Harappan Excavation
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The remains of a huge underwater city off the western coast
of India may force historians and archaeologists to radically
reconsider their view of ancient human history. It?s believed
that the area was submerged when ice caps melted at the
end of the last ice age, 9-10,000 years ago.
Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 120
feet underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast
of India could be over 9,000 years old. The vast city - which
is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate
the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than
5,000 years.
The site was discovered by chance last year by
oceanographers from India?s National Institute of Ocean
Technology who were conducting a survey of pollution. Using
sidescan sonar - which sends a beam of sound waves down
to the bottom of the ocean - they identified huge geometrical
structures at a depth of 120 feet. Debris recovered from the
site - including construction material, pottery, sections of
walls, beads, sculpture and human bones and teeth - has
been carbon dated and found to be nearly 9,500 years old.
However, archaeologist Justin Morris from the British Museum
says more work will need to be done before the site can be
said to belong to a 9,000 year old civilization, since there can
be errors in carbon dating. ?Culturally speaking, in that part
of the world there were no civilizations prior to about 2,500
BC. What?s happening before then mainly consisted of small,
village settlements,? he says.
Strong tides make investigations in the Cambay difficult.
Marine scientists led by the Madras-based National Institute
of Ocean Technology are solving this problem by taking
acoustic images off the sea-bed and using dredging
equipment to extract artifacts.
The Indian Minister for Ocean Technology, Murli Manohar
Joshi, says the images indicate symmetrical man-made
structures and also a paleo-river, with banks containing
artifacts, such as pottery. Carbon dating on a block of wood
brought up from the depths suggests it dates back to 7,595
BC. ?We have to find out what happened then ... where and
how this civilisation vanished,? he says.
The city is believed to be even older than the ancient
Harappan civilisation, which dates back around 4,000 years
and is the oldest on the subcontinent. Although Palaeolithic
sites dating back around 20,000 years have been found on
the coast of India?s western state of Gujarat before, this is
the first time that man-made structures as old as 9,500 years
have been found deep beneath the ocean surface.
Marine archaeologists have used a technique known as sub-
bottom profiling to show that the buildings were built on
enormous foundations. Graham Hancock, author
of ?Fingerprints of the Gods,? says, ?The [oceanographers]
found that they were dealing with two large blocks of
apparently man made structures. Cities on this scale are not
known in the archaeological record until roughly 4,500 years
ago when the first big cities begin to appear in Mesopotamia.
Nothing else on the scale of the underwater cities of Cambay
is known. The first cities of the historical period are as far
away from these cities as we are today from the pyramids of
Egypt.?
Hancock feels this discovery could have a major influence on
our view of the ancient world. ?There?s a huge chronological
problem in this discovery. It means that the whole model of
the origins of civilization with which archaeologists have been
working will have to be remade from scratch,? he says.
To learn more, read ?Catastrophobia? by Barbara Hand Clow,
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