Ancient Villages Beneath the Waves - Voyages of the Destiny's Dreams

The story of the submerged village under the sea was in the journals from the 1800s found in the lighthouse keeper's house in the attic.

The first page of one of the journals began, “Journal Entry 78 - I, Anya, the Storyteller of the Blue Lantern, am writing this beneath the towering sails of the clipper ship Destiny’s Dreams. We are anchored off the coast of what they call California near a large bay. The events I describe are real.”

A flat rock rested near the journal that showed a carving of a small boy playing with a dog. A dusty lantern with etched blue glass sat near the journals.

Her handwriting was faded but the curve of the loops and the pressures on the flowing script seemed to bring her back from over a hundred years ago so she could tell the story herself.

The journal told a story that aroused the readers and they wondered about the tales of the rising seas. This is what the journal said. 

The ancient village hid far beneath the waves. Soft jellyfish trailed their tentacles and drifted through the windows and doorways and around the stacked stones. Sea turtles and fish floated through the village. Seaweed and kelp grew around the ancient underwater village.

The stone statues, shell necklaces, and pictures carved into the boulders welcomed the soft creatures inside shells, the round blobs with many arms, and the scaled animals with fins who sheltered there and peered out.

The carvings of figures almost seemed alive. It was as if they might move and speak by saying, “I remember.”

Twenty thousand years ago, when the village was still on dry land, the ice age was melting and making the sea rise. The village was on the coast of what would later be southern California.

The people of the village carved the statues and figures of people, animals, plants, fish, stars and the moon and sun.

“Say the special words. The pictures will come alive.” One of the carvers spoke to the children watching.

“All of nature is alive and connected. The energy of life flows everywhere through everything.”

Then the children danced and leaped around the statues and pictures carved into the huge boulders.

“Look. They are moving,” shouted one little girl, lauphing.

Smoke from the villager’s campfires curled up through the air. The wide expanse of sand stretched as far as they could see and the blue ocean waves lapped at the shore and surged into tidepools.

“It tickles,” said one little girl, hopping through the tidepools and dragging vines of seaweed.

A long, narrow log, with people sitting inside the hollowed out part, paddled across the water and landed. The people drew the boat up onto the sand.

 A young boy played on the beach with the family’s pet dog. His parents worked nearby carving the height of the current sea on a tall stone they called the sentinel.

“The sea is in a quiet mood today, and it is the season of tranquil waters. But in many months that will change.” A white haired woman rubbed a stone tool against the sentinel and the marks she made deepened.

“Each generation knows the sea is rising. We watch the water creep closer, closer. The waves lap nearer each year to our homes.” The boy’s mother drew her brows together and leaned toward the other women who were helping with the stone carving.

“Last year at the highest tides in midwinter a rogue wave suddenly blasted through our home, surging back into the ocean with our belongings, the walls of the house, and the roof. The other women nodded.

“Yes,” said one. “I remember. We are not safe. The whole village needs to move far inland. We cannot live on the edge of the sea anymore.”

A third woman said, “The leaders are divided. Some say it will be ok and we are worrying too much. But I say the threat is real. It is not our imagination. We must convince the leaders to move before we are drowned in our sleep by rogue waves. The tides are unpredictable.”

The women held stone tools and sharp shells. They stood around the narrow, tall stone that they called “The Sentinel.”

The first woman said,“My grandfather says the village of his childhood was lost long ago to the sea. It is now beneath the waves.

He said the temperatures are warming and the melting ice far, far to the north is making the sea rise.”

The women all tried to talk at once.

“Some say it is not rising, and the weather is not warming. It is only something temporary.” One of the women spoke in a high pitched tone.

“That cannot be. The old stone Sentinel from grandfather’s day has the carvings of the sea level.” Another woman’s voice was firm.

“I know. You are right.” The women agreed.

“And the rogue waves, storms, and monster high tides are much worse than when I was a child.” “A white haired woman spoke and the others nodded.

“Last year my son was swept out to see by a rogue wave surge and we almost lost him. My husband I ran into the ocean and we were all caught by a riptide that carried us parallel to the shore. We grabbed my child and floated until we ran into the basalt volcanic rock stacks near the shore.

The rocks bruised and cut us but we were able to grab hold of them and pull till we got our feet on the ocean bottom and pulled ourselves to shore by holding the rocky cliffs.” The youngest woman said this and gasped for breath as if it was happening again.

“It is settled.” The first woman spoke again. “Let’s finish marking the sea height on this Sentinel and then we will go to persuade the villagers to move farther inland. It is a lot of work so they will not want to do it. But this is necessary.”

More stone artists were pressing their tools against the boulders surrounding the beach. A picture inspired by the small boy playing with his dog was emerging.

Time passed. The villagers moved inland. Life was pleasant. They gathered shellfish, went out in the log boats to bring back the ocean’s bounty, gathered acorns and ground them into a mash or made flour for a type of bread baked on top of hot stones over the fires, and gathered plants and greens.

They were well fed and the weather was warm and mild year round. Streams ran down from the coastal mountain ranges with clear spring water for them.

There was time for artistic endeavors and the carvers enjoyed being creative.

But over the centuries, generation after generation, the Sentinels, statues, and carved pictures on the cliffs and big rocks were gradually submerged beneath the ocean.

The people moved to the higher foothills and mountains. Their ancestors’ villages and stone art were eventually miles from the original shore and it was buried under the water as the ice age melt made the sea rise.

One day, thousands of years after the women carved the sentinel and the boy played with is dog on the beach, a wooden ship with large, square white sails cut through the waves like a giant white bird.

A mile from shore, the sailors loosened the cleats of a thick steel chain and the anchor fell into the water, plunging downward and catching on something from one of the ancient villages on the bottom of the sea.

Captain Alfonse of the clipper ship the Destiny’s Dreams gathered the crew.

“Let’s drop the surfboat into the water and go in to the shore.” His voice carried across the quiet air of the morning.

The captain’s wife, Luciana, got her map making tools and paper ready so she could measure and draw to make the maps of the area.

First Mate Adelberto, his wife Isabella, and Anya, the ship’s storyteller, all climbed into the surfboat and the sailors began rowing them to shore.

The small boat entered a wide mouth to a bay. It rounded a point along the shore. They were close to the beach when there was a lurch and a jolt. 

The people in the surfboat did not know it, but they had struck one of the old stone Sentinels that measured the height of the ocean for one generation so that later generations could check it.

“Look out. Something in the water. We hit it. Maybe a rock. There’s a leak.” Adelberto shouted to the sailors.

“Quick. Everyone get on the other side of the boat. We need to raise the break in the hull above the water before we sink.” They were close to shore. With one edge almost going underwater, the passengers used their weight to get the broken side of the boat out of the water.

They climbed out in the shallows and pulled the boat onto the sand.

“Wave to the ship. We need them to send another boat. This one will have to be repaired.” Captain Alfonse instructed the sailors.

The tide was going out, and with low tide more of the beach was revealed.

The crew and passengers examined the broken wood on one side of the surfboat’s hull. Then they set off to explore while they waited for another boat to arrive.

A few hours later they returned to the beach at low tide.

“Look at that.” Isabella pointed.

A narrow, tall stone was protruding from the waves at low tide. It had carvings on it.

The group continued to explore. There on the cliffs they saw the pictures of a boy playing with a dog, of children dancing in the tidepools, and of sea creatures with bodies like blobs and long tentacles drifting.

The other surfboats arrived to take the crew and passengers back to the clipper ship. But the damaged boat was left on the beach.

During the following days of repairing the boat, the crew and passengers found more of the tall, narrow rocks with carved marks on them.

“It looks like some type of measurement.” Captain Alfonse’s navigator scratched his head and examined the stones.

“They seem to be measuring the height of something.”

The people from the Destiny’s Dreams continued to be puzzled.

Anya, the ship Storyteller of the Blue Light, thought of old legends and myths.

“I remember,” she said. Everyone gathered around her. “The wisdom of the ancients passed down the story of the world being cold and icy. Then the world warmed, the ice melted, and this made the oceans rise.”

The listeners were still looking puzzled.

“I think these might be measurements made thousands of years ago by people to warn their descendants that the ocean was rising. They measure the height of the sea.”

A sense of awe filled the listeners.

“Could this be true?” They tilted their heads and asked each other whether this could have really happened.

Out beyond the shore pools, deep under the ocean waters, the submerged villages still rested and displayed their statues and carvings for the fish and the sea plants.

“That sounds like an incredible story, Anya,” said Adelberto. “I like this tale but I do not believe that really happened.”

After he said that, an unexpected surge of a rogue wave rose high and flooded the beach. Everyone ran from it but some of them got wet and were dragged into the water, fighting to escape its power.

Anya, the Storyteller of the Blue Lantern, looked at the ocean later and whispered to herself, “How many villages are beneath those waves and what stories do the carvings tell?”

"If only we could swim beneath the waves and see them."

Under the sea, a school of wavering jellyfish silently floated through the nearest underwater village, and an octopus dragged two empty shells together to make a safe shelter. A sea turtle floated through the kelp.

The villages and carvings lived on through centuries, forming a reef for their new dwellers.