Lost Civilisation From 7,500 BC Discovered Off Indian Coast

Ananova ^ | 1-16-2002

[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

[blam]

"Great! I've always strongly believed "civilization" is much older than most of the conventional wisdom claims, so anything that helps push the clock back is always interesting news."

That's exactly my view too.

[dixie sass]

Ping

[blam]

Bump for the early morning crew.

[arthurus]

temple may or may not qualify depending on where you set the bar.

To qualify as civilization, a place definitely has got to have a bar or two. A town is just not civilized without a saloon.

[blam]

"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?

[blam]

A Forgotten Site Yields Ancient Stone Tools in India

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.”

[RightWhale]

To qualify as civilization

Some kind of civic order is necessary for beer, bread, and cheese. Moose not necessary.

[goody2shooz]

Nice post. This I remember reading somewhere...but I'm sure I was above sea level at the time.

[blam]

You may have missed this one.

[TheBlackFeather]

... a bathroom or a temple."

Let's see, daily offerings, place of refuge, always being fought over for control; So what's the difference?

[farmfriend]

Thanks for the ping.

[blam]

"These finds are coming in with increasing frequency lately."

Ain't that the truth. I think the ones 400+ feet underwater are going to prove to be the most interesting. Like the one off the coast of Cuba. (If in fact it is a city)

[yoe]

Ernest, your link Gods, Graves, Glyphs simply took me to my own post page. I am really intrigued, can you post the link again?

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

this article is rather groovy (as the kids say)

WOW they still say groovy i havent seen vinyl records in a long long time

[arthurus]

Atlantis?

No, This is the even more mysterious lost civilization of Indianoceanis

[Grampa Dave]

They found a throne room. Too early to determine if it was a bathroom or where the ruler lived or where they worshipped.

[CobaltBlue]

Interesting photos of artifacts from the Bay of Cambay site here:
http://www.grahamhancock.com/underworld/cambay3.php?p=1

First artifact reminds me of warp weights, used to hold down warp threads during weaving.

Earliest known use of warp weights, to my knowledge, was at Catal Huyuk, 7000 BCE.

http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/hsc00b.htm

Or maybe a weight for a fishing net?

[muawiyah]

Not only would any cities or temples on the coasts have been covered by the rising oceans, most nearly everything around them would have been destroyed as gigantic solitons rolled in from Antarctica.

Massive tidal waves of up to 2 km in height would have pulverized most everything in advance of the rising waters from the Antarctic melt off.

Simply assume Antarctica melted or softened on the edges, and then released suddenly. Just before the current interglacial, this ice was up to 4 miles deep.

This would happen at the end of every major glaciation and would have destroyed all coastal civilizations on every continent. Remember the total pulverization of material goods that occured with the World Trade Center collapse - now, imagine that 6 to 10 times as tall and covering a wide area. About the only places anything or anybody could have survived would be in the Rockies, the Himalayas, or in the middle of the Sahara (which was green and lush in those days).