2. Jeju Island as the Center of Sundaland
Stephen Oppenheimer, combining genetics with mythology and geology, stirred controversy in academia by publishing a book titled Eden in the East, which contained the conclusion that some ten thousand years ago the Garden of Eden lay in the Sunda Islands of Southeast Asia.[2] Stephen Oppenheimer presents numerous geological and genetic pieces of evidence that ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations both originated in Southeast Asia.[3]
The sunken continent known today as Sundaland is said to have allowed the people of that time to travel freely across Eurasia.[4] Sundaland is said to be a continent formed during the last Ice Age of the Pleistocene, between 12,000 BC and 8,000 BC, when the sea level rose more than 150 meters above today's level. The German-type skeletal remains found at Gadeok Island, a relic of that era, indicate that the Korean Peninsula, including Jeju Island, was at that time connected to China and, farther away, to Indonesia, India, and even Africa. If Sundaland existed, then since the depth of the deepest parts of the West Sea is only about 50 meters, during an Ice Age when the sea level fell by as much as 150 meters, people would have walked across what is now the West Sea, connected as it was to the continent. Professor Nik Hassan Shuhaimi, president of the Malaysian Archaeological Society, argues that humanity's first herding and agriculture took place in Sundaland 12,000 years before Christ.[5] Sunda lies in Indonesia, where the Sunda Strait is located today.
Jeju Island, appearing to be encircled by the sea, is said to have been land connected to the continent through Sundaland during the Ice Age. The Korean Peninsula, including Jeju Island, is said to have been a region even more conducive to the emergence of civilization than the Southeast Asian region at that time. On the Korean Peninsula, there is no continental shelf as low and vast as the West Sea between the Korean Peninsula and mainland China anywhere on this earth, and its location is moreover the northernmost region free of glaciers; thus it is said that the West Sea continental shelf must inevitably have been where humanity's greatest civilization arose. In fact, the pottery excavated at Gosan-ri, Jeju Island, is said to be the world's oldest pottery, used about ten thousand years ago. In the southern Korean Peninsula, not only Gosan-ri pottery but also a 4-meter boat from 8,000 years ago, presumed to be the world's oldest, was found at the Changnyeong Neolithic site,[6] and the Bangudae petroglyphs in Ulsan revealed the world's first whaling petroglyphs, said to have been carved 7,000 years ago. In the case of agriculture as well, the fact that the world's oldest (最古) rice grains—the Soro-ri rice grains found in Korea, presumed to date from 13,000 to 7,000 years ago—were discovered was even reported through the internet edition of Britain's BBC.[7]
A representative relic of Sundaland cited today is the Yonaguni site near Jeju Island. The underwater site of Yonaguni, which appears to be a massive artificial structure, has already become a famous tourist attraction. Professor Teruaki Ishii (石井輝秋) of the Department of Geology at the University of Tokyo says that if Yonaguni is an artificial structure, it is presumed to have been built before 8,000 BC.[8]
Jeju Island, where Mt. Halla—the highest in the Sundaland region—soars, was the center of the southwestern-sea continental shelf during the ultra-ancient Ice Age; thus it can be seen that all tribes sought to seize Jeju Island, a strategic fortress, in order to become the master of the great southwestern-sea plain. The continuity that links the pyramids of Indonesia and the dolhareubang, and even the pyramids of South America and the stone statues of Easter Island, shows Jeju Island as the center of Sundaland. The stepped pyramid of the Caral region, regarded as the oldest civilization in South America, the pyramids of Xi'an in China, and the stepped pyramid of Gunung Padang in Indonesia, presumed to date back 20,000 years, are said to vividly demonstrate the hyperdiffusionist theory of civilization represented by Elliot Smith.[9]
The background against which Jeju Island became the center of Sundaland traces back as far as 70,000 years ago, when modern humans began. What today's advanced genetic engineering has discovered is that modern humans began 70,000 years before Christ from a single woman in Africa, and that woman is called "Eve."[10] Modern humans originated in central-eastern Africa and, 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, migrated to Southeast Asia to avoid the archaic humans of the Eurasian continent; 30,000 years ago, modern humans who had flowed out of southeastern Africa advanced into Central Asia, exterminated archaic humans such as the Neanderthals, and came to dominate the Eurasian continent. Their dwelling places were limited to three locations—the southwestern-sea continental shelf of the Korean Peninsula, Sundaland in Indonesia, and the Bay of Bengal in India—so naturally population density rose and wars between tribes broke out. The modern humans who had begun to dominate Eurasia were, literally, primitive people carrying on a war of all against all, so their population did not increase much either.
About 20,000 years ago, a volcanic eruption in Indonesia covered the entire earth with volcanic ash and began the last Ice Age it accelerated. As temperatures plunged, glaciers thousands of meters thick piled up in the heart of the Eurasian continent, the sea level fell by about 130 meters, and the world's largest continental shelf—the southwestern-sea continental shelf of the Korean Peninsula—emerged as dry land. The modern humans scattered across the Eurasian continent escaped the glaciers and began to flock to the southwestern-sea continental shelf of the Korean Peninsula. The modern humans who had lived on the Eurasian continent and in Southeast Asia came together to live on the southwestern-sea continental shelf.
Around 12,000 BC, a certain civilization finally emerged in Sundaland, and then around 9,000 BC it sank into the sea, because from that time global warming caused the sea level to rise sharply until it became the current sea level. All Ice Age civilizations were submerged, and humanity in that period again escaped from the continental shelf to the continent. On the continent, what is called the <Neolithic Revolution> began in that period; this refers to the sudden appearance of a civilization that reached an almost modern-level standard, far higher than the continent's earlier Paleolithic civilization, as though archaeologists had suddenly encountered a break in human civilization.
Among the newly emerged civilizations, the one that was most advanced was formerly known as Egyptian civilization or Sumerian civilization, but today it is regarded as the Caral civilization of South America and the like. Egyptian civilization and Sumerian civilization are regarded as having been formed when this South American civilization, represented by the Maya civilization and the like, was in turn propagated to Europe and Africa.