Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest

New Scientist ^ | 18 January 02 | Emma Young

[Oxylus]

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 river but is now 40 metres beneath the sea. The site is surrounded by evidence of extensive human settlement. Carved wood, pottery, beads, broken pieces of sculpture and human teeth have been retrieved from along the river banks, according to a report in the Indian Express newspaper. Carbon dating of one of the wooden samples has dated the site to around 7500 BC.

"The carbon dating of 7500 BC obtained for the wooden piece recovered from the site changes the earlier held view that the first cities appeared in the Sumer Valley [in Mesopotamia] around 3000 BC," said B Sasisekaran of India's National Science Academy.

Tom Higham of Oxford University's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit says submerged wood is often well-preserved and should be relatively straightforward to carbon date. "I don't see how you could get it grossly wrong," he says. "In the past, it has been said that you shouldn't pin all your interpretations on a date from one sample. But that's not so true these days. And dating a sample that's between 5000 and 10,000 years old is pretty easy."

Critical examination

If confirmed, the find would also push back the date of India's earliest known civilisation by 5000 years. The Harappan civilisation has been dated to about 2500 BC. The newly identified site "looks like a Harappan-type civilisation but dating way back to 7500 BC," said minister Murli Manohar Joshi.

However, he cautioned that a "more critical examination" of the finds must now be carried out.

Sharad Rajaguru, a former head of archaeology at the Deccan College in Pune, said: "These collections represent an exciting breakthrough in offshore archaeology. Further investigation of the area is important as this might throw light on the development of human civilisation, besides having a bearing on Indian history."

Joshi said the government is now forming a group of archaeological experts from institutes around the country to investigate further.

[Oxylus]

Bump. Here's an interesting one for you.

[Hiro Protaginast]

Inquiring minds want to know. Has the sea level risen 120 feet since 7500 BC?

[RJL]

Inquiring minds want to know. Has the sea level risen 120 feet since 7500 BC?

I am wondering about this too. Another possible ancient city west of Cuba was reported a week or so ago. If I recall correctly, it's under 2100 feet of water.

[Oxylus]

I don't know the numbers, but there was a lot of water locked up in ice 9500 years ago (7500 BC). Another question is whether or not the ground (earth's crust) has moved up and down at that site.

[koba]

India did have a great civilization once. Even today, you can still see remnants of it like the Elephanta caves, ancient temples, even the Taj Mahal. Unfortunately, the lower classes had higher birth rates while the educated classes had low birth rates. After a time, the lower classes took most of the land by weight of population. The elite class got diluted and the country is now a third-world country. Is this story starting to sound familiar?

[x]

Is that really what happened? It does seem that a caste society that segregates people off into various segments it plants the seeds of its own decline. When lower castes can't make their way up very far in society and upper castes can't make use of the expertise of arrivistes and aren't regenerated by newcomers, revolution or decline looks to be the likely result. The "fresh blood" justification of immigration is suspect, but within societies there does seem to be a dying away of high castes if intermarriage is restricted.

[aruanan]

Unfortunately, the lower classes had higher birth rates while the educated classes had low birth rates. After a time, the lower classes took most of the land by weight of population. The elite class got diluted and the country is now a third-world country. Is this story starting to sound familiar?

It's preferable to actually refer to history and draw conclusions from it rather than to look at the present and imagine a cause for it that happens to buttress a belief already taken for granted. Your's is one of those just-so stories like those used to explain why the bear has a short tail.

[koba]

The rich upper castes genrally limited thier reproduction because they wanted their children to inherit the land. The illiterate lower castes needed children because the children could be used as farm labor or even as sexual labor for the upper castes. That kind of thinking goes on even today. The Rolling Stones song "Brown Sugar" gives a pretty good example of this, though they were talking about slavery in America. When a small educated group is outnumbered by a huge pool of uneducated people, the educated upper middle-class people try to flee if they can. Land becomes premium, jobs scare, infrastrucutre crumbles etc. India tends to double its population every thirty years, so by 2035 there should 2.4 billion people living there, 40% of whom will be completly illiterate and only a thin veneer of people with marketable skills. The same thing, though on a more muted scale, happens in this country. The lower classes have births rates of 3.5-5 children per woman. The upper class birth-rate is 1.84, less than replacement rate. This is why many parts of the country are slowly crumbling. More power, land, and money have to be ceded to the uneducated lower classes because of their sheer weight of numbers. It will be interesting to see how things will turn out here.

[koba]

These explanations were derived from Indian history books and oral history.

[tortoise]

Has the sea level risen 120 feet since 7500 BC?

Locally it is possible due to a combination of factors. Elevation can easily change a several meters during a good earthquake. If I am not mistaken, there is a forest off the coast of Oregon that they dredge for timber (apparently the wood is still good) that sank during a big earthquake on January 26th, 1700 that they estimate was around 9.0 on the Richter scale (similar to the big Anchorage quake). You see a lot of this type of sinking along active subduction zones. I believe this archaeological site is located along a very active subduction zone, so it is quite plausible.

[CaptRon]

And just this morning I saw a new report that said that some sink-hole in Afghanistan might be the oldest city in the world. Just goes to show you...

[blam]

Thanks for the ping

Lost Civilisation From 7,500 BC Discovered Off Indian Coast

[blam]

"Has the sea level risen 120 feet since 7500 BC?"

YES.

[blam]

" there is a forest off the coast of Oregon that they dredge for timber (apparently the wood is still good) that sank during a big earthquake on January 26th, 1700"

I have some 7,000 year old wood from a forest in Florida. It was dredged up from the Santa Rosa Sound. The water has risen. (for whatever reason). I'm beginning to think the Gulf of Mexico was blocked off from the world's oceans during the last Ice Age. That could explain the city 2200 feet underwater off the coast of Cuba. (if it proves to be a city there)

[blam]

Here's an interesting one for you.

Going Into The Water: A Survey Of Impact Events And The Coastal Peoples Of South-East North America, The Caribbean, And Central America

[Dog Gone]

Inquiring minds want to know. Has the sea level risen 120 feet since 7500 BC?

I don't know how they did it, but I'm sure Pakistan is somehow to blame.

[RightWhale]

These ancient ruins seem to predate any of the Indian civilization as it is known today. They might not be related to the modern population. Still, there is the DNA analysis of a 9000 year old body in England that was related to a teacher still living in the same village.

BTW, the cast system is thought to be a remnant of successive invasions rather than a division of a single indiginous population.

[Rain-maker]

The Great flood about 7500 years ago,(i.e. about 5500 BC) was presumed to be an abrupt drowning of the Black Sea Shelf.

Looks like this area may be pointing to part of India's continental shelf subsiding.

Some more on India's archaelogial history

[oneeye]

Have you considered that the ground level may have dropped in that area?