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A little over a century ago, British and Indian archeologists began excavating the remains of what they soon realized was a previously unknown civilization in the Indus Valley. Straddling parts of Pakistan and India and reaching into Afghanistan, the culture these explorers unearthed had existed at the same time as those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and covered a much larger area. It was also astonishingly advanced: sophisticated and complex, boasting large, carefully laid out cities, a relatively affluent population, writing, plumbing and baths, wide trade connections, and even standardized weights and measures. What kind of a society was the...

The recent International Conference on Harappan Archaeology produced an unexpected announcement from archaeologists BR Mani and KN Dikshit, both of the Archaeological Survey of India, who claim that new dates from excavations show the Harappan culture began around 2000 years earlier than previously thought.The ruins of the Harrapan city of Mohenjo-daro remained undocumented for over 3,700 years, until their discovery in 1922 by Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay, an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India. He was led to the mound by a Buddhist monk, who reportedly believed it to be a stupa. Image: Wikimedia commons Redating of Harappan culture Based on...

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Seato the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of...

Professor VD Mishra said that new researches have revealed that agricultural practices in India started in Mesolithic period (6-7,000 BC), much before the Neolithic period (4000 BC) as is generally believed. This discovery has proved that agriculture in India started simultaneously with other parts of the world. He said that Sativa rice, discovered from excavations at Chopni in Belan valley, has proved that India did not lag behind in agriculture... Joshi said that encroachments around historical monuments should be stopped because it harms our heritage. Citing an example, he said that Gwalior Fort could not be declared World Heritage due...

Excavations reveal 7,000 year-old Harappan sites Staff Report PESHAWAR: Gandi Umar Khan, around 55 kilometres west of Dera Ismail Khan, is the most important archaeological site of the Indus Valley civilization in the North Western Frontier Province. Gandi Umar Khan is spread over an area of 220 by 200 meters and has a maximum height of 8.5 metres. The site was discovered in 1997 by the University of Peshawar. The Directorate of Archaeology and Museum NWFP conducted an extensive survey of the Gomal Plain in March 2003 and discovered 95 sites out of which exist 53 sites of different periods...

Pre-Harappan bricks found in Gulf of Cambay TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SUNDAY, JULY 18, 2004 10:09:31 PM ] VADODARA: In an underwater exploration in the Gulf of Cambay, National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) scientists discovered almost 9,500-year-old bricks made of clay and straw. Archaeological experts of the MS University who, too, are involved in a part of the exploration near Surat and the coast of Gulf of Cambay, however, feel that a further insight into the size of the bricks can confirm its age and its period. The bricks, believed to be pre-Harappan, have been identified to be of the...

Wood Buried Under Ocean Floor Thousands of Miles at Sea October 22, 2019 | David F. Coppedge Wood chips hundreds of feet deep in ocean sediments have been found. How did they get there? Watch out for ocean trees. Geology researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) went boring into ocean sediments near India, and were surprised to find direct evidence that “Catastrophic events carry forests of trees thousands of miles to a burial at sea.” They pulled up six cores of sediment from the ocean floor a thousand feet below the surface. The cores were extracted miles apart...

The ruins are located close to the popular tourist destination and UNESCO World Heritage Site, Mamallapuram, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Just before the devastating 2004 Asian Tsunami hit, the ocean receded several hundred feet, and tourists reported glimpsing large stones and boulders in the distance. A 10-member team from the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) surveyed the area from March 10 to 18, and have found the ruins of one of six ancient temples that are thought to have been swallowed up by the ocean as sea levels rose. The team, comprising of divers, geologists and...

Rocks with step-like cuttings, a wall and carved blocks found under the sea in the southern coast near the heritage site of Mahabalipuram are believed to be evidence of an early settlement or a port. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) came across the remains while recently conducting excavations underwater at the site in Tamil Nadu. "Mahabalipuram is a historical place. We started detailed excavation 500 metres from the shore in the sea and recently came across different types of rocks which indicate human activity. We have also found a wall running from the shore into the sea," Alok Tripathy,...

THE little Buddhist sage sits underneath the tree only yards from the sea from which he was plucked, a whimsical smile upon his face. Villagers gather before him with offerings of incense and food. “We must look after him,” Gajendram, a fisherman, said as he knelt to light a candle. “He was sent 1,000 miles across the sea to protect us and he will stay with us for ever.” A few miles up the coast at Mahabalipuram, a group of daytrippers marvel at the weathered carvings on a huge rock sitting in the middle of the beach. To one side...

In a major success, archaeologists in Mahabalipuram district have discovered remains of a 4th century Hindu temple built by the kings of the majestic Pallava dynasty. Archaeologists say the uncovering is the result of the December 26 tsunami that destroyed the beaches of various South Asian countries and claimed thousands of lives. The archaeologists inform that the newly discovered temple is a complex by itself. "We carried out extensive diving offshore and there we found certain remains which suggested some human activity in the region. To confirm and correlate that, we carried out excavation on this land and during the...

CHENNAI, March 31. — After the excitement of discovering man made rock structures under sea off Mahabalipuram coast, the excavation team of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) has now unearthed traces of two more temples on shore. Adjoining the Shore Temple, these findings could perhaps lend credence to legends about ‘Seven Pagodas (temples)’ having stood on this historic spot, once a flourishing port town under the Pallavas. “We are presently excavating the remains of two structural temples on shore, both to the south of the Shore Temple. They appear to be similar in size to the Shore Temple. And,...

MAHABALIPURAM, India (AP) -- Archaeologists have begun underwater excavations of what is believed to be an ancient city and parts of a temple uncovered by the tsunami off the coast of a centuries-old pilgrimage town. Three rocky structures with elaborate carvings of animals have emerged near the coastal town of Mahabalipuram, which was battered by the Dec. 26 tsunami. As the waves receded, the force of the water removed sand deposits that had covered the structures, which appear to belong to a port city built in the seventh century, said T. Satyamurthy, a senior archaeologist with the Archaeological Survey of...

The deadly tsunami could have uncovered the remains of an ancient port city off the coast in southern India. Archaeologists say they have discovered some stone remains from the coast close to India's famous beachfront Mahabalipuram temple in Tamil Nadu state following the 26 December tsunami. They believe that the "structures" could be the remains of an ancient and once-flourishing port city in the area housing the famous 1200-year-old rock-hewn temple. Three pieces of remains, which include a granite lion, were found buried in the sand after the coastline receded in the area after the tsunami struck. Undersea remains "They...

Clues to missing pagodas found AKSHAYA MUKUL TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ SATURDAY, JULY 06, 2002 11:49:09 PM ] NEW DELHI: Submerged structures found off the coast of Mahabalipuram in the Bay of Bengal could well solve the mystery of seven pagodas dating back to the Pallava Period (7th Century AD). The Archaeological Survey of India’s Underwater Archaeology Wing (UAW) has discovered three walls and a number of carved architectural members of ancient temples running north to south and east to west. Also found are seven big submerged rocks 500 metres off shore. According to UAW in-charge Alok Tripathi, who undertook...

A MYSTERIOUS settlement that sank beneath the waves at least 1,200 years ago has been discovered by divers off the south-east coast of India.Granite blocks and walls that lie 20ft below the surface may be the remains of six "lost temples" that form part of local mythology.The ruins came to light after the controversial amateur archaeologist and best-selling author Graham Hancock interviewed fisherman for a recent television series.After hearing accounts of the myth of a submerged city, he and two dozen divers searched the sea bed last week.India's National Institute of Oceanography, which was involved in the discovery, believes the...

Evidence of an ancient "lost river civilisation" has been uncovered off the west coast of India, the country's minister for science and technology has announced. Local archaeologists claim the find could push back currently accepted dates of the emergence of the world's first cities. Underwater archaeologists at the National Institute of Ocean Technology first detected signs of an ancient submerged settlement in the Gulf of Cambray, off Gujarat, in May 2001. They have now conducted further acoustic imaging surveys and have carbon dated one of the finds. The acoustic imaging has identified a nine-kilometre-long stretch of what was once a ...

British linguist Max-Muller has invented the Aryan invasion theory that ancient Aryans invade India at about 1500BC, driven out the Dravidians from their land, have imported the Hindu civilization along with Sanskrit language from the steppes of central Asia. The theory was the justification for the British occupation of India, as Winston Churchill remarked. Although there was no archeological evidence to support this theory, it has become the most important doctrine on the ancient Indian history. Although it was opposed by prominent historians like Ramesh Chandra Mazumdar and archeologists like Rakhaldas Banerjee and S.P.Gupta, the pro-British historians of India so...

Submerged city may be older than Mesopotamia Utpal Parashar Dehra Dun, December 3 A submerged coastal city near Poompuhar in Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, is the focus of a major expedition being conducted jointly by the Indian Naval Hydrographic Department (INHD) and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Both the organisations are trying to piece together the city's past, which some noted marine archaeologists consider to be the birthplace of modern civilisation. The once flourishing port city is located about one mile off the Nagapattinam coast. "We have been able to locate a section of the city at a depth of...