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Pyramids in Japan
These are burial tombs, dating to the Kofun period (circa 300
710 AD). I onlymention them here because of their immense size and
multitude, Japan has over
10,000 mound tombs. The largest is the Daisen Kofun, above,
which has thecommon kofun keyhole shape, and is 35 metres high and
an incredible 486 metres
in length. Situated in the city of Sakai, 92 other kofun can be
found within six
square miles.
In Japan one can also find an ancient stone pyramid. It is a
beautifully shaped
monolith, about six and a half feet tall and twelve feet at the
base, practically lost in
the thick forest growth on the slope of a hill near the town of
Ena, in central Honsu,
largest of the Japanese islands. Cut from a single, massive
block of gray granite, theobject was a pyramidian, a smaller
version of the Great Pyramid and its full-sizecousins.
This trignon, as they call it, might have passed for the missing
capstone of itsgigantic counterpart in Giza. People leave flowers
at the base of the pyramid. Their
veneration is more in keeping with Shinto practices, which
predate Buddhism in
Japan by unknown centuries. There are few folk lores about the
pyramid. The only
mythic element still current concerns a white serpent that
dwells either within orunderneath the trignon. It is a beneficent
creature, which local people worship by
laying out plates of small eggs for the snake to consume.
Somehow, this practice isrelated to human and agricultural
fertility.
But who cut the straight angles of the Japanese pyramid, when
and for whatpurposes are utterly unknown. Nor is it the only such
example. Perhaps 100 meters
further up the same hill another trignon of approximately the
same dimensions
stands in an apparent alignment whose suspected celestial
orientation has not yet
been determined. At least one more pyramidian lies toward the
north. Together, the
monolithic trio forms a triangular relationship, the
significance of which continues
to escape investigators.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofunhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofun
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Surprisingly, the immediate area features many other puzzling
remnants of a
culture or cultures which flourished around Ena long before the
advent of recordedhistory. The area is uncommonly rich in
petroglyphs. One site is extraordinary for
the enormous, flat slab of stone, some 8 by 15 feet across its
smooth surface.
Reverently incorporated into the forecourt of a private home by
a man sympatheticto archaeological values, it is incised with
dozens of human and geometric figures,
together with examples of a linear script that bears a striking
resemblance to Ogam.
The petroglyph stone lies in a valley surrounded by hundreds of
terraced farmswhere rice is cultivated in a manner preserved over
the course of unguessed
generations. So much so, they have been honored by the
government as "nationaltreasures." But anyone who has visited the
Inka cities of Ollantaytambo or Machu
Picchu in the Peruvian Andes would be struck by their similarity
to the Ena
agricultural terraces.
On the other side of the valley from the trignons, we climbed to
another, steeper
hill densely covered with pines. Eventually, the path leading
through dark shadows
opened into a sunlit clearing, at the center of which waited two
upright, stone slabs.Some seven feet tall and two feet thick, they
were practically mirror images of each
other and separated by a one-inch gap.
After patient observation, a local resident, Mr. Suzuki, proved
that the stones were
precisely oriented to sunrise of the winter solstice. At dawn of
the shortest day ofthe year he was thrilled to phtotograph the
rising sun shoot its first rays through the
thin gap between the twin megaliths--and only on the morning of
that day. Later, hefound a faint image apparently representing the
sun incised on the flanks of one of
the stones, strongly suggesting the astronomical intentions of
its prehistoric builder.
Like the trignons, the solar marker's age and cultural identity
are unknown. Yet, its
similarity to more famous megalithic structures in Western
Europe is uncanny. InAncient Greece, as well as pre-columbian Ohio
(Locust Grove's Great Serpent
Mound), the icon of a snake disgorging an egg from its mouth
recalls surviving folktraditions of the trignon's white serpent and
its ritual offering of eggs by resident
farmers.
What are we to make of Ena's rice terraces? Throughout the
world, the only other
comparable examples (save those in Peru) may be found in the
Philippines, north of
Manila, at Bonaue, which date back 2,000 years. The three widely
separated
locations imply a line of relationship defying the formidable
oceanic distancesbetween them: Peru, the Philippines, Japan.
