Head of Mummy unearthed at burial site.
Posted on 01/16/2002 5:18:59 AM PST by blam
Lost civilisation from 7,500 BC discovered off Indian coast
Archaeologists have found a civilisation dating back to 7,500 BC off India's western coast.
The find is 5,000 years older than any previously unearthed civilisation in the subcontinent.
Researchers uncovered pottery, beads, sculptures, a fossilised jaw bone and human teeth at the Gulf of Cambay site.(DNA tests?)
Previously, the oldest known civilisations were the Harrapan and Indus Valley communities - which date from around 2,500BC.
Murli Manohar Joshi, minister for human resources and ocean development, told The Times of India: "The findings buried 40 metres below the sea reveal some sort of human civilisation, a courtyard, staircase, a bathroom or a temple."
Researchers used carbon-dating techniques. The find was made by the Indian ocean development and archaeology institutes.
Story filed: 12:43 Wednesday 16th January 2002
Head of Mummy unearthed at burial site.
Wednesday, 16 January, 2002, 13:14 GMT
Indian civilisation '9,000 years old'
By Rajyasri Rao in Delhi
Marine scientists in India say an archaeological site off India's western coast may be up to 9,000 years old.
The revelation comes some 18 months after acoustic images from the sea-bed suggested the presence of built-up structures resembling the ancient Harappan civilisation which dates back around 4,000 years.
The Harappan civilisation is the oldest in 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 there are indications of man-made structures as old as 9,500 years found deep beneath the sea.
Search impeded
Known as the Gulf of Cambay, the area has been subject to a great deal of archaeological interest due to its proximity to another ancient submerged site - Dwaraka - in the nearby Gulf of Kutch.
But investigations in the Cambay region have been made more difficult by strong tidal currents running at around 2 to 3 metres per second.
They impede any sustained underwater studies.
Marine scientists led by the Madras-based National Institute of Ocean Technology say they got around this problem by taking acoustic images off the sea-bed and using dredging equipment to extract artefacts.
A second round of investigations was conducted around three months ago.
'Glorious past'
The Indian Minister for Ocean Technology, Murli Manohar Joshi, told journalists the images indicated not only symmetrical man-made structures but also a paleo-river running for around nine kilometres on whose banks all the artefacts were discovered.
Experts say submerged pottery may offer a clue
Carbon dating carried out on one of these artefacts - a block of wood bearing the signs of deep fissures - dated it to around 7,595 BC.
Mr Joshi says his ministry plans to set up a multi-disciplinary group to look into what this discovery really means and what relation it may have to other ancient sites in the area.
Critics say the minister, who has been in the eye of a storm recently for attempts to Hinduise school history-text books, may well be presenting these archaeological discoveries as proof of India's glorious and ancient past.
But others say only further scientific studies can tell whether such a claim can be made at all.
Insert your joke here.
Probably so. Any cities or villages along ancient coastlines would have been inundated by the rising seas.
Remember, sea levels were several hundred feet lower during the last Ice Age.
Most people then, like now, lived near the sea, especially near river deltas and sites where rivers and streams emptied into the seas.
This is a public relations problem. Were the inhabitants of this palatial country estate actually Hindu, or were they related at all to the present inhabitants of India? There appear to be swamped and inundated stone city ruins all around the planet, both New World, and Old World. These ruins appear to predate even the Indo-European roots of our modern languages. Any inscriptions?
Experts say submerged pottery may offer a clue.
Thanks for the flag!
To find all articles tagged or indexed using 'Gods, Graves, Glyphs'
Click here: 'Gods, Graves, Glyphs'
300-500 feet. Most people accept 400 feet, as a rule of thumb.
Ummmm. This is definitive...
Do you have more information or links to the 20,000-year-old sites? thanks.
Don't know. (Haven't developed a 'blam' theory on this one yet. It will need to 'soak' a couple more days, lol)
Any reliable time-frame estimate? If the town flooded in 7500 BC, it might have been around even longer.
Book collector, lol.
I posted the only two mentions I've seen of this discovery. I expect any civilization found at this site will exceed the dates posted. The theories about the Sphinx being about 10k years old don't seem so foreign now, huh?
I would say, NAH. There were people all over the world then and had many different languages.
I did a search on this subject. All I found were articles about the Bavarian Illuminati and 3,000 year old Egyptian aircraft. No word about these nine fellows. Can you provide a link?
That's exactly my view too.
To qualify as civilization, a place definitely has got to have a bar or two. A town is just not civilized without a saloon.
Agreed. Any idea what kind of 'brew' they would have been drinking 9,000 years ago?
By Michael A. Stowe
An archaeological site discovered nearly 140 years ago in southern India is now yielding a remarkable collection of early Stone Age tools found in association with ancient animal footprints.
The Attirampakkam site, discovered in Tamil Nadu state by British geologist Robert Bruce Foote in 1863, was littered with stone tools. It had been sporadically excavated over the years, but little was ever published about it. Then archaeologist Shanti Pappu of the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education made a startling discovery there in 1991. Beneath the layers of dirt and clay, his team found remnants of Acheulean tools — an Old World stone-tool technology that began about 1 million years ago and lasted for nearly 900,000 years.
The stone-tool assemblage, the first Paleolithic tools ever found in clay deposits anywhere in India, includes hand axes, cleavers, picks, awls, scrapers, knives and stone flakes that were used as tools, all crafted from local quartzite.
Pappu said 17 roughly oval, animal-like footprints were found this past year in the clay layer that held the tools. The footprints and three fossilized teeth also found in the clay may help scientists sort out India’s ancient environment.
“This season’s excavations were important owing to the discovery of animal footprints in association with Acheulean artifacts,” says Pappu. “These factors render the site on par with other Achulean sites in East Africa and indicate its immense potential for long-term study.”
Some kind of civic order is necessary for beer, bread, and cheese. Moose not necessary.
Let's see, daily offerings, place of refuge, always being fought over for control; So what's the difference?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.