Indian sunken city
Submitted by Thorgrim on Tuesday, 01 March 2005 Page Views: 14395
Neolithic and Bronze AgeANCIENT remains of a sunken city first discovered by a team of Dorset-based explorers have been revealed by the force of the Asian tsunami, say archaeologists.Bournemouth's Daily Echo reports that divers and scientists, led by explorer Monty Halls, made the spectacular find of a lost civilisation off the coast of southern India three years ago.
Now, the deadly waves that hit the coastal regions on Boxing Day have uncovered historic relics buried under sand for centuries.
Two giant granite lions carved from a single block, and a rock elephant, are among the structures revealed after the water blasted away huge amounts of sand from the coast at Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu.
A team of 16 divers, backed by the Scientific Exploration Society (SES), based at Motcombe, near Shaftesbury, made the original discovery in 2002, reporting vast submerged ruins stretching over several square miles.
The latest finds now prove that the ancient city could cover a massive area.
Monty Halls, who led the expedition, said: "I am delighted that this confirms what we thought we saw. "We had a very, very strong feeling that we had found something significant.
"But we were looking at the remains with more of a diver's eye rather than an archaeologist's, and it was hard to be certain."
Local fishermen had told of a lost civilisation engulfed by a flood in ancient times, pointing the way to the underwater city.
The new discoveries are certain to fuel theories that ancient myths about great cities lost in a universal flood thousands of years ago are based on truth.
The SES team had hoped to return to the area to carry out further investigations, but the authorities in India have now taken over the project.
In November, Mr Halls, a former Royal Marine, also led another SES-backed team of divers exploring underwater caverns off the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, discovering remarkable evidence of stone age communities living there before sea levels rose.
"We have found objects dating anywhere from 300,000 to 1.5 million years ago," he said.
The explorer is now planning a second expedition to investigate more sites along the coast, which could reveal important clues about some of our most ancient ancestors.
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