Lost cities show civilisation began 9,500 years ago (London Times)

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http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2002031818,00.html

London Times SATURDAY JANUARY 19 2002

Lost cities show civilisation began 9,500 years ago

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BY SAM LISTER AND TIM TEEMAN

AN ANCIENT metropolis likened to the lost city of Atlantis has been discovered

off the west coast of India, suggesting that civilisation may have started

5,000 years earlier than previously believed. A grid of geometric structures

thought to be the foundations of two cities, each more than five miles wide,

has been detected 120ft below sea level in the Gulf of Khambhat. Fragments of

pottery, carved wood, bone and beads have been recovered from the site, 40

miles off the coast of Gujarat, with initial tests dating two of the artefacts

to 7500BC.

Until now, the earliest human civilisations — the Harrapan and Indus Valley

communities — had been dated to about 2500BC. However, experts have speculated

that “civilised” communities may have existed much earlier but were lost as sea

levels rose at the end of the Ice Age around 8000BC. Other specialists remained

sceptical yesterday, dismissing the discovery.

Traces of the cities, located at a site that was once the fork of a river, were

detected by a team of Indian oceanographers carrying out pollution checks.

Sonar scans of the area revealed one six-mile long conurbation, with a second

smaller settlement eight miles to the south.

Dr S. Kathiroli, the director of India’s National Institute of Ocean Technology,

said that the find had astonished him and his team, who returned three times to

check their results. “The sonar scans we were carrying out picked up these many

large regular geometric patterns, the sort of shapes you would never expect in

the sea. We then went back many times to explore the site, when we discovered

many artefacts,” he said.

As well as indicating many large square and rectangular structures, the

foundations also suggested more complex shapes, believed to be a staircase and

a courtyard. Other items retrieved from the site included what appeared to be

construction material, broken pieces of sculpture and a fossilised jaw bone.

Speaking yesterday from the institute’s base in Madras, Dr Kathiroli said that

the first carbon dating tests — on two carved logs sent to separate

laboratories — had shown both samples dated from about 7500BC. A large stone

slab covered in impressions was being studied to see if it was one of the

earliest discovered forms of writing.

Announcing the first results, the Indian Government said that the discovery

could have worldwide implications for theories of civilisation, which would

become clearer as further tests were conducted.

Some experts are already heralding the find as confirmation that the history of

civilisation needs radical revision. Graham Hancock, who has spent ten years

investigating the earliest civilisations, said the discovery finally confirmed

that complex communities existed in the Ice Age.

For three years Mr Hancock has been working on a book, Underworld: Flooded

Kingdoms of the Ice Age, which is being made into a Channel 4 documentary. He

recently visited the site in India and said the scans had shown foundations

that suggested buildings up to three storeys high and walls running for more

than 400ft.

“It is all so highly geometric. The scans show large rectangles and squares

which number in their hundreds, even thousands.” Mr Hancock said that it was

extremely likely that other civilisations had been at the end of the Ice Age,

when 15 million square miles of land were submerged by the sea. He said: “It

was a catastrophic period of climate change. The most obvious areas that people

would have settled would have been on fertile land near the coasts, and it was

these areas that were lost with the rise in sea levels.”

Other experts remained sceptical of the discovery. Derek Kennet, a research

fellow in archaeology at the University of Durham, said: “It all sounds

extremely dubious. If it’s true it means an utter re-evaluation of how we view

history. Even the earliest cities came 2,000 years later than this supposed

discovery. If this is true we’re looking at a period of about a thousand years

after the end of the Ice Age with cavemen building cities.

“Up until now we knew that from about 9000BC to about 4000BC there was a period

of village economies and people farming. The transition to urbanisation was

slow. This discovery would change that completely and put the construction of

the cities in the Palaeolithic Age, which is frankly unthinkable.”

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Also http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2002031819,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1768000/1768109.stm