Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00046)

Hi Daniel,

That's an amazing find! If you would, I'd like to see you post this to
BN-Study also. This would be a good scientific study to run along side of
our seven fold constitution study.

Thanks, 

Larry

On Mon, 04 Feb 2002 19:32:55 -0000 "danielhcaldwell"
<danielhcaldwell@yahoo.com> writes:
> (From: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=1176)
> See also BBC News link:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1768000/17681
> 09.stm
> 
> "The whole model of the origins of civilization with which 
> archaeologists have 
> been working will have to be remade from scratch..."
> Another Submerged City
> 21-Jan-2002
> 
> 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 disco
> vered 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 oce
> an - 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 
> i
> ndicate 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 t
> he whole model of the origins of civilization with which 
> archaeologists have 
> been working will have to be remade from scratch," he says.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to 
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 
> 
> 

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