock, a somewhat infamous Atlantis-chasing pseudoscientist and overall purveyor of extremely flimsy "ancient civilization" theories.
That doesn't mean that there aren't also legitimate archeologists who might be excited about these prospects, but the lack of their mention is...suspicious.
To me it's quite telling that even John Anthony West is among those who say this structure is natural. J. A. West was famous for his theory about Sphinx showing signs of water erosion and hence possibly being 12,000 years old.
Where are the photos of this marvelous arch, the carvings and paved streets? All we've ever seen are photos and scale models of the "stairways" rock formation. If the idea that these are manmade is as popular as the article suggests, why leave out the best evidence?