Lost city
'could rewrite history'—by Tom Houdden
The city is believed to predate the Harappan
civilisation
BBC News Online's Tom Housden
The remains of what has been described as a huge lost
city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view
of ancient human history.
Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered
36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of
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
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 ft.
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.
Lost
civilisation
The city is believed to be even older than the ancient
Harappan civilisation, which dates back around 4,000 years.
Marine archaeologists have used a technique known as
sub-bottom profiling to show that the buildings remains stand on enormous
foundations.
Author and film-maker Graham Hancock—who has written
extensively on the uncovering of ancient civilizations—told BBC News Online
that the evidence was compelling:
"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
"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
Chronological
problem
This, Mr Hancock told BBC News Online, could have
massive repercussions for 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 civilisation with
which archaeologists have been working will have to be remade from
scratch," he said.
However, archaeologist Justin Morris from the
"Culturally speaking, in that part of the world
there were no civilisations prior to about 2,500 BC. What's happening before
then mainly consisted of small, village settlements," he told BBC News
Online.
Dr Morris added that artefacts from the site would need
to be very carefully analysed, and pointed out that the C14 carbon dating
process is not without its error margins.
It is believed that the area was submerged as ice caps
melted at the end of the last ice age 9-10,000 years ago
Although the first signs of a significant find came
eight months ago, exploring the area has been extremely difficult because the
remains lie in highly treacherous waters, with strong currents and rip tides.
The Indian Minister for Human Resources and ocean
development said a group had been formed to oversee further studies in the
area.
"We have to find out what happened then ... where and
how this civilisation vanished," he said.
Saturday, 19 January, 2002, 06:33 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1768109.stm
Discovery in
The civilization of Ancient Egypt occurred in a past so
remote that today it seems mystical. The pyramids and other temples, with their
hieroglyphics depicting a flourishing civilization, have a mysterious, almost
magical appeal. It seems inconceivable that people of an advanced society could
have walked those ancient streets.
Now, it was announced in January, a civilization has
been uncovered that would have appeared just as ancient to the people who built
the pyramids as the pyramids seem to us.
According to marine scientists in
This news completely contradicts the position of most Western historians and
archaeologists, who (because it did not fit their theories) have always
rejected, ignored, or suppressed evidence of an older view of mankind's
existence on planet Earth. Human civilization is now provably much more ancient
than many have believed.
According to
the BBC's Tom Housden
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
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 (BBC article).
Several reports confirm this estimate. Housden added,
"The whole model of the origins of civilisation will have to be remade
from scratch."
Unheard-of Scope of Cambay Ruins
The BBC article tells us that the remains of this
ancient city stand upon "enormous foundations." Marine archaeologists
discovered them with a technology known as "sub-bottom profiling."
Author and filmmaker Graham Hancock, an authority on archaeological
investigations of ancient civilizations, reportedly said that the evidence was
compelling. For example, he said that the oceanographers had found two large
blocks that were larger than anything that's ever been found. "Cities on
this scale," Hancock told BBC Online, "are not known in the
archaeological record until roughly 4,500 years ago when the first big cities
begin to appear in
Theorists are postulating that the area where this city exists was submerged
when the ice caps melted at the end of the last Ice Age.
"A month ago in mid-January [2002]," says Hancock on his website,
"marine scientists in India announced they had sonar images of square and
rectangular shapes about 130 feet down off the northwestern coast of India in
the Gulf of Khambhat (Cambay). ... [There are] sonar shapes with 90-degree
angles. The Indian Minister of Science and Technology ordered that the site be
dredged. What was found has surprised archaeologists around the world" (GrahamHancock.com/news.)
The Find Includes Human Remains
Linda Moulton Howe, who investigates occurrences of
this type worldwide, interviewed Michael Cremo about this new discovery. Cremo
is a researcher and author of the book Forbidden Archaeology. Cremo, Howe said,
has visited
"Within the past few months," Cremo told her, "the engineers
began some dredging operations there and they pulled up human fossil bones,
fossil wood, stone tools, pieces of pottery, and many other things that
indicated that it indeed was a human habitation site that they had. And they
were able to do more intensive sonar work there and were able to identify more
structures. They appeared to have been laid out on the bank of a river that had
been flowing from the Indian subcontinent out into that area."
According to Howe
Even if we don't know what the cultural background of
the people is, if it does happen to be a city that is 9500 years old, that is older
than the Sumerian civilization by several thousand years. It is older than the
Egyptian, older than the Chinese. So it would radically affect our whole
picture of the development of urban civilization on this planet.
Now, if it further happens that additional research is able to identify the
culture of the people who lived in that city that's now underwater—if it turns
out they are a Vedic people, which I think is quite probable given the location
of this off the coast of India—I think that would radically change the whole
picture of Indian history which has basically been written by Western
archaeologists.
To read about the previously most ancient finds in
http://www.spiritofmaat.com/announce/oldcity.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_archaeology_in_the_Gulf_of_Cambay