City under the sea

[Guest guest]

indicjournalists, "N.S. Rajaram"

<nsrajaram@v...> wrote:

I do not have an URL for this , but it is one more piece of

evidence for the theory that David Frawley and I have been suggesting

that an older (pre- or proto-Vedic) civilization in India existed in

the South (meaning peninsular India), especially the coastal region.

The Bhimbetka caves probably served as shelters during the Ice Age.

 

NSR

 

 

City Under the Sea

 

Wrath of Jealous Gods? - By B.K. Parthasarathy

 

B.K. Parthasarathy writes about a spectacular

underwater archaeological find by a joint

British-Indian diving team that could rewrite history.

 

Who would have thought a city that could be older than

the Harappan civilization could be lying beneath water

right off the coast of Mahabalipuram?

 

Sometimes, it pays to listen to the stories of humble

fishermen. Local fishermen in the coast of

Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu have for centuries

believed in that a great flood consumed a city over

1,000 years ago in a single day when the gods grew

jealous of its beauty.

 

The myths of Mahabalipuram were written down by

British travellerJ. Goldingham, who visited the town

in 1798, at which time it was known to sailors as the

Seven Pagodas. Legend had it that six temples were

submerged beneath the waves, with the seventh temple

still standing on the seashore.

 

Best-selling British author and television presenter

Graham Hancock took these stories seriously. The

hypothesis that there may be ruins underwater off the

coast of Mahabalipuram has been around at least since

the eighteenth century among scholarly circles.

 

"I have long regarded Mahabalipuram, because of its

flood myths and fishermen's sightings as a very likely

place in which discoveries of underwater structures

could be made, and I proposed that a diving expedition

should be undertaken there," said Hancock.

 

Hancock's initiative resulted in the Dorset,

England-based Scientific Exploration Society and

India's National Institute of Oceanography joining

hands. In April this year, the team made a spectacular

discovery

 

The SES announced: "A joint expedition of 25 divers

from the Scientific Exploration Society and India's

National Institute of Oceanography led by Monty Halls

and accompanied by Graham Hancock, have discovered an

extensive area with a series of structures that

clearly show man made attributes, at a depth of 5-7

meters offshore of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu.

 

"The scale of the submerged ruins, covering several

square miles and at distances of up to a mile from

shore, ranks this as a major marine-archaeological

discovery as spectacular as the ruined cities

submerged off Alexandria in Egypt."

 

India's NIO said in a statement: "A team of

underwater archaeologists from National Institute of

Oceanography NIO have successfully `unearthed'

evidence of submerged structures off Mahabalipuram and

established first-ever proof of the popular belief

that the Shore temple of Mahabalipuram is the remnant

of series of total seven of such temples built that

have been submerged in succession. The discovery was

made during a joint underwater exploration with the

Scientific Exploration Society, U.K."

 

NIO said:

 

Underwater investigations were carried out at 5

locations in the 5 - 8 m water depths, 500 to 700 m

off Shore temple.

 

Investigations at each location have shown presence of

the construction of stone masonry, remains of walls, a

big square rock cut remains, scattered square and

rectangular stone blocks, big platform leading the

steps to it amidst of the geological formations of the

rocks that occur locally.

 

Most of the structures are badly damaged and scattered

in a vast area, having biological growth of barnacles,

mussels and other organisms.

 

The construction pattern and area, about 100m X 50m,

appears to be same at each location. The actual area

covered by ruins may extend well beyond the explored

locations.

 

The possible date of the ruins may be 1500-1200 years

BP. Pallava dynasty, ruling the area during the

period, has constructed many such rock cut and

structural temples in Mahabalipuram and Kanchipuram.

 

The last claim is questioned by Hancock, who says a

scientist has told him it could be 6,000 years old.

 

Durham University geologist Glenn Milne told him in an

e-mail: "I had a chat with some of my colleagues here

in the dept. of geological sciences and it is probably

reasonable to assume that there has been very little

vertical tectonic motion in this region [i.e. the

coastal region around Mahabalipuram] during the past

five thousand years or so. Therefore, the dominant

process driving sea-level change will have been due to

the melting of the Late Pleistocene ice sheets.

Looking at predictions from a computer model of this

process suggests that the area where the structures

exist would have been submerged around six thousand

years ago. Of course, there is some uncertainty in the

model predictions and so there is a flexibility of

roughly plus or minus one thousand years is this

date."

 

If that were true, it would be a spectacular

development. Previous archaeological opinion

recognizes no culture in India 6,000 years ago capable

of building anything much.

 

Hancock says this discovery proves scientists should

be more open-minded. "I have argued for many years

that the world's flood myths deserve to be taken

seriously, a view that most Western academics reject.

"But here in Mahabalipuram, we have proved the myths

right and the academics wrong."

 

Hancock believes far more research needs to be done on

underwater relics.

 

"Between 17,000 years ago and 7000 years ago, at the

end of the last Ice Age, terrible things happened to

the world our ancestors lived in," he says. "Great ice

caps over northern Europe and north America melted

down, huge floods ripped across the earth, sea-level

rose by more than 100 meters, and about 25 million

square kilometers of formerly habitable lands were

swallowed up by the waves.

 

"Marine archaeology has been possible as a scholarly

discipline for about 50 years - since the introduction

of scuba. In that time, according to Nick Flemming,

the doyen of British marine archaeology, only 500

submerged sites have been found worldwide containing

the remains of any form of man-made structure or of

lithic artifacts. Of these sites only 100 - that's 100

in the whole world! - are more than 3000 years old."

 

Hancock, who was understandably resentful about the

NIO's silence in his pivotal role in making the diving

expedition happen - SES gave him full recognition -

was himself quite generous about who deserved the

greatest credit:

 

"Of course the real discoverers of this amazing and

very extensive submerged site are the local fishermen

of Mahabalipuram. My role was simply to take what they

had to say seriously and to take the town's powerful

and distinctive flood myths seriously. Since no diving

had ever been done to investigate these neglected

myths and sightings I decided that a proper expedition

had to be mounted. To this end, about a year ago, I

brought together my friends at the Scientific

Exploration Society in Britain and the National

Institute of Oceanography in India and we embarked on

the long process that has finally culminated in the

discovery of a major and hitherto completely unknown

submerged archaeological site."

 

 

 

 

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