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9000 Year Old Civilization discovered 
in India's Gulf of Cambay! 

Page last updated: 06/23/2002

Read the Articles below for more information, 
or click on the title of each article to go to the original sites.

Updates (06/23/2002 ) available at:

Additional underwater ruins found in Tamil Nadu off the Coast of Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram). These articles also include references to Cambay:

.... and a good summary of the underwater Cuban discoveries:

 

From the Times of India:

7500 BC lost river civilisation discovered off India's coast
AFP [ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2002  3:43:45 PM ]
EW DELHI: A 'lost river' civilisation dating back to 7500 BC has been discovered off India's western coast, a senior cabinet minister said Wednesday. "The findings buried 40 metres (yards) below the sea reveal some sort of human civilisation, a courtyard, staircase, a bathroom or a temple or something," said Murli Manohar Joshi, minister for human resources and also ocean development. "It looks like a Harrapan-type civilisation but dating way back to 7500 BC," he said. The earliest discovered human civilisations in the subcontinent are the sites of the Harrapan and Indus Valley communities, which date back to 2500 BC. The 'marine archaeological findings' have been made by a joint exercise conducted by the Indian ocean development and archaeology institutes in the Gulf of Cambay region, off the coast of Gujarat state in the Arabian Sea. Objects such as pieces of construction material, artefacts with rectangular holes, fused objects, pottery, beads, broken pieces of sculpture, a fossilised jaw bone and human teeth and a cut wooden log have all been retrieved out from the site. Carbon-dating and other methods have dated the finds to around 7500 BC. Acoustic imagery has also revealed a river stretch of nine kilometres (5.6 miles) along which all the objects have been found. The imagery also shows built-up structures protruding from the seabed. "We have formed a group to undertake further studies," Joshi said. "We have to find out what happened then ... where and how did this civilisation vanish ... what kind of seismological activity is taking place here." The minister said the discovery could have implications worldwide. "The idea is to tell the world that here is an area which needs further examination due to the discovery of objects which have been dated back to 7500 BC."

From the BBC News Service:

Tuesday, 22 May, 2001, 18:14 GMT 19:14 UK

Indian seabed hides ancient remains


By Rajyasri Rao in Delhi

Marine experts have discovered a clump of archaeological structures deep beneath the sea off India's western coast.

Although the discovery has not yet been accurately dated, the structures are said to resemble archeological sites belonging to the Harappan civilisation, dating back more than 4,000 years.

This is the first time man-made structures have been found in this part of the Arabian Sea which is known as the Gulf of Cambay.

The team leader, M Ravindran, told the BBC that they first noticed the huge structures while examining acoustic images collected from under the sea bed.

Ancient settlement?

The group was routinely investigating the Gulf of Cambay to monitor pollution levels, using devices able to penetrate at least 10 metres deep beneath the sea bed.

Harappan site in Pakistan
Harappan remains have been found in India and Pakistan
The images gathered over the past six months led to a surprising discovery - a series of well-defined geometric formations were clearly seen, spread irregularly across a nine-kilometre (five-mile) stretch, a little beneath the sea bed.

Some of them closely resemble an acropolis - or great bath - known to be characteristic of the Harappan civilisation.

The Gulf of Cambay is one of the largest tidal areas in the world - with a current of very high velocity - and so it is conceivable that the area may well have submerged an entire ancient settlement, Mr Ravindran said.

But archaeologists are far more sceptical.

Closer study

A leading marine archaologist says that far more detailed investigations need to be done to confirm the exact date of the structures.

Indus Vally pottery
Experts say submerged pottery may offer a clue
S R Rao, who has spent years researching the nearby Gulf of Kutch, said the only conclusive way of establishing the antiquity of the site was by studying pieces of submerged pottery from the same area.

Mr Rao's own research led to the discovery of the first tidal dock in the world - built at around 2300 BC in the port town of Lothal - at the head of the Gulf of Cambay.

But he says much more research and evidence is required to categorise the latest discovery in the same manner.

Numerous Harappan archeological sites have been found in northern and western India, as well as neighbouring Pakistan.

 

 

From Graham Hancock's Official Site:

For Books and Videos by Graham Hancock, including his upcoming Underwold, click here!

Lost Civilisation Discovered

Lost Civilisation Discovered: Two submerged cities off the coast of India are at least 9,000 years old

Posted on January 17 2002.

A senior Indian official reported today (January 16, 2002) the discovery of submerged ruins at a depth of 40 metres in the Gulf of Cambay, off the coast of Gujurat in northern India.

The Cambay discovery was made about a year ago by India’s National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT). Graham Hancock, photographer Santha Faiia and a Channel Four film crew accompanied the NIOT on their most recent expedition as part of Hancock’s forthcoming book and television series Underworld, which is scheduled for publication and broadcast in early February (see our Bookshop section). Unfortunately, the extreme tidal currents in Gulf of Cambay have so far prevented any attempt to capture underwater footage of the structures themselves. Instead, the ruins have been investigated through high-resolution sonar scans and through the recovery of around 2,000 artifacts from the site, including pottery, beads, broken pieces of sculpture, a fossilised jaw bone and human teeth.

The sonar scans have so far revealed that the Gulf of Cambay actually holds two cities beneath its waters, both situated beside ancient river courses. One of the cities extends for at least nine kilometers along the ancient riverbed, and at least two kilometers away from it, giving a minimum surface area of 18 square kilometers. The outer limits of the city have not yet been found, and further investigation may well reveal that the city is even larger than this. There are remains of a dam more than 600 metres long across on one of the ancient river courses. The scans have also revealed that the cities consist of numerous rectangular buildings with foundations that have been sturdy enough to survive thousands of years of pounding by the violent tidal currents. The NIOT have produced density analyses of the foundations compared with the silt between them, which suggest that the foundations are built of a uniform substance of great density – probably stone blocks.

Initially, those archaeologists who chose not to dismiss the submerged city as a hallucination assumed it belonged to the Harappan Civilisation, which flourished in Pakistan and northern India between around 5,000 and 3,000 years ago. However, Graham Hancock has pointed out that geological models of sea-level rise strongly suggest the site is much older than that. Geologist Glenn Milne at the University of Durham believes that the site was probably submerged at the very end of the last Ice Age between 7,700 and 6,900 years ago – pushing the date of the city well back into the prehistoric era.

Glenn Milne’s estimates were recently confirmed by radiocarbon dates achieved by two Indian laboratories from a piece of wood recovered from a shallow layer of the site. One laboratory dated the piece of wood to 6,500BC, and another dated it to 7,500BC. The NIOT hope to obtain datable material from deeper layers of the site on a future expedition, and this may well push back the age of the submerged city even further.

These dates, combined with the astonishing size and complexity of the city, effectively disprove the orthodox view of the origins of civilisation, which holds that civilisation first began with the Sumerians around 3,100BC. The Near East, which is regarded by archaeologists as the first cradle of civilisation, has nothing to rival this lost prehistoric civilisation. The submerged city of Cambay is at least 150 times larger than the largest Near Eastern settlements of 7,500BC, such as the village of Catalhoyuk in Anatolia. If farming is considered to be a necessary precursor for civilisation, then orthodox models of the origins and spread of agriculture may also have to be re-written.

The beginning of history will itself have to be pushed back at least 4,000 years, because the Cambay cities have already yielded evidence of writing. A piece of stone has been recovered with an unknown scipt engraved on it in a circular pattern. Some of the characters in the script look rather similar to characters that appeared in the Harappan script which appeared 4,000 later and which still remains undeciphered.

Graham Hancock has long argued that conventional views of the origins of civilisation are wrong and that we should pay more attention to ancient flood legends from around the world. In Underworld he points out that while the Cambay discovery will be a shock to Western archaeology, it is unlikely to come as a great surprise to the people of India. The ancient Vedic texts, which are at the heart of Hindu religion, already tell of an early civilisation of great sophistication that was submerged beneath the sea at the end of the last Ice Age.

For more info, go to www.grahamhancock.com.

 

GrahamHancock.com
 
Updates on Underworld related stories:
 
Underworld
 

 

 

Hancock's Latest:

       

 Graham Hancock's 3-part Quest For the Lost Civilization Videos now on sale! 

Ancient Mariners

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Forgotten Knowledge


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Great Lost Continent theories:

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Three Detailed Books which update Ancient Mysteries and Inventions with a keen Fortean eye (neither dogmatically unbelieving nor naively credulous):

 

Ancient Inventions (1995)
by Peter James, Nick Thorpe

From Amazon.com: "IT'S CHOCKABLOCK WITH CURIOUS LORE....[James and Thorpe] have amassed scores of persuasive testimonials of primeval ingenuity." --The Boston Globe. We in the twentieth century tend to assume that our era has a monopoly on the inventions of clever machines, labor-saving devices, feats of engineering, and advanced technology. But as the authors of this fascinating and eye-opening book reveal, some of humankind's most important and most amazing inventions actually date back thousands of years.

Historian Peter James and archaeologist Nick Thorpe have pooled their expertise in amassing this compendium of human ingenuity through the ages. Together they conclusively prove that our ancestors, however long ago they lived and whatever part of the globe they occupied, were brilliant problem-solvers. Written with the pure joy of discovery, Ancient Inventions reveals that: * Medieval Baghdad had an efficient postal service, banks, and a paper mill.  * Rudimentary calendars were being used in France as early as 13,000 B.C. * Apartment condominiums rose in deserts of the American Southwest a thousand years ago. * The ancient Greeks used an early form of computer. * Plastic surgery was being performed in India by the first century B.C. * The Egyptians knew about effective contraceptives. * Flamethrowers were used in battles waged in tenth-century China. Brimming with odd facts and entertaining curiosities, written with zest and humor, comprehensive and fun to read, Ancient Inventions is a wonderful celebration of the endless inventiveness of the human mind. "This presentation of the discoveries and innovations of the ancients will fascinate." --Booklist


Ancient Mysteries (1999)
by Peter James, Nick Thorpe, I. J. Thorpe

From Amazon.com: There may be a wide gap between uncritical belief and hard-line skepticism, but that doesn't mean many writers have chosen to explore this territory. Now science writer Peter James and archaeologist Dr. Nick Thorpe have teamed up again to examine Ancient Mysteries, pledging allegiance to no theory or theorist, free to explore any explanation supported by the evidence. As often happens, they must finally throw up their hands in confusion, but getting there is half the fun.

Did King Arthur really exist? Who was Robin Hood? How did the enormous stone heads of Easter Island find their way to their resting places? Why did the Mayans disappear? These are some of the 37 big questions tackled by James and Thorpe in nearly 700 pages. A few of their selections may seem curious when compared to the puzzles that have gripped us for centuries, but overall their penetrating analyses of legend and archaeological data are fascinating and engagingly written. For those who can tolerate a bit of uncertainty in their reading, Ancient Mysteries will be a profoundly satisfying look into the fuzzy boundaries of our knowledge. --Rob Lightner


An excellent volume of interest, 
from the Editors of Fortean Times!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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