Underworld Project

In November 1998 Graham and Santha began the immense series of worldwide journeys and scuba-diving adventures that will lie at the heart of their new book - working title Underworld - scheduled for publication in October 2001.

Underworld leaves the mythological and cultural interpretations of Heaven's Mirror behind and focuses on a search for vanished traces of the lost civilisation, using the latest in scientific and archaeological theory and methods. As reported in Heaven's Mirror, Graham has for some years been involved in the exploration of enigmatic underwater structures off the coast of Yonaguni and other islands in Japan's Okinawa island chain. These mysterious monuments could be the legacy of a previously unknown Pacific culture, flourishing around 8000 BC. What more, Graham wonders, may lie under the oceans, or in other places about the globe which now lie beneath desert or ice due to cataclysmic climate changes over the last few millennia?

The very latest scientific theories postulate that the great Flood of mythology was in fact a real catastrophe - many, many times more violent and destructive than previously imagined. All around the globe underwater archaeologists are unearthing sites of previous human occupation, once on dry land, but now miles out to sea. In the Americas sites are being found that completely shatter our current understanding of when the New World was first inhabited - putting the date back not by tens of years, but by tens of thousands! In Japan interest is growing in an astonishing prehistoric culture known as the Jomon that flourished as early as 14,000 BC, made pottery thousands of years before any other known people on Earth and undertook immense oceanic journeys as far afield as the coast of Ecuador and the islands of the South Pacific. Could the mystery of the Jomon in some way be linked to the mystery of Japan's underwater monuments?

Graham writes: "In December 1998 and again in March 1999 and July 1999, Santha and I made multiple dives around Japan, not only at Yonaguni but also off other islands such as Kerama and Aguni. We have found many remarkable things and continue to be astonished on each new dive. We have been privileged to be supported in our expeditions around Japan by Seamen's Club Resort Hotel in Ishigaki. Their divers have taken incredible risks for us and enabled us to explore underwater sites that we might otherwise never have found - or survived! Some of our best memories are of these wonderful people and the great adventures we have had with them.

With so many dives now completed we have gradually begun to understand the true character and significance of Japan's extraordinary underwater monuments. This is a story that we will tell fully in our book - although visitors to the Gallery pages of this website can see previews of some of Santha's unique photographs of Underwater Ruins all around the world. We would like others to experience some of the wonders we have been lucky enough to see.

Remarkable though they are, the Japanese underwater monuments are only part of the story of Underworld and only part of the journey we are making. During May and June 1999 we dived in the Pacific starting in Tahiti (Huahina and Raiatea), then moving on to Tonga (Ha'pai), and then on to Ponape, Kosrae, Guam, Rota and Tinian before ending up in Japan at the beginning of July. Between 18 July and 7 August we dived around Bimini in the Bahamas. During October/November 1999 we are focussing on Indonesia and Malaysia, in January 2000, India, and in May 2000 the Mediterranean."