It sounds like an adventure novel by Rider Haggard or Rice Burroughs, or an Indiana Jones movie, but the fact is that a diver thinks he has discovered the ruins of a legendary city two-thousand-year-old African city mentioned in classical sources and that some historians consider to have been the first great metropolis from the non-Mediterranean part of the continent:the mysterious lost city of Rhapta .
In reality, not much is known about that place, beyond a quote in the work Periplus through the Eritrean Sea (year 50 AD), where it is identified with the southernmost town of Azania, as well as the one mentioned by the Greek writer- Egyptian Claudius Ptolemy in his work Geography . According to this author, a sailor named Diogenes who was sailing on a route with India explained to him that it was an important trading center for weapons made of metal and tortoiseshell, a market that would have provided great profits until it became one of the metropolises richer of the time of it.
The problem is that there is not much more news because that site, if it existed, enigmatically disappeared of history about 1600 years ago. Only one map is available, drawn in 1890 by the German explorer Carl Peters , placing Rhapta next to Mafia Island (formerly Monfia) and alluding to a Portuguese fort built on previous ruins.
Because we don't know, we don't even know its exact location, except for vague references to the southeast African coast, off the Tanzanian coastline and the island of Zanzibar. At least that's how it was until 2013 when a helicopter flying over that area perceived some strange and unusual shapes half emerging on the sea surface In circular form. The alarms went off immediately and this discovery was identified with architectural structures and not with reefs, as before.
And now there is new news about it, in this case provided by a submariner named Alan Sutton , who, after a series of dives and despite the low underwater visibility, believes he has found the exact spot. He claims to have seen what he identifies as walls and remains of buildings , apart from ceramic pieces in the sand in the background. The low tide brought by spring brought out part of those remains.
The ruins found are in a large sandbank (Mafia Island is actually sandy, not rocky), which combined with the warm water temperature and algae blooms makes the water cloudy and visibility poor. However, you can see blocks , apparently sandstone and of considerable size (5 x 5 meters and 40 centimeters thick).
The images show what appear to be lots of cubic and rectangular constructions arranged in a ring in a fairly wide area. A priori it's not much; certainly not enough for an identification in absolute terms. But Felix Chami , an archaeologist at the University of Dar es-Salaam, confirms that they could - the conditional is important - belong to Rhapta, since local people have always claimed that there were submerged houses. Another thing is if they are such ancient ruins, since many experts identify them rather with Portuguese colonial constructions , of which abundant examples are preserved in that part of the Indian Ocean. In addition, on several surrounding islands there is Shirazi monumental heritage (Swahili).
Chami suggests an integrating theory:the Portuguese built taking advantage of what already existed. He is based, he says, on the air of Roman style which has what the photos show, very different from other architectural elements found in Tanzania. In fact, the name of Rhapta is due to the Romans:this is how they called the bay where the city was based. In any case, it is clear that there is still much study and excavation work ahead. Since the architecture does not clarify much, it will be interesting to rescue utensils (tools, weapons, pottery...) that shed a little light. Archaeologists, therefore, have the floor.
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