Sunken City Found Off Of India

Raindeer writes "A city only known from old myths about seven pagodas and thought by Western scientists not have existed, was found off the coast of India. The myths speak of six temples submerged beneath the waves with the seventh temple still standing on the seashore. The myths also state that a large city once stood here which was so beautiful the gods became jealous and sent a flood that swallowed it up entirely in a single day. " With the purported discovery of a city off of Cuba, as well as the the finding of Herakleion underwater archaeology is doing well.

Comments

So which one is Atlantis?

[Uttles]

And when can I buy my flight-enabling crystal?

(intended as humor)

Re:So which one is Atlantis?

[Mondrames]

The island is called Thera - "Fear" in Greek according to the TLC Documentry. One problem is that the explosion occurred 900 instead of 9000 years prior to Plato's original story. This however can be explained by difference in number systems, or clerical errors.

Re:So which one is Atlantis?

[t0ph3rus]

Well, if you think about it. There has to be many more cities that have been lost in a similar way. After all water is extremly vital for transportation and comerce. It is only natural that people would build cities in areas that are close to water and easily floodable. I can't think of any major city that was founded before the auto-mobile that is not near a major source of water. We have even had "lost cities" in modern times. There was a storm in the early part of the 20th century that submerged a vacation island off the coast of NYC. Every one forgot about it untill a few years ago when some researchers found pottery washing up on the shorlines.

Re:So which one is Atlantis?

[The Phantom Blot]

The Minoan capital was Knossos, not Minoa. Knossos is located on the island of Crete. Minoa is located on the island of Amorgos, in the Cyclades island group. The Cyclades also include the island of Thera/Santorini, referred to elsewhere in this thread.

Here's a map for your convenience.

Re: So which one is Atlantis?

[Black Parrot]

> The island is called Thera - "Fear" in Greek according to the TLC Documentry. One problem is that the explosion occurred 900 instead of 9000 years prior to Plato's original story. This however can be explained by difference in number systems, or clerical errors.

Or maybe Atlantis didn't exist at all?

Just because some myths have historical underpinnings doesn't mean that all myths have historical underpinnings.

And when you have to start twisting the myth around a lot to make it match the "evidence", then you should really stop and wonder why you're trying so hard to make it match.

Moreover, Plato isn't exactly a good source of mythology. He was neither a historian nor a mythographer. He was a philosopher, and not a very deep one at that. (IMO he operated on about a 10th grade mentality.) He liked to write stories about things like how the ideal state would be constituted, and he used an idealized Socrates as a sock puppet in his writings.

Plato tells the Atlantis story in his Timaeus . In particular, Plato tells a made-up story about a conversation between Socrates, Critias, and a couple of others, and in that story Critias tells a story he heard from another guy named Critias, and in that story the second Critias tells that he heard it from Solon, and in that story Solon tells that heard it from the Egyptian priests (along with a bunch of other drek). So we the recursively embedded stories Plato(Critias1(Critias2(Solon(Egyptians)))) -- and we know that the outermost story was a work of fiction (one of Plato's so-called dramatic dialogues). This is not a source that inspires a lot of confidence.

Once you get beyond that it makes a lot more sense to try to figure out what role the story played in whatever point Plato was trying to make with his polemic than it does exploring the world trying to find something that can be stretched to fit the story.

The story doesn't even appear to be real mythology, let alone real history.

<uncle>One more thing!</uncle> "Thera" doesn't mean "fear", it means "the hunt", "the chase", "pursuit", "the catch", or "hunting ground". And the name of the island may not even be the same word; Liddel and Scott list it under a separate entry.

Hopefully this gives everyone an idea why scientists and historians tend to scoff at claims that lost civilizations have been discovered, until verifiable evidence is in hand.

Re:So which one is Atlantis?

[Stephen Maturin]

There is also the lost city of Indianola, on the upper Texas coast. The city was washed away by a hurricane in the early part of the 20th century (or was it late 19th century?). Nothing but a few foundations remain as far as I know. The few who survived left to settle elsewhere.
An interesting anecdote related to this is that in St. David's Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, is a stained glass window of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. The organist at the time had never been to the coast, and decided to take a vacation. She told people that if anything happened to her, she wanted a stained glass window.
She was one of those lost at Indianola.

5000 years old

[pieterh]

This is about 1000 years earlier than the assumed birth of cities in ancient Iraq.

Just maybe, human civiliation is a lot older and spread much wider, earlier, than we tend to believe.

Re:5000 years old

[Brian Knotts]

Perhaps.

Re:5000 years old

[toofani]

The ancient town of Mehrgarh has been excavated in the Baluchistan area. It is part of the Indus-Saraswati civilization, and dates back to 6500 BC. Spread over 168 acres, it had a population of 30,000. The earliest Sumerian settlements date to 4000 BC. Lots of sources for information on the web. One sample.

Re:5000 years old

[zangdesign]

Human settlement may be more widely spread than previously thought, but recent world events lead me to believe that civilization is probably not possible.

Re:5000 years old

[ackthpt]

This is about 1000 years earlier than the assumed birth of cities in ancient Iraq.

According to Sources:

The age of 5000 years has been verified by the finding of a 750MHz Athlon, which we all know is ancient by now.

The city was actually sunk by angry gods because, inspite of building wonderous temples, the inhabitants fooled around with creating restrictive copyright laws.

The decendents of all survivors live in Wooster, Ohio.

The Co$ claims it's the work of rampant Thetans and you really, really, really should believe them and send them lots of money.

Most of the worlds missing left socks were found inside the sunken temples.

No claims have yet been issued by Ankh-Morpork or Klatch, but armies and navies are quietly being assembled.

Through exhaustive research, i.e. I've totally made up.

Re:5000 years old

[betis70]

The tricky thing with archaeology is you have to actually have evidence of such things as dates.

That always buggers up the hypothesis that human cities have been around for a long time. Since C14 dating needs organic material and other dating methods are less accurate (other than tree-ring dating), you need to have organic material preserved. This means a specific chemical/depositional environment (anerobic is great--like the Black Sea).

Underwater arch has the BEST potential for making stunning discoveries that re-write the history books because of the preservation potential of many of these areas (and the lack of later humans trampling all over the earlier strata).

The only thing left to ponder is HOW this city got there. That will take some talented surficial geologists (not the oil finding structural kind our Uni't tend to produce) and a bit of luck. Looking forward to hearing more about this and the site off Cuba.

Re:5000 years old

[dirty]

http://www.infidels.org/. Go there, you'll find scientific arguments against everything you just stated.

Re:5000 years old

[pyrrho]

this reminds me of the Ghandi quote when asked "What do you think of Western Civilizaiton", Ghandi said, "Sounds like a good idea to me."

Don't Dis-myth Out of Hand!

[McLuhanesque]

From where we sit in modern times, ancient myths and legends are often considered little more than fairy tales. But given what we know about the effects of natural catastrophes - namely their ability to eradicate all traces of any civilization that once stood in their path - there is probably much that is buried, inundated or otherwise obscured from view.

One interesting question that is perhaps particularly revealing is, why are are so surprised whenever we find this stuff?

Re:Don't Dis-myth Out of Hand!

[drivers]

From where we sit in modern times, ancient myths and legends are often considered little more than fairy tales. But given what we know about the effects of natural catastrophes - namely their ability to eradicate all traces of any civilization that once stood in their path - there is probably much that is buried, inundated or otherwise obscured from view.

Tolkien, is that you? That was pretty much the premise of Tolkien's work.

Re:Don't Dis-myth Out of Hand!

[spike hay]

Many legends you look at have some basis in truth. It's pretty easy to see how a natural disaster could get distorted over the millenia. Take the great deluge for example:

Around 8,000 years ago, the black sea was a freshwater lake about 2/3 of it's current size. It is now believed that there was a proto-civilization along it's shores. Then, water from the Mediterrainean broke through the strip of land at the Dardanelles. This caused a cataclysmic flood around the Black Sea area, inudating hundreds of square miles, including the proto-civilization.

Now the flood took about 48 hours to fill up the black sea. Everyone should have been able to escape. But over the millenia, as the story was told orally, embellishments were added on to it. You know how Granpa said he blocked the exploding grenade with his helmet, shot Heinrich Himmler, and did all that other crap during the war? Anyway, this story was told orally for 3,000 years before a distorted version of it was written down in the classic "Epic of Gilgamesh", the first great literary achievement.(read it. It's very good.)

The Flood legend was incorporated into pretty much every culture in the fetile crescent area, including the jewish culture.

Other legends: The indians of the Columbia Basin in WA st. also have a flood myth. This is from the devastating Missoula Floods. This series of floods was caused by an ice dam reapededly blocking the Clark Fork River. It formed a lake the size of Lk Eerie behind it and it was 2,000 feet deep. When the dam broke, it realesed a 2000 foot high wall of water, devastating everything and killing any indians in it's path. These floods also formed huge rock coulees all over the columbia basin.

Another one is Atlantis: This was probably the island of Thera near crete. It had a very technologically advanced Minoan city on it. Then one day, the Thera volcano exploded with a force many, many times more than the Krakatoa eruption. It sunk part of the island and also produced huge tidal waves.

Noah's Ark

[DeadBugs]

Robert Ballard who found the wreck of the Titanic. According to the article he is searching the Black Sea "where four 1,500-year-old wooden ships were found two years ago. He's looking for evidence of a great flood, possibly linked to the story of Noah's ark"

Re:Noah's Ark

[The Good Reverend]

Perhaps if he's looking for such evidence FOR a flood he should also check out the mountains of evidence AGAINST a global flood. While this document deals largely with the Noah's Ark myth, it has a good deal of information on the geological and logistical problems associated.

Re:Noah's Ark

[arkanes]

There's evidence for a nearly world-wide flood, too - there's examples of the flood myth in native american mythology (can't remember the tribe, sorry), babylonian, bible (of course), hindi, practically every culture has one.

Re:Noah's Ark

[The Good Reverend]

That doesn't mean there was a global flood, that just means there were lots of little floods.

Re:Noah's Ark

[Peyna]

There are many many texts, including the Bible and Gilgamesh just to name 2 which have an account of a great flood. (Both corresponding to approximately the same time period for the flood occuring). I'd say from the evidence and everything else that there probably was a huge flood at some point in time that killed a lot of people, whether or not it occured exactly as describe in the book of Genesis, I am not certain.

Re:Noah's Ark

[the phantom]

It is little wonder that both the Bible and Epic of Gilgamesh have many common themes. Much of the Bible was written by people who had lived in Summaria, then left, perhaps because they felt that civillization was wrong. There are many themes that are repeated in both Gilgamesh and the Bible.

In Gilgamesh, the walls are made of "...burnt brick and good." (Sandars, 61) In the Bible, people come together, saying "...let us make bricks, and burn them thoughly," in order to create the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:3). The Jews regarded the Ziggarat (Summerian temple/pyramid/great public work) as a bad thing made of burnt brick. This smae structure was at the core of Summerian life. The same thing is described by both Summerians and Jews with very similar language (perhaps the building blocks of an oral tradition cum written document.

The flood is another major theme in both documents. However, the Jews saw the flood as a punishment. People were wicked and corrupt, so they had to be wiped from the face of the Earth. This was not done on a whim. In Gilgamesh, Enlil (one of the gods) says "the uproar of mankind is intolerableand sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel" and the gods decide to wipe out humanity on a whim so they can sleep (Sandars 108).

The Jews migrated out of Summaria, forsaking Summarian civilization to become sheperds. While many of the stories were turned on their heads to better fit the Jewish world view, many elements were taken from the familier Summerian stories. The fact that there are similarities is more likely evidence of common cultural heritage rather than common events in some long forgotton past.


References

Coogan, Michael D.
1991. The NewOxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press:New York.

Sandars, N. K., trans. and ed.
1972. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Books:London.

Re:Noah's Ark

[Peyna]

You must be the only person on /. to actually provide references with your comments. I swear my English profs would have fits if they saw everyone else's posts =]

Re:Noah's Ark

[arkanes]

well, there certainly is. I'm not saying there was a flood, just that the flood is a common thread between civilization, which is a reason to look for a connection. There's no evidence AGAINST vampires, after all.

(For what it's worth, I think it's more likely that the flood legends are based on local flooding caused by global climate change, not that the entire world was flooded all at the same time)

Re:Noah's Ark

[elefantstn]

Much of the Bible was written by people who had lived in Summaria, then left, perhaps because they felt that civillization was wrong.

Whoa, slow down there, Sparky. First of all, none of the Bible was actually written until, at the very earliest, the 10th century BCE.

Secondly, even if by "written," you really meant "composed [orally]," it's hardly "much of the Bible." Casting aside the unsubstantiated migration from Sumeria theory, more than 90% of the material in the Old Testament describes events that took place after these people lived, so they hardly could have written it.

Thirdly, as far as migration out of Sumeria is concerned -- it's totally tangential to your point. The fertile crescent was crisscrossed by trade roads, so there's no reason to assume that the only way the Hebrews had contact with Mesopotamian legends was through having lived there and left.

Re:Noah's Ark

[The Good Reverend]

I don't know if you've noticed, but many places in the world regularly flood, and have for many thousands of years. The most likely explaination is minor, not major, flooding.

Re:Noah's Ark

[EnderWiggnz]

oh my god.

let me guess - christian fundamentalist?

its common speculation that much of the old testament and new testament was lifted from local legends.

The creation story is a mirror image of the Enuma Elish legend, down to what was created on what day.

The flood story is a mirror image of the gilgamesh legend.

and the "jesus story" is a mirror image of the su-god legend.

you're bible is a neat story, but it isnt particularly creative, or true. just rehashes of old legends.

Re:Noah's Ark

[elefantstn]

Listen here, dumbass -- I am not a Christian fundamentalist. I don't even know where the hell you got that idea from. I majored in Mediterranean Studies in college, and your Discovery Channel knowledge frankly doesn't impress me. I know the origins of the biblical stories you just quoted, and only about half of them are really derivative. The other half just represent archetypes that show up in stories all over the world.

So please, don't try to troll someone who knows more than you.

Re:Noah's Ark

[the phantom]

Pardon me, you are correct; I was being a bit liberal with the language. Compiled into some form of oral tradition is more what I was trying to express.

Also, you are right that similarities in material and oral traditions could be related to trade networks, I seem to recall something from Intro to Arch about the Jews coming out of Summeria. As the class was several years ago, and the mid-east/Palestine/the Mediteranean is not my area of expertise, I am more than willing to concede that point as well.

As for the comment about "much of the Bible," the first 10-15 or so chapters of Genesis deal with topics that are common to both traditions. This is not a majority of the Bible, or a great plurality even, but I would argue that this counts as "much." The term is subjective, and is once again a mistake or misuse of the language on my part, and I should have limited my comments to Genesis. I apologize for being unclear.

Still, all of this is somewhat tangential to the core of my argument, which is that there is, in fact, a common origin. Parts of Hebrew (and later Christian, Muslim, and Morman) mythology are derived from Mesopotamian myths, and that it should come as no suprise that common themes appear.

Re:Noah's Ark

[the phantom]

Summerian civilization is (arguably) the oldest human civilization. They popped up in the fertile cresent between the Tigris and Euphretis Rivers about 7 kBP (BP == years before present). The Greeks appeared maybe 4 kBP, though "classical" Greek civilization was much later, maybe 2-2.5 kBP. The Jews have been around for perhaps 5 thousand years.

It is probable that there was some contact between the ancient Greeks and Jews, and it is possible that Jewish culture and lore had an effect upon Greek traditions, but I don't really know to what extent.

SHORT ANSWER: Summerian and Jewish culture are both older than Greek culture.

However, I have little expertise in the Mediteranean (or the Old World in general -- I am much more interested in the hunter-gatherer societies of the pre-historic New World than Old World ancient civ.). The above dates are all from required Western Civ course and associated textbook:

Mattews, Roy T. and F. DeWitt Platt, eds.
2001. The Westen Humanities: Volume One: Beginnings through the Renaissance, 4th Ed.Mayfield Publishing Company:Mountain View, CA.

If there is some one with more knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong.

Re:Noah's Ark

[the phantom]

The reasons for the recurrances can probably be tracked to two or three factors. First, there is the obvious common origin idea... these themes all come from some common event, culture, or oral tradition.

The other possibility is that they are simply archetypes that tend to appear because humans are all basically alike. For instance, hero figures tend to be very similar across many cultures. Or take creation stories as an example. Nearly every culture has a creation myth. They often include a "man is wicked and so must be punished" theme. The floods in the Bible and Gilgamesh. Escaping from the underworld in south west American Indian lore. Examples can be found in Greek and Norse mythology as well.

Or elightenment style stories. The apple in the Garden of Eden. Prometheis bringing fire to humans. Coyote doing the same for the Hopi.

Anthropologists have studied the commonality of themes in folklore, and the jury still seems to be out. There are those that argue that all folklore follows one of several trajectories, containing a finite number of themes that are deeply ingrained in human culture. Others argue that common folklore represents common cultural traditions and see commonalities as evidence of some great cultural heritage.

In the end, I feel that some middle ground is most probable. There is some shared tradtion, but there are also themes that tend to have an effect on people. Those themes are explored in nearly every culture: why are we here? what makes us (humans) unique in the world? how do you define good and bad?

Now, as it is way past the time I am generally long asleep, I must bid you good night.

Re:Noah's Ark

[elefantstn]

Still, all of this is somewhat tangential to the core of my argument, which is that there is, in fact, a common origin. Parts of Hebrew (and later Christian, Muslim, and Morman) mythology are derived from Mesopotamian myths, and that it should come as no suprise that common themes appear.

That, I certainly agree with. I was just correcting a few factual errors in your previous post -- the essence of your argument, though, is totally correct.

Re:Still more evidence for creationism

[spike hay]

Actually, this city has sunk because the sea levels have risen since the last ice age. U see, during the last ice age, much of the ocean's water was locked up in ice. Sea level was about 300 feet lower than it is today. As the ice melted over several millenia, sea levels rose to their present levels.

Anyway, I think we would see some real evidence for a world engulfing flood that occured only 5,000 years ago. Using the bible's genealogy and stuff, scholars have pinpointed the year of Noah's flood according to the bible. It supposedly was around 2700 BC. Funny that the egyptians and the Sumerians never seemed to notice it!

Re:global flood

[garcia]

no one doubts the flood. Hell, there have been many theories about how the story originated. It most likely did happen.

I don't see how the finding of this city (or any other city) or that some city was flooded proves there is a god, and He created us.

Re:Still more evidence for creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this "interesting?" The above comment is sheer nonsense, flaimbait at best.

Floods happen. End of story. How is this "proof" of creationism? How does this "disprove" evolution? This discovery does neither.

Re:Still more evidence for creationism

[trix_e]

exactly what I was thinking!

more vindication for my theory that the Flintstones is, in fact, a documentary... They can't hide the truth forever.

Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[boltar]

I've never understood why academia seem so intent
on believing that civilization has only been
around
for the last 4 or 5 thousand years or so. After
all, if the genetic record is correct homo sapiens
have been around for a few hundred thousand years
at least and I find it far harder to believe that
in all that time all humans did was hunt and gather as opposed to them building cities and
towns. Carving blocks of stone , building roads
etc isn't rocket science and if some race had built
a city 100,000 years ago VERY little of it would
still be around today (Ice Ages notwithstanding).
Look at how little is left of most Roman ruins and
they're only 2000 years old!
Though Graham Hancock may come out with a lot of
BS at times , I think in this case he's spot on.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[MindStalker]

Not really the foundation of rome was only 735BC and wasn't the democratic society that we know of till 509BC.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[Cally]

I've never understood why academia seem so intent
on believing that civilization has only been
around
for the last 4 or 5 thousand years or so.

It's not that they're intent on proving it; it's just that there's little or no evidence of any large settlements before then. What artifacts we do have are consistent with loosely organised, unsepcialised hunter-gatherer type societies. No big conspiracy, honestly.

And are you American by any chance? If you lived in Europe you'd realise the Romans left a LOT of stuff behind. And of course Roman civilisation goes back a couple of thousand years BC.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[Tenebrious1]

For the same reason most people think the Internet was created in 1996. Sure, it existed much longer. I started using email, ftp, and gopher back in the mid 80's. But we didn't have MS Outlook, we didn't have IE, we didn't have Netscape. All the sudden, in 1996, the WWW blossomed, and all these tools became available. WWW became the "Internet". Hardly anyone believes anything could possibly have existed before 1996. Finding a fully graphical web browser that was written in 1975, like finding a massive city over 10000 years old would be a huge surprise- if not impossible.

Homo Sapiens has been around for some 250k years. But they were our predecessors- we are classed as Homo Sapien Sapien- who've only been around for about 40k years. The Cro Mags. The difference between the Homo Sapiens and Homo Sapein Sapiens is that the latter, us, settled down, started farming, domesticating animals, using bows and arrows to hunt.

So while we can't rule out there were massive civilizations by an known race of humans (or aliens), judging by what science has uncovered, the cro mags were the first to settle in community groups that gave rise to civilization as we know it.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[hattig]

Agreed to some extent. Depends on the society that the humans lived in though. Caves could have been adequate for a society which did not grow in size. Nomadic societies have no reason for cities. Once a cave dweller discovers something that lets the society grow however, or the nomads discover somewhere that is always plentiful, then maybe the need for cities would arise. And they would most likely start off with wooden frames covered in skins or large leaves, mud walls perhaps first. And society would have lived like this for many thousands of years.

Then you get climate changes which force the society to move to better climes, and this is what most likely makes leaps in development. If you have a mud house, then why make a wooden house or a stone house? But if you have no house and there is a lot of wood or stone lying around, then why not use these for building your new dwelling? Especially if the soil is not suitable for making mud houses! Necessity breeds invention?

Carving blocks of stone with wood or bone doesn't work! You need something that can carve that stone - perhaps harder stone like flint on softer stone? But not much would remain of a sandstone dwelling after 10,000 years! To cut decent stone that would last to today you need metal. And when did people find out how to make metal? People will be asking these questions for hundreds of years to come...

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[the phantom]

FYI, Roman civ. only goes back to maybe 2.5-3 k years, not a "couple of thousand" of years BC.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[betis70]

Hmm I thought the Roman EMPIRE started under the EMPEROR, Caesar Augustus circa 27 BC.

Prior to that it was just a land-grubbing, republican nation-state.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[(void*)]

It's called evidence. The evidence before that is just good not enough, although there are reasons to believe such ancient civilizations did exist.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[swillden]

Carving blocks of stone , building roads etc isn't rocket science

Isn't it? Have you ever tried it? No fair using carbon-steel tools, either. For that matter, have you ever tried chipping flint to make stone tools? Or tried tanning and cutting a hide to make clothing? Again, no scissors, please.

In fact many of the "simple" technologies that we consider trivial because we can now do so much more are really anything but trivial. They were far from obvious and took a long time to develop and perfect.

And the idea of a road had to have been a blindingly brilliant insight at first. I mean, everyone knew how nice it was when a nice, broad, smooth path went where you wanted to go, but the idea of cutting and scraping the land to *make* it that way so that you could move people and goods easily... that can't have been obvious. Many of the peoples conquered by the Romans were both puzzled and awed by the Roman army's focus on and ability to construct roads. The whole road-building idea was *not* obvious, much less the techniques used to do it. But it was an extremely powerful idea, and a major part of why Rome was able to dominate so much of the world.

Heck, if I was the Cro-Magnon patent examiner, I'd have granted "Method for using rock and compacted soil for constructing broad and smooth artificial pathways to improve travel and transportation of people, goods, livestock and armies", wouldn't you?

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[austad]

Actually, Antarctica used to be where austrailia is, and it wasn't covered with ice. There's a very good chance that there are ruins under 2 miles of ice there. In fact, Plato had detailed maps of the land under antarctica which he says he copied from sources that were very ancient. One of the notable things about the maps is that the measurements for latitude are extremely accurate. Our current civilization didn't develop an accurate way to measure latitude until the 1400's.

A good book to check out is Graham Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods". It gets a little fanatical towards the end but it's very interesting.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[KjetilK]

Carving blocks of stone , building roads etc isn't rocket science

Why the hell would you go around carving blocks of stone and build roads when you're out hunting happily?

It's not a question if they had the brains to do it, we haven't changed much since then, it is a question of whether they had any interest in doing it. They may not have had that.

and if some race had built a city 100,000 years ago VERY little of it would still be around today (Ice Ages notwithstanding). Look at how little is left of most Roman ruins and they're only 2000 years old!

What? You need to do a lot more travelling! There are so many roman ruins around, you wouldn't believe it! Yeah, I've done a lot of travelling, and I've seen tons of them. If you had seen Pompeii, there is no way you would have made such a statement, because that city might well have been preserved for another 98000 years.

Ever heard of fossils? There are many excellently preserved fossils on record that are many millions of years old.

If, for some reason, our civilization had died out, it is very likely that there would be tons of stuff left after us to be found in 100 000 years.

That being said, I'm as excited by lost cities as anybody.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[Tony-A]

There is also no country (in the "western" world anyway) which I am aware of which is as insular and generally unaware of the outside world as the US.
An oversimplification, but is, IMHO, an accurate accessment, but hardly unique to Americans, and hardly uniform within America.
Americans can for the most part safely ignore the rest of the world in their daily routine. Canadians tend to be acutely aware of what's going on stateside, because the Canadian economy tends to flow North-South rather than East-West and small changes within the US can have large impacts on Canadians. New Yorkers safely ignore the rest of the country, except maybe Los Angeles. I suspect that good Parisians safely ignore the Provinces and the same type of situation should apply to Berliners.
The awareness is not "being able to point to my hometown", but like the awareness you would have of New York City when you are somewhere in rural New Jersey. It's the persistent pressure of your neighbors' existence.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[locust]

It's not that they're intent on proving it; it's just that there's little or no evidence of any large settlements before then.

No, there isn't a whole set of people who made their bread and butter on one set of theories, and whose egos have expanded to enormous size. They have no vested interest in preserving the status quo. And there is no peer review, by which the old established theories get entrenched.

All science at the high level is done in spite of the politics that goes on in academia and everywhere else. Probably the examples most familiar to the average /. reader are those dealing with the catholic church. And while today, you wouldn't burn someone at the stake, you could certainly deny him funding, snow job his work, or just attack him personally in academic circles.

In this vien one might think, well there is no evidence, we would have looked and found it. But have we infact looked and found it? Or did funding some piece of revolutionary research not fit in somebody's personal agenda?

Its not all this black, but this sort of thing goes on much more than any academic would like to admit.

--locust

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[ahde]

Once a cave dweller discovers something that lets the society grow however

Like sex? Every civilization thinks they're the first to discover it.

Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal?

[MrOrn]

I presume you are referring to the Piri Reis map. I'd suggest that Plato had nothing to do with it. Pretty much all the serious archaelogical study of this has shown that it is not at all accurate. For a debunking, see http://www.intersurf.com/~chalcedony/FOG9.html.

Anything that involves Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods (his degree is, by the way, in sociology, not anything related to archaeology or history), I'd take a barrel full of salt before believing. For a debunking of the book, see http://www.intersurf.com/~chalcedony/wildside.shtm l.

Basically the man is a fraud. His basic premise is "I think this based on my naive intuition - I am well informed, so I don't have to do any research into the technical aspects of archaeology, nor do I need to actually prove my theory with any evidence. It's up to the archaeologists to disprove my theory. However, what they say is only subjective opinion (not based on a lifetime or multiple lifetimes of research and discovery, of course).

Re:Still more evidence for creationism

[AftanGustur]

Let's see how quickly the evolutionists try to cover this one up.

Well, scientists have been proven wrong numerous times before, that's the difference between science and pseudo-science, you can't prove pseude-science wrong because they are based on a belive in themselves. (I.e. you can walk through that wall if you stop beliving it's there (and all of scientology's 'technology'))

The evolutionists will simply adapt to new facts (if there is anything that needs adapting, that is)

Science is a process, not a belive.

Western scientists must be pretty dumb!

[seldolivaw]

Personally, if I heard a legend about 7 temples, and the 7th temple was not only already discovered standing on land, but also one of the most photographed temples in India, then I'd be inclined to believe the other 6 temples existed, wouldn't you? Call me wacky...

Re:Western scientists must be pretty dumb!

[i0lanthe]

Well... if I recall correctly, people didn't believe Troy existed either until Schliemann said he'd dug it up. (though there seems to be dispute over whether that really was Troy.) Some things don't change much, eh.

Re:Western scientists must be pretty dumb!

[ahde]

no, people weren't sure where troy was until he found it -- though many suspected it was somewhere around where he was searching.

Re:Warning !

[Kierthos]

1) It's R'lyeh.

2) Leng is always depicted in the Lovecraftian stories as being on a plateau. (And presented in "The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath" as actually being in Earth's Dreamlands).

Although it is an underwater city... I suspect that the aqua-archaeologists couldn't recognize an Elder Sign until it was far too late.

Kierthos

Ancient Civs

[Vidmaster_Steve]

Back in high school Chem class, we had to argue pro or con for a Nuke plant to be built locally (one, rural Nevada... why bother?). Me, always being an argumentative dickhead, chose to Devil's Advocate the task, and sided with the whiny, anti-nuke hippies.

Aaaanyhow, one of the arguments that I had used was that there are extinct civilizations that have only died out as recent as FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, and we, with all our fancy European-style education have yet to come within reasonable nearness to decyphering their written language.

So, I argued, what if... Something catastrophic happens again, and in a few thousand years, after civilization has dragged itself back up through the ashes to the point where its out exploring the seas again in galleys and colonizing the farthest reaches of the globe. What if... What if they stumble across the Yucca Mountain dump?
Now, they have absolutley no knowledge of what that yellow and black circle, divided up into sixths means. They're seeing metal signs with an indecypherable alien text on them. They find these vaults, and manage to tunnel in and are exposed to radiation. Potential catastrophy there...

Anyhow. Since I got to thinking about that, then I start thinking some more. What if it had already happened once? What if Jericho weren't really the "First City?" What if we humans became significantly advanced (pre-industrial age or so?) then got wiped out by the encroaching glaciation? Which would explain the decided lack of structures and monuments, with the notable exception of the alleged sunken cities in the Sea of Japan, off India and Cuba.

I read somewhere that the temples at Ankor could be upwards of 12k years old. Which predates the "Fertile Crescent" civs by at least a thousand years...

Just the ruminations of a crazy drunk that's been up for three days. Responses would be keen, a full-fucking-fledged discussion would rock.

Re:Ancient Civs

[Leven Valera]

I was reading a book the other day by Michael Cremo which had a theory in it that man has been on this planet, in our current form, for at least two million years, and our current society is not the first enlightened civilization. Neat stuff.

LV

Re:Ancient Civs

[2nd Post!]

Have you heard of laser induced fission?

Take a laser of high enough energy to encourage radioactive material to fise until it reaches a suitably short half life and is safe to store? Say a half life of a couple months?

The neat part is that it may be possible to get more energy out of the reaction than we put in, at least for the first few cycles; uranium, plutonium, etc.

The advantages are twofold;no nuclear reactor would need critical masses, and nuclear waste would only be as dangerous as we choose not to degrade it, according to energy cost. If a half life of 100 years is acceptable, we can choose that. If a half life of 1000 years is acceptable, we can choose that.

This presupposes of course that research into laser induced fission proceeds on course.

Google search.

Re:Ancient Civs

[KieranElby]

> What if they [future civs] stumble across the Yucca Mountain dump?

This is getting slightly off-topic, but the nuclear industry has been researching how to warn future civilisations 10000 years later about nuclear waste.

There's some excerpts from a report here that are surprisingly interesting reading.

Amongst other things, the report discusses using earthworks and markers to try and convey an impression of danger and inhospitability - but, importantly, without making the waste repository look like it might contain anything valuable. After all, it did not take long for grave-robbers to break into the pyramids, curse or no curse...

Re:Ancient Civs

[gUmbi]

Take a laser of high enough energy to encourage radioactive material to fise until it reaches a suitably short half life and is safe to store? Say a half life of a couple months?

This might be a dumb question but what are you going to use to power this laser?

Jason.

Re:Ancient Civs

[blair1q]

You aren't the first smartass to think of this.

The regulations for storing nuclear waste long-term require that the legends on the site be durable, pictographic, and clear enough that anybody could understand that this place is bad.

Which sure helped the Pharaohs protect their treasure...

--Blair

Re:Ancient Civs

[MAJ Rantage]

Oh don't worry....the giant laser is on the moon, and we're using solar power.

And we shall call it...the Alan Parsons Project!

Re:Ancient Civs

[Galvatron]

Well, we have found things like bodies frozen in glaciers, and they've all looked like hunters and gatherers. It's possible there were a few cities here or there, but it seems unlikely that civilization was widespread. Besides, there's plenty of areas the glaciers didn't roll over, around the equator for instance, where one would still expect to find ruins. There could, as you say, have been a few pre-industrial societies, but certainly nothing advanced.

Regarding the whole "what if future explorers blunder into a radioactive dumping ground?" I have to admit that the possibility of maybe half a dozen explorers in a post-apocolytic world dying from radiation does not seem like a compelling reason not to use nuclear power.

Re:Ancient Civs

[arkanes]

They should design ingenious puzzles and traps to snare the wary, with lots pf pressure plates and levers and stone blocks. Then only Lara Croft will be able to get in!

On a more serious note, how are they going to get pictoglyphs that are any more dangerous looking than "curse of the mummy' type stuff? Images of the face from "Scream" are all well and good, but that's more or less what they egyptians had on thier pyramids.

Re:Ancient Civs

[jafac]

What destroyed the ancients?

onerous copyright protection laws.

Re:Ancient Civs

[2nd Post!]

I like the black hole concept.

Why not scatter, near the surface, a low amount of radioactive material, intentionally?

Not lethal levels, but enough to be measurably higher than the background, so that the casual adventurer with the right tools would realize this place is radioactive, with an obvious gradient from background to max near the center?

For that matter, why not have 'fossilized' bodies, 'skeletal' shapes, and such, litter the landscape, made of impossibly tough materials? Like, say, titanium? If they are advanced enough to process the titanium, they should be advanced enough to figure out the whole purpose of the site, and if they cannot cut/process the titanium, then, well, wouldn't it be awfully foreboding to see the utterly black surface pockmarked by skeletal remains?

April Fools?

[mac.newbold]

Does anyone else find it interesting that the article says:

"The discovery was made on 1 April by a joint team of divers from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography and the Scientific Exploration Society based in Dorset."

Sounds like it might have been a joke that the BBC picked up on about 10 days late...

Mac

Re:April Fools?

[Hard_Code]

And what about this:

"Expedition leader Monty Halls"

How many gold pieces and dragon treasure did they find?

Re:Still more evidence for creationism

[BWJones]

Let's see how quickly the evolutionists try to cover this one up.

How do you make this leap of logic based on the article? And why we are here, why is it that evolution and religion have to be mutually exclusive? I am a hard core scientist (neurophysiologist), that also happens to believe in God. What is there to say that God cannot work through evolution? To deny evolution exists is to be blind to the world around you.

Think about the following:

Why is it that bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics? Evolution. This is a reality and we have to deal with it daily.

Its always the same

[Psiren]

Its always the same isn't it. Years and years and no citties to be seen. Then suddenly three turn up at once! ;-)

Funny about the dates...

[rsidd]

First, the surviving temple is certainly not 5000 years old: it dates from the 7th or 8th century AD.
Second, Hindu civilization itself is old but not that old. For temples of this kind, 1000 BC would be an optimistic early limit; 3000 BC is out of the question.
From this article it seems that the claim of 5000 years comes from Graham Hancock, a controversial writer about "lost civilizations". I'd like to see the opinion backed by some credible evidence.

Re:Funny about the dates...

[BlueUnderwear]

Indeed, some dates are rather funny, most importantly the date of discovery:

The discovery was made on 1 April by a joint team of divers from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography and the Scientific Exploration Society based in Dorset.

Re:Funny about the dates...

[Black Parrot]

> I coulda sworn that the Bhavad Gita was about 5000 years old, dating back to near Mesopotamian age.

If you do decide to swear that, don't swear it on your yarbles or anything else you hold dear.

Re:Funny about the dates...

[sisukapalli1]

The Rig Veda is widely believed as the most ancient script. Bhagavad Gita is what has been preached by Lord Krishna during the Mahabharata time, so it would be fairly yound document.

Interestingly, the first verse of Rig Veda says something like this (paraphrasing...)

"There was no truth before life, no falsehood, no sky, no space. Where was all hidden, who dug it up? Where was all the water?"

Sastry

Re:Funny about the dates...

[loche451]

Graham Hancock has written several books, probably the most well-known is Finger Prints of the Gods. I would highly recommend reading it. BTW- it has about 50 pages of footnotes, so it is not like he is pulling his theories out of his butt.

He does provide an interesting link between alot of facts...and goes into detail about which facts are accepted, and which are not...and then provides usually compelling evidence for either side.

For example: Probably the easiest thing to point out is that the Pires Ries Map (I know I spelled that wrong) has a landmass drawn upon it that fits extremely closely with antartica...only problem is the the Pires Ries map was drawn up in the 1500's based upon a collection of older maps. Antartica was officially discovered in the late 1800s and has still not been entirely surveyed (to my knowledge at least) but enough major points of interest match to say it is a rendering of antartica before 2 miles thick of ice covered the continent.

Another good example would be water errosion found on the Sphinx in egypt. (the evidence is accepted by geologists, but denied by egyptologists) The last time enough water was in egpyt to account for that level of errosion is guessed to be about 10,000 bc or thereabout.

Some of it may be crap...but alot of these facts are extremely conspicous. I hope the reseachers find some more questions to ask based on these new ruins.

Re:Funny about the dates...

[Phork]

The Bhagavad Gita purports to have last been told to mankind by Krishna 5000 years ago.

Re:Funny about the dates...

[btellier]

"facts can be used to prove anything that's even remotely true"

This is especially true with consipiracy theorists and people who want to believe in archeological coverups, such as that the pyramids were built by aliens. Anyone can skew the facts in their own book to make it seem plausible.

Re:Funny about the dates...

[Chris Mattern]

> BTW- it has about 50 pages of footnotes, so it is not like he is pulling his theories out of his butt.

Unless, of course, he's also pulling the footnotes out of his butt. Footnotes are not meant to admired for their sheer mass--"Oooh, lookit all the footnotes! He *must* be a scholar!"--but to be followed, checked, and used to see if his sources truly do support his conclusions.

Chris Mattern

April Fools?

[Dunkirk]

Found on April 1 with a team leader by the name "Monty Halls?" Sounds like a prank to me...

sea level rise

[Alien54]

Scientists now want to explore the possibility that the city was submerged following the last Ice Age.

If this proves correct, it would date the discovery at more than 5,000 years old.

Actually I thought the sea level rose about 120 meters at the end of the last ice age (starting about 20,000 years ago)

There are some interesting graphics here: One, Two, Three

Re:sea level rise

[Peyna]

Why does everyone say 'the end of the last ice age'? We are still in the middle of an ice age that just happens to be in a slight recession. Just because half of the US isn't covered in ice doesn't mean it's not an ice age. In fact, we are about 1.6 million years into this ice age. Periods like the one that we are in right now (where it is warmer there's not so much ice everywhere except at the poles and on mountains) tend to last about 10-15,000 years. I guess that means we're due for some more ice pretty soon.

If you don't believe, go pick up the nearest geology book and have a good read.

Re:sea level rise

[Alien54]

Why does everyone say 'the end of the last ice age'? We are still in the middle of an ice age that just happens to be in a slight recession.

Unfortunately, the periodic elements usually cite as contributing to an Ice Age usually vary over tens of thousands of years, not Millions. Check out thies graphs on Orbital eccentricity, Axis Tilt, and Precession of the Equinoxes. There is a Composite Graph as well.

End result is that we do knot know what actually causes the Ice Ages; these variations seem to be operating at the wrong time scale. More realistic factors include Plate tectonics (the forming of Panama as a link block off the Pacific from the Atlantic) - Solar activity also indicates global warming on Mars, which would indicate that the sun is slowly warming up.

All of which puts the nature and duration of the current "warm period" into confusion.

But then, I find pictures like this of Mars fascinating, since it looks so much like standing water, when this is of course impossible. I don't know what to make of it. Damn good illusion, if nothing else

Re:sea level rise

[Fizzlewhiff]

Why does everyone say 'the end of the last ice age'?

No doubt! Bud Ice, Icehouse, Molson Ice, one only has to go as far as the supermarket to see we are in an ice age.

Re:sea level rise

[Tony-A]

Major culprit for the ice ages is probably the Himalayan(sp?) Mountains. Disturbs air flow and pulls CO2 from the atmosphere.
If you consider the earth as a heat engine which basically takes in heat at the equater and radiates it out to space from the poles, where the boundaries of this engine are made of air and water, and no good idea as to what it takes to switch from one equilibrium state to another, ....
A plausible consequence of "global warming" is another ice age, not the most likely, but not unreasonable.
Somebody that actually knows the stuff could fill in better than this, but the minor contributers are probably just that, minor.

Here is the Text

[akiaki007]

Here is the text as requested by some users:

An ancient underwater city has been discovered off the coast of south-eastern India.

Divers from India and England made the discovery based on the statements of local fishermen and the old Indian legend of the Seven Pagodas.

The ruins, which are off the coast of Mahabalipuram, cover many square miles and seem to prove that a major city once stood there.

A further expedition to the region is now being arranged which will take place at the beginning of 2003.

'International significance'

The discovery was made on 1 April by a joint team of divers from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography and the Scientific Exploration Society based in Dorset.

Expedition leader Monty Halls said: "Our divers were presented with a series of structures that clearly showed man-made attributes.

"The scale of the site appears to be extremely extensive, with 50 dives conducted over a three-day period covering only a small area of the overall ruin field.

"This is plainly a discovery of international significance that demands further exploration and detailed investigation."

During the expedition to the site, divers came across structures believed to be man-made.

One of the buildings appears to be a place of worship, although they could only view part of what is a huge area suggesting a major city.

Jealous Gods

The myths of Mahabalipuram were first set down in writing by British traveller J. Goldingham who visited the South Indian coastal town in 1798, at which time it was known to sailors as the Seven Pagodas.

The myths speak of six temples submerged beneath the waves with the seventh temple still standing on the seashore.

The myths also state that a large city once stood here which was so beautiful the gods became jealous and sent a flood that swallowed it up entirely in a single day.

One of the expedition team, Graham Hancock, said: "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."

Scientists now want to explore the possibility that the city was submerged following the last Ice Age.

If this proves correct, it would date the discovery at more than 5,000 years old.

How to veiw this

[secondsun]

Southern Baptist -- "See? They worshipped their gods and look what our God did to them!"

Hindu -- "We were right all along."

Creationist -- "Let's see how long it will be before the evolutionists try to cover this one up."

Evolutionist -- "Where is my shovel?"

Historian -- "Legends really do rave a basis in fact, whoda thunk it?"

Captialist -- "Get your 6 temple tour here today!"

Di$ney -- "We are working on our new film, Searh for the six temples. PLease pay our Congressmen accordingly."

Mafia -- "Oh damn, there goes our hiding spot."

</humor>
<serious>
Our world is so huge and our history is so enormous. Why is it that when a site of great historical impoartance is found that there are always dozens of holy rollers that try to twist it more than what it is? (That being an archaeological find.) I find it amazing that we could be so close to something so signifigant and think it wasn't there for 2000 years. Kinda makes me wonder about Atlantis.

Secondsun

Re:How to veiw this

[Bandman]

LOL i had to laugh at that....i guess according to the guide above, I'm Hindu/Evolutionist...with a slight twist of Mafia...

Re:How to veiw this

[Tackhead]

> Southern Baptist -- "See? They worshipped their gods and look what our God did to them!"
>Hindu -- "We were right all along."
>Creationist -- "Let's see how long it will be before the evolutionists try to cover this one up."
>Evolutionist -- "Where is my shovel?"
>Historian -- "Legends really do rave a basis in fact, whoda thunk it?"
>Captialist -- "Get your 6 temple tour here today!"
>Di$ney -- "We are working on our new film, Searh for the six temples. PLease pay our Congressmen accordingly."
>Mafia -- "Oh damn, there goes our hiding spot."

Illuminist: "And those Discordian bastards stole the statues we were planning to sell them!"

Discordian: "Hot shit! 8 months after a splinter group of the Leauge of Assassins goes apeshit, 6 months after we barely catch the germ warfare leaks in time, and only a week after we buy the luxury submarine we read about on Slashdot, and we've got the gold Atlantean statues! Finally, we can buy the Mob back from the Illuminati and stop the power grab in the States. (Dorn, that's your job!) The rest of us will haul ass through the secret tunnel to Lake Totenkopf! Let's move it, we've only got three weeks to go before they immanentize the Eschaton!"

(I gave up on reality when I realized the The Illuminatus! Trilogy, (1975), was a better guide to world events fnord than CNN. Robert Anton Wilson was right -- science fiction fnord authors aren't writing fiction, they're just people who happen to be travelling backwards in time fnord and they're writing their memoirs...)

Re:How to veiw this

[Anthony Boyd]

</serious>

Sorry, just couldn't stand to have an unclosed tag. 8^)

Re:Still more evidence for creationism

[Tenebrious1]

They have discovered what they think to be the site of the great flood, around 5500BCE around the Black Sea. The idea is that it was a large, freshwater lake before then judging from the shellfish they've dug up in core samples. After the 5500BCE layer they find only saltwater shellfish. The earth wall at istanbul collapsed and the sea rushed in, doubling the size of the Black Sea.

The Babylons did notice, for there is a legend of Gilgamesh searching for the survivor of the great flood, which eventually turned into the Noah story in Genesis from what I understand of it.

And even if it isn't the origin of the biblical flood, it's still a pretty cool discovery.

Re:Just wait until more exploration is done...

[Unknown Poltroon]

I Think that thats too long a time sacle for humans. Weve been "human" for the past, call it 500,000 years give or take, which is nothing in goelogical, continental drift terms. THe continents probably moved a mile or two in that time.

Ummm

[wiredog]

You didn't read that comment, did you? Ballard is looking for evidence of a great not global flood.

Re:Ummm

[The Good Reverend]

Yes, but if said "great" flood is supposed to be linked to the Noah's Ark story, it would follow that it was a global issue. Regardless, it's still good information.

Re:global flood

[jamie]

"What he argues is that there most likely existed a global environmental disaster, most likely a flood, that occured in ancient times and was incorporated into the myths of many cultures."

A flood at the end of the last Ice Age (ca. 9,000 BC)? I am shocked, shocked to learn that the melting of planet-girdling glaciers could somehow be linked with deluges of water.

UK researcher: crackpot or for real?

[Cally]

This chap (Graham Hancock) is really very interesting. He recently had a series of (IIRC) six shows on TV here in the UK looking at various evidence he'd accumulated to backup his theory. The basic hypothesis as I understand it is that there were complex, advanced, city-building civilisations BEFORE or possibly DURING the last ice-age; but that most of the evidence was lost under water at the end of the last ice age when the sea level rose. (Of course they'd only be in relatively shallow water, not far offshore - continental shelves, down to a couple of hundred feet. The claimed ruins off Cuba are supposed to be several THOUSAND feet down, which sounds highly unlikely to me -- unless Cuba has a hitherto unknown tectonic fracture or something...

The case against seems to be that (a) the earliest settlements accepted by most archeologists go back perhaps 6000 or 7000 years, and these are flimsy houses built of wood, reeds, thatch etc - not monolithic dressed stone covering many thousands of acres. Secondly, if these civilisations existed, they would surely have built in OTHER places than right next to shore lines -- where are their ruins on land? In one of the programs he looked at a stone-age Japanese society (one I hadn't heard of previously) - however these are " only " 5000 years ago, and built using wood.

Of course there are plenty of lunatics, new age freaks and other riff-raff -- the "jesus was a spaceman, UFOs built Atlantis" types -- who should of course deserve nothing more than laughter, pity and contempt. (Try to explain the distinction to my girfriend though... *sigh*... a great way to teach oneself patience and forbearance... =)

Re:UK researcher: crackpot or for real?

[hattig]

I personally find all this ancient stuff fascinating.

Maybe these cities were built close to the shore because they were mainly fish-eating people? Another argument goes that cities built inland would have been built by rivers, and that over a few thousand years river action (erosion, silting, etc) would basically cover most of the cities up. Imagine 100 years of the Mississippi getting free reign over the landscape basically - how much would remain afterwards?

And smaller communities would most likely still be built with wood. Maybe a stone temple or something - but you try finding a 4000 year old stone building that is most likely collapsed and buried under mud!

When you look at these things, you have to look at them with an open mind. I.e., never trust any previously held beliefs about the origin of mankind, etc, that modern civilisation has its roots only in the last few thousand years and before that we were ooga-booga cavemen...

The ice age would have made most temperate climates pretty unlivable in, so an ancient civilisations would have been much closer to the equator. We are talking south America thru mexico, cuba, africa (which has undergone a major climate change over the last 3000 years anyway), india, china, etc.

And there appears to be plenty of evidence suggesting older civilisations did develop. Shame is, they built most of their cities it seems under 120ft above sea level. Which would wipe out many major cities today, btw. The sea is an obvious food source, trading mechanism, etc.

The only people currently that are finding these things are people that the "archaelogical community" think of as weirdos. However these people are the only people who are actually willing to look for these places, so what do you expect. Maybe in 50 years time we will have a greater knowledge of mankinds recent origins and they will be accepted as the truth.

And for every honest "nutcase" there will be a dishonest "nutcase" as well - in any field. The existence of one person claiming 20,000 year old civilisations that turns out to not be true does not mean that there were never any 20,000 year old civilisations. However the current oldest claims are about 12,000 years old, in South America.

Other interesting things are that geneticists have worked out that ALL current human beings are descended from around 2,000 humans at a point around 80,000 years ago. Yes, 2,000, separated out into separate clusters around the planet (China, Africa, etc). That is why humanity is not like other animals like dogs for which there are a myriad of different shapes and forms.

Still, I don't think it will ever turn out that Atlantis is buried in deep ice on Antartica and is basically a giant stasis field generator for when the Sun does a 12,000 year pulsar cycle... :) Nor do I think that UFOs built Atlantis or that we are the descendents of an Alien civilisation that landed here so many aeons ago...

Re:UK researcher: crackpot or for real?

[Bazzargh]

I watched all of that series (there is a book of the series too, called Underworld IIRC). Graham Hancock has been banging on about pre-ice age global civilisation for some time and had previously made one of a pair of programs presenting the case for this on land (looking at Angkor Wat, the Pyramids, and Easter Island as having been built by the remnants of an older global civilisation). The interesting thing with those programs - and with the current set - was that space was given over to the conventional viewpoint to explain these things away.

The earlier assertions looked pretty tenuous. The new programs covered underwater structures off the coast of India (supposedly remnants of the Indus civilisation, and the origin of the flood stories in the Bhagavad Gita); between India and Sri Lanka; off the southern tip of Japan; and some others.

The case for most of these was pretty much debunked by a geologist he dived with, who said they arent cities at all but natural rock formations. The Indus city had by far the strongest case, as trawling had pulled up artifacts that did appear to be man made (such as a long cylindrical stone with a hole drilled through its centre, presumed to be a bead).

On the whole I wasnt convinced, but you have to give some time to Graham as he at least attempts to find real solid evidence for his claims, and allows contrary opinions into his work.

Re:UK researcher: crackpot or for real?

[Cally]

Jericho had stone walls almost 10,000 years ago.

Wow, really? Do you have a source or URI for that? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's news to me and I'd like to read up on it ;)

Re: UK researcher: crackpot or for real?

[Black Parrot]

> Wow, really? Do you have a source or URI for that? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's news to me and I'd like to read up on it ;)

I'm not very expert at knowing which Web archaeology sites are real and which are loonie-sites, and google turns up zillions of hits for sites of the fans of a certain religion that doesn't want to acknowledge that the world existed that long ago, but here is a timeline site that looks reasonable.

You can also find out about it in lots of books; next time you're in a bookstore look in a historical atlas (but not in the religious section) and you'll almost certainly find mention of it.

Nation-wide web?

[$beirdo]

So, what do they call it internally, the Nation-Wide Web?

Graham Hancock... again...

[Krieger]

Go figure. Well despite being a poorly documented academic, his stuff tends to read like creationist babble and tends to frequently single source for theories that support his ideas, he's doing a pretty good job of pursuing his theories and attempting to make the traditional scientific community (archaeological) reconsider their current theories. If nothing else his books put together various theories in a way that make you think. He's been pretty obsessed about Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings by Charles Hapsburg.

I'm impressed, he may eventually get past crack pot status.

Geology involved

[GeoNerd]

Archaeology is doing so well because archeologists finally grew brains and started incorporating geology into their work.

For years, archaeologists have thought like this "these people liked to live by rivers, so lets dig around by rivers and see what we find!", when in fact, they should have been thinking like this "these people liked to live by rivers and hung around here about 10,000 yeras ago, lets figure out where the rivers were 10,000 years ago and dig there!".

Sea level has risen significantly since the last ice age. Most population centers in the world are right on the coast, and that hasn't really changed for a long time. Therefore, to find old population centers, one must look where the shoreline USED to be, which is now underwater.

Don't be surprised if you start hearing about more and more of these types of discoveries - none of them are Atlantis.

archaeology is doing well. .....

[PsiPsiStar]

...civilization on the other hand...

Flood in many cultures

[cyberkahn]

Similar stories of a great flood are recorded within many cultures besides the Judeo-Christian Bible. For example, as I am sure everyone here as already heard in many history/literature classes, The Epic of Giglemesh. The American Indians also have a tail of a man getting into a boat because of a great flood. One could debate as to whether the flood covered the earth, only part of the earth, or possibly it appeared to these people that is was the whole earth because the known earth to them at this time was quite vast, but in reality it was only a part.

Sure

[NetMasta10bt]

I was there last June. I took a tour of the Mahabalipuram Temple. The tour guide mentioned the sunken city. So apparently this isn't really all that new to them.

This site although in Japanese, does have some very nice photos of the shore temple that didn't sink. One thing to note is, these monuments were all carved from one stone.

As seen in this photo here this is all ONE rock.

Very impressive.

Not so fast...

[ryanvm]

Every couple years somebody annouces the "discovery" of an ancient underwater city. They're usually characterized by massive, blocks of stone neatly organized in the formation of a wall. (Couldn't tell if that was what this article was talking about - not enough detail.)

However, what usually happens is the general scientific community decides that it's actually orthogonal jointing of beachrock - which it turns out is pretty common (Bimini Road, Tasmanian Parking Lot, the referenced story about Cuba, etc.). There was actually a pretty interesting segment on TLC (I think) about this a couple weeks ago.

Sunken pyramids off Japan

[sstidman]

A similar, fairly recent find is the controversial "pyramids" found off the coast of Japan. There are many web sites about this site, but a pretty decent one can be found at http://www.lauralee.com/japan.htm. There is a lot of debate about whether these structures are man-made or natural. Either way, there are some pretty cool pictures:

http://www.lauralee.com/japan/japan1.htm

http://www.lauralee.com/japan/japan2.htm

Re:how did this happen??

[swordgeek]

Hmm. So humans just are too minor to have any substantial effect? While the other things you say are true, that is TOTALLY over the top. Regardless of how the planet is going on its own, we're doing a fair bit to screw it up as well.

We have been around for a long time�

[1001 0000]

Humans evolved to their current form (more or less) almost half a million years ago. That leaves plenty of time for societies to rise up and disappear into dust in a relative blink of an eye. It seems we only remember those who leave massive monuments that endure across the millennia.

I know it seems impossible right now, but I wonder if we will be forgotten 10,000 years from now. I bet those who build the pyramids thought they had the universe under their thumbs, just like we do today. Call me pessimistic, but somehow I don't see our civilization as the enduring type.

Maybe a day will come when people worship our telecommunications "gods" as they glide across the sky.

Re:Warning !

[jgerman]

Heh, too bad I ran out of mod points yesterday. ROFL though. "That is not dead which can
eternal lie,and with strange eons even death may die"

Not Hindu, Indus ...

[SimonK]

This city is part of the Indus valley civilisation. Most scholars believe the Indus language and culture were Dravidian, that is pre-Aryan and (probably) pre anything like Hinduism.

Hancock disagrees, but then, as you say, he's not the most reliable source of evidence.

Re:Not Hindu, Indus ...

[KH]

Indus valley civilization (IVC) is called Indus valley civilization because its prominent sites (Harappa and Mohenjo Daro) are in that valley.

Old school scholars view is that the inhabitants of the civilization moved to the south after the collapse of the civilization (circa 1200BCE). We don't know much about prehistoric South India around 3000BC. There are no large scale sites that are associated with the IVC.

Current view of the IVC is that it spread over up to modern day Gujarat. There are several large scale sites in that state.

Shouldn't there be other large sites like the seven temples in South India if the Indus Valley Civilization was so prevalent. FYI, Mahapariburam is just south of Madras, which is pretty south.

OTOH, there are other more interesting archaeological sites in South India. The most interesting for me is those that belong to a megalith culture. The book I read said that one person (or more than one?) was about 2m (or more) high.

Re:Not Hindu, Indus ...

[rsidd]

This city is part of the Indus valley civilisation.

If so, it has nothing to do with the surviving shore temple, which is from the Pallava period in the 7th/8th century AD.

But I don't see any evidence for this Indus theory. It is also a very long way off from the Indus valley sites which are, well, in/near the Indus valley on the other side of the subcontinent, mainly in today's Pakistan (look at the map). The likely explanation is surely that this is a Pallava city dating from the same time as the surviving temple.

Re:Not Hindu, Indus ...

[SimonK]

Ah, OK. My mistake. I didn't realise how far south it was. I just immediately thought "ancient India - Indus valley".

Nonetheless, that makes it even less likely that the city will have had any aspects of Hindu or Aryan culture in its makeup.

Graham Hancock...

[JimPooley]

...is a nutter. Pure and simple. He's right there in the nutter squad with such people as David Icke and Whitley Streiber.
Just because they may have found some ruins in the sea doesn't mean these ancient myths are true.

Re:Graham Hancock...

[MtViewGuy]

I think you might be correct if you're mentioning his earlier books, but his more recent books are better-rooted in decent scientific research.

I do know that Underworld, which will be published in the USA later this year, notes that there are many unusual structures found only a few hundred feet below the ocean level at many spots around the world.

Besides, consider this: back during the last Ice Age up to about 12,000 years ago, because of the massive advance of glaciers much of North America, Europe and Siberia was buried in those glaciers. This meant because so much water was locked up in ice, the sea level could be quite a bit lower than now--probably as much as 100 meters (328 feet). When you have 100 meters lower sea level a lot more lands near the equator will be exposed, to say the least. For one thing, that would turn the entire West Indies chain of islands from Cuba eastwards into one pretty big land mass, which could end up being a candidate for the location of the ancient Atlantis.

We do know that as the glaciers melted, lakes formed by ice dams broke and there was unprecedented land flooding; the emptying of the ancient Lake Bonneville in what is now Utah about 15,000 BC (which carved out the Snake River Canyon and much of the canyons of the Columbia River gorges) is a good example of this. Also, the rise of the Black Sea around 9,000 BC was probably caused by a combination of heavy water outflows from the north from melting glaciers and the breakthrough of water from the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosphorus Straits as the Mediterranean's sea level exceeded that of the natural dam in the Bosphorus holding the water back as the sea level rose from the melting of the glaciers.

Re:First Numenor Post

[Anonymous Coward]

dude.. you ever get laid?

Corroborated by Indian legend

[donutello]

What I find most interesting is that Indian mythology also has a story very similar to Noah's ark.

To me, this points to one of two things:
1. A great flood (of some magnitude) or
2. A common cultural origin (more likely)

Rome was a democratic society?

[ArsSineArtificio]

Rome was a republic, and bore little resemblance to what we might consider a democracy.

The city magistrates were elected (until Imperial times), but by (what would seem to us) a really screwy procedure. The popular assemblies, which qualify as direct democracy, only really became powerful at the time of the Gracchi, in the 2nd century BC. The Senate was a plutocracy (given that the primary qualification was a specific level of personal wealth).

Why however is Rome the canonical "really ancient civilization", and not, say, Sumeria? 753 BC, nothing.

Re:Rome was a democratic society?

[the_2nd_coming]

the Gracchi brothers realt let the people be heared. to bad that was the begining of the end for the republic. I am sure the Roman Senate feared the people having power so they invoked the Emergency rules that allowed them to appoint a 6month emporer. it is funny how they changed the law so they could make him emporer for life.

the Irony of the entire situation is that the very act of self preservation that the Senate used ended up to be their eventual downfall.

thank-god we have all learned from that.

Re:Right

[DickPhallus]

all the land east of the San Andreas Fault slides off into the Atlantic.

That'll be one hell of an earthquake if all the land east of the fault ends up in the Atlantic!

How about the land west of the fault ending up in the Pacific?

Re:Ancient Civs - how to dispute them.

[Shivetya]

The problem with the ever present "ancient civilizations" theorey is the course of our own civilization.

Working of metals from early bronze days to the industrial revolution was really only possible because the raw ores themselves were either found on the surface or very near it. Even with a glacial age it would not explain the preponderance of such ores in many areas (some of which would not have been affected by glacial ice)

Let alone the fact that some of the advanced metals (or not so advanced - your choice) that we have today will easily survive glacial ice or be found in such quantity to reveal that "something" did exist.

Re:Still more evidence for creationism

[Tremul]

And you offer 0 reasons why this doesn't devastate evolution.

I'm not making bold statements about the correctness of evolution. I am merely calling on you to back up your statement.

Reasons? Okay, first of all, evolution says that the Bible is false.

Wrong. Evolution does not mention anything about the bible. It mereely describes how organisms have developed over time. Certain people use the theory of evolution to show the bible is incorrect in some respects. In actuality the Bible and evolution go hand in hand if you go back to the ancient Hebrew interpertations. The word translated to day in most English Bibles actually means period of time in Herbrew.

The Bible says that there was a global flood.

Modern science says there was a global flood. Modern sciecne also says evolution is correct. Your methodology is flawed.

I love how you have attempted to disprove a theory with incredible amounts of evidence with a one sentence corrolation.

Alexadria under the sea

[peter303]

The outer parts of older Alexandria are underwater too. Perhaps there is faster subsidence in some seashores.

Cambay recently found off the coast of Gujurat

[DaoudaW]

The Feb 11, 2002 issue of India Today had the story of the discovery of Cambay off the coast of Gujarat in January of this year. The India Today website is subscriber only, but here is the teaser.

The article is somewhat sensationalist, but here are the highlights: Wood from the site has been dated between 5500BC and 7500BC. Structures found include stone roads, a bath complex, and acropolis-style raised platforms. Among the artifacts were large numbers of semiprecious stones and beads.

Re:Ancient Civs - how to dispute them.

[the_2nd_coming]

perhaps the ancient civilizations that existed were moe like the aztecs who did not use any metals in construction and only presious metals in ornamentation. that way, he presious metals would ahve not been disernable from a huck of naturaly found stuff and the clay bricks and wooden swords would have been neatly returned to the eco system.

advanced civilization is possable with out using the resources that we use.

no need for what we have to be consdered advanced, just need a large population, a mature governmental system, and law enforcement. that is all.

The one off Gibraltar

[j_w_d]

There was a set of links that showed up with this post including one regarding a French study. The author concluded that there actuall are several drowned islands, just west of Gibraltar, that were submerged about 11,000 years ago. Sea level at the height of the Pleistocene was about 400 feet (120 meters) below its present level. So, in fact there is a substantial piece of real estate now underwater that once was dry land when you consider the planet as a whole. The French author plans to dive on these "islands" this summer. It is worth noting - to us archaeologists any way - that this is the second drowned city found off India. Another was found last year in 120 feet of water off southwest India - the other side of the subcontinent from the latest find. My colleagues are unconfortable with the radiocarbon dates from this site, which reportedly run about 9,000 years old. This would tack a good 5,000 years onto the archaeology of civilizations, as opposed to less complexly organized societies.

Re:Still more evidence for creationism

[BWJones]

I'd email you, but you have no email listed. I have some very OT questions for you. Please drop me a line

Sure, I'd love to but your email address gives me Reason: Illegal host/domain name found and http://hookah.truedork.net:8080/ gives me no reply.

It's a Monty Halls campaign!

[iabervon]

Expedition leader Monty Halls said: "Our divers were presented with a series of structures that clearly showed man-made attributes. The scale of the site appears to be extremely extensive, with 50 dives conducted over a three-day period covering only a small area of the overall ruin field."

Right, and now they're going to find tons of overly powerful items and monsters which are not dangerous considering the characters.

Graham Hancock, racist?

[uqbar]

A lot of people have big issues with this guy.

The implications of many of his writings are that the people we *think* built great civilizations aren't capable of being that smart. For example, say the aboriginal Maya peoples of Central America couldn't have build all those great cities and pyramids, let alone figured out all that astronomy, etc.

Instead some other "greater" previous civilization is responsible. Whatever.

Cargo Cult Archaeology

[RDW]

I'm surprised that the BBC swallowed this one so uncritically. The Guardian has a rather more sceptical story, which implies that the underwater 'structures' have not been dated in any meaningful way, and may in fact be natural rock formations :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,682 031,00.html

Curiously, the expedition does not seem to include any professional archaeologists:

http://www.india-atlantis.org/

Graham Hancock, the most prominent member of the expedition, is well known for what might kindly be described as 'fringe' theories of ancient civilizations, Faces on Mars, etc:

http://www.grahamhancock.com/

For a critical view, see:

http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk/

Other things to consider

[CAIMLAS]

Sounds a lot like the story of the Minoan Crete island, Thera/Santorini - the gods also became jealous, and the nation was sunk in a single day. For those not familiar, this is probably the city/nation referenced to by Plato (or is it Socrates? I get their works confused sometimes) in his account of Atlantis, which subsuquently is a story he got from a man in Egypt, who got it from his father, who was a supposed escapee from the 'sinking Atlantis'. It's quite a fascinating story, but kind of sad that things like Atlantis are debunked instead of being found in their whole glory. However, the Minoan society -was- quite advanced - their houses had cold -and- warm running water fixtures that came from pipes! Their society was destroyed by a large volcanic explosion that errupted from teh center of their island. No remains have been found of humans, so it's suspected there were earthquakes that warned them to leave. This Theran volcano is probably what destroyed the Crete civilization.

It's kind of interesting how there are multiple accounts of 'great cities/nations that sink into the sea, never to be seen again' throughout various cultures. I suspect we'll have such Atlantean rumours in the future as well - New York after the polar ice caps melt, anybody? "A city that never slept, with pillars that reached to the sky, holding the world together" - I can see it now. Very, very interesting indeed.

A couple of corrections

[FreeUser]

You are right to be open minded about such things.

However, others are right to be skeptical of many of the claims ... without significant evidence they are just that ... claims. I think it is quite possible ancient civilizations have risen and fallen, and had their every trace eradicated by glaciers, erosion, and who knows what else. However, without physical evidence one should view these things as hypothetical possibilities, not probabilities. As for the alien slant I agree with you entirely ... show me the alien, or stop wasting my time with nonsense. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Other interesting things are that geneticists have worked out that ALL current human beings are descended from around 2,000 humans at a point around 80,000 years ago.

Clarification. IIRC all humans are descended from a few thousand humans 80,000 ... when some natural catastrophe (possibly a yellowstone-like so-called super-volcano, possibly disease or climatic change) nearly wiped the species out.

However, everyone outside of Africa is believed to be descended from about 500 people who emigrated more recently. That's right, something like 90-95% of human genetic diversity is in Africa. The rest of us, be we European, Native American, Asian, or whatever, are all much more similar, having only 5-10% of the genetic diversity. I'll leave it as an excercize to the reader as to which group some future humans, having survived some arbitrary change in survival requirements and conditions, is most likely to come from (hint, the math can be done by any 10th grade algebra student).

That is why humanity is not like other animals like dogs for which there are a myriad of different shapes and forms.

First, dogs are not naturally occuring creatures. They were bred for specific characteristics and traits, indeed inbred extensively, which is why there are so many varieties of dogs, some taking very odd form. A better example would have been different wolves, or bears, whose differences exist because of natural selection and not human intervention.

Second, that bottleneck is one possible contributing factor to humankinds homogeneous nature. Other factors which may have been more important were the destruction of the Neanderthal and perhaps other intelligent primates we don't know about (i.e. the ethnic cleansing of a differing kind of primates, leaving homo sap alone to dominate the world), our ability to modify our environment (easing some evolutionary pressures that wolves and bears must endure), and probably numerous other things as well.

Re:Atlantis

[MtViewGuy]

Actually, Atlantis: The Lost Empire is not as bad as some people think.

I think people are so engrained by the successful style of Disney animated features from The Little Mermaid to The Lion King that any deviation from that formula results in a lot of complaints about Disney not doing the right style of movie.

Given that I have the two-disc Collector's Edition DVD set, I can say that the movie as escapist entertainment actually works quite well; after all, by definition this type of movie has to seen with some suspension of belief (which is true of most science fiction and fantasy stories).

There are two things I loved about the movie: 1) the breathtaking quality of animation (especially backgrounds), especially the wonderful digital-to-digital transfer on DVD; 2) the very effective use of sound effects throughout the movie (the opening sequence WILL damage your home theater setup of speakers and amps if you're not careful). Too bad Disney didn't submit this movie for Best Animated Feature Oscar, because I think the movie could have been nominated for Original Score, Sound and Sound Editing.

okay

[zephc]

when will we find the lost Towers of Hanoi?

=]

Re:Atlantis

[MsGeek]

Of course, you realize that Atlantis may very well have been a ripoff of Gainax' "Nadia of Blue Water" as well as Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli's "Laputa."

Here is some food for thought, both pro-and-con Atlantis/Nadia connections:
DVDAngle: an introduction to the controversy
Nadia/Atlantis: The evil Disney Empire rips off Anime, again...
Nadia/Atlantis: an opposing view
Nadia/Atlantis: list of "homages" in Nadia

Gulf of Cambay (also nearIndia) hides another city

[innermind]

There is another sunken city that has recently been discovered in the Gulf of Cambay, off northwestern India..

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

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Cambay+unde rs ea&btnG=Google+Search

It's beginning to seem plausible that much of what we know about prehistory is clearly wrong..

Excavations at Santorini (the Aegean Sea) have found four and five story buildings with indoor plumbing and heating systems.. dating back to before 1800 BC.. They are buried under as much as 200 meters of ash from the huge volcanic eruptions there..

:)

This is not conjecture.. it's scientific fact...

Ice age?

[MsGeek]

We are still in the middle of an ice age that just happens to be in a slight recession. Just because half of the US isn't covered in ice doesn't mean it's not an ice age.

***Set sarcasm mode ON***

Then W00t! for Global Warming! We sure are giving that Ice Age what-for! Greenhouse gases? Hell, we are doing the Earth a favor by driving our big SUVs and using chloroflurocarbons!

***Set sarcasm mode OFF***

Re:How to view this

[Vantigo]

Hey! None of the comments after yours were funny because you forgot to close your tag. Thanks a lot.

No report in the Indian Press

[sureshm]

I've tried looking for this piece of news in the Indian Press (Try http://www.samachar.com for a list of and links to various Indian newspapers and magazines) but have failed. I can't help but wonder about the credibility of this news report -- I'm not disputing that something may have been located beneath the waves at Mahabalipuram but am sceptical as to whether the find is really as significant as claimed.

Re:Atlantis

[MtViewGuy]

Mind you, Nadia was in many ways a retelling of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, so there.

The problem with Nadia: Secret of Blue Water was while the early and late episodes were great, the middle episodes bored me to tears at times, and Nadia's attitude is nowhere like that of Kidagakash's, that's to be sure.

Re:Atlantis

[MtViewGuy]

I just wish they'd shoot for something more original.

It'll be very interesting to see the reaction of the general audience to Lilo & Stitch (due in June) and Treasure Planet (due late this year). Both are definitely not in the early 1990's mold of Disney animated features.

Re:Look at the date of discovery

[arkanes]

Guess you don't know everything, after all. http://www.bartleby.com/65/ma/Mahabali.html

Re:Gravity is 1% Less in India

[arkanes]

I suppose I shouldn't post unless I know for sure, but I believe the current theory is that the lower gravity is caused by the fact that the earth is not a perfect sphere, nor of a consistent density.

Yes

[SimonK]

And the soma ritual may also go back to Indus times. The matter is far from closed, but the best evidence comes from the language: people have mapped Indus valley script onto something like Dravidian quite convincingly. Attempts to map it onto a Sanscrit like language are much less convincing.

My bet would be that modern Hindu culture includes aspects of the ancient Indus culture, and aspects of the Aryan invader's culture.

why so slow?

[samantha]

I heard about this underwater city being discovered at least three months ago. The question in my mind is why the official news about it is moving so slowly as is (apparently) the archaeology community. Perhaps it could have something to do with the early estimates I saw that this city is over 9.000 years old. If so then a lot of theories about the history of early civilization come into question. Stay tuned.

Base 10

[Arker]

It's not just the date that's off by a power of 10 in Platos story, but also the dimensions. This consistency makes it seem very likely that it's simply a result of a greek mistake while interpreting egyptian numbers.

The island is also called Santorini, btw, and it was not the capital of the Minoans, at least during the times we know of, and neither was Minoa... the capital was Knossos on Crete, Minoa is closer to Thera. However, hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't remember any reason to rule out the hypothesis that Thera was the site of the Minoan capital in prehistoric times, before the explosion?

Anyway, it's a far better fit than any other site I've seen for the Atlantis story, the details all seem to fit, as long as we change the actual numbers consistently by factors of 10.

Wrong approach perhaps?

[castlan]

Quickly, I don't understand why the "radiation symbol" should not be used. So future peoples may see the symbol, do a background ratiation check, and ignore the rest of the message. We want to convey the dangers of the radioactive material - if they already understand radioactivity, then why is the rest of our message so important? This seems to be overstating our importance, and the importance of our message, rather than allowing for the competence of later peoples. What if our hazardous waste becomes a valuable resource for their more advanced energy harnessing needs?
Not that I think the current approach is really wrong, but lets pretend for a minute that I do.

Instead of "We are a great culture, this is important to us" there should be more emphasis on penance and shame in relation to visitors There should be an emphasis on "you" the visitor, and our guilt on what we perpetrated against you. Why should a great civilization care about this place so much to invest so greatly in it? "This is our shame. We were wrong to make this. This is a plague. We cannot save you. You should avoid this mistake. We are guilty of leaving this burden here for you."

Now I really think that this style, emphasizing the visitor's importance should be incorporated into the linguistics of the message. The tone near the end of the report should maybe be given more attention. The entire report emphasized messages of great importance and greatness. Maybe there should be more of a sense of penance and regret, or even a sense of understatement out of shame.

Is the right approach really to embark on our civilazation's greatest and most ambitious work to date? How does this compare to, e.g. the Great Wall of China, which can be seen from outer space with the naked eye?

How do "cultures", as in "ways of life" end? What happened to the Egyptians, for example? The Greeks were assimilated into the Romans, so that important knowlegde was carried over into the next culture. The Romans "fell to barbarians", or collapsed under their own weight, how ever you want to look at it. In the following "Dark Ages" some knowlege of the Romans was preserved, but was lost to the general populace. The elite few religous scholars had most of the transmitted knowlege, but even if they subjugated the masses via religous ritual, it seems unlikely that the medieval scholars would have let humanity be irradiated by an ancient Greek WIPP.

More significant breaks in cultural meme transmission are widespread cataclysmic events, like a pandemic plague, globally significant meteor impact, or many imaginitive events. At this point, who cares? Where do we draw the line of responsibility? Some "native American" tribes have a law that they are responsible for seven generations of successors. Will a post apocalypic people care about any warnings we can give, or will they just be intrigued by any proof of prior civilization? Are we responsible to protect the hostile succesoors to the human race? What about just leaving the site nondescript and undifferentiated so that it can be forgotten for 10K years? Will any disconnected culture (assumed less technologically capable) be able to dig down 4 miles? Perhaps the post-apocalyptic culture will be a burrowing underground civilization, how will we protect/warn them with our surface markers?

Of course while it may be presumptuous of us to think we are keener than 10000 years of post humanity, I fully support this kind of cross disciplinary research, and value the fruits of foresight. Alternative perspectves are good, especially if they may slow down certain aspects of our current "civilization", and allow a more organic, sustainable culture of meditation and self reflection. I like the sentiment of holding responsibility to our next seven generations as being a limiting factor to some of our folly. While I am encouraged by the creativity that can occaisionally be expressed my out industry, I can't help but feel that this isn't enough. This report almost has a sense of not having been put under much public review - there are even a few minor typographical errors. At least a sentence is spared to reflect on the possiblity that this report itself is an indication of our current error.

-castlan

I know the area well

[abhinavnath]

Mahabalipuram (or Mamallapuram) is now a moderately large town and a pretty nice resort. I grew up not far from there (in Vellore, Tamil Nadu). I've seen the seventh temple - there are lots of very nice temples and rock-carvings by the seaside. Anyway, the existence of six submerged temples has always been taught as fact, at least when I was in school, and I think that preliminary diving expeditions had already found evidence of a submerged city there. The new discovery doesn't really surprise me.

India has another submerged city : Dwaraka, the legendary abode of Krishna, located (probably) off the west coast a little north of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). I'm pretty sure archaeologists have found some submerged ruins in that area as well, but nothing specific.

Re:Ancient Civs - how to dispute them.

[jafac]

I'm pretty sure gold, which does not oxidize, would still be around, and any worked or fashioned gold jewelry would be a dead givaway. I don't believe that there are any examples of that in existance which are known to be "inexplicably old".

Re:Still more evidence for creationism

[spike hay]

Um, the glaciers receded by about 10,000 BC, give or take 2,000 years.

This city supposedly dates maybe around 5,000 years ago (~3,000 BC).

Well, the melting of glaciers was gradual. It occured over many thousands of years. It's not like, "Boom" and we were out of the ice age. There have even beem sunken cities due to sea level changes less than 2,000 years ago. Parts of Alexandria are now submerged.

From the article:

Scientists now want to explore the possibility that the city was submerged following the last Ice Age.

However, you make a good point. Now I wonder if it was just built during a very cool period (as opposed to the end of the last ice age) and it has just been submerged by today's comparatively warmer climate. I don't know.

Re:Ancient Civs - how to dispute them.

[the_2nd_coming]

hmmm gold jewelry buried in the ground for 6 or 7 thousand years.....it would seem to me that most of it would have been ground into hunks of shapeless crap by glaciers and siesmic activity.

In related news...

[Alsee]

Mt. Olympus, mythical home of the gods and the tallest mountain on earth - many times the size of Mt. Everest - was recently discovered by a team of explorers in Hackensack, New Jersey.

When asked how the biggest mountain on earth cound go unreported fo so long the explorer said "Well, we just never noticed it before. It was in New Jersey after all. Nobody pays any attention to Jew Jersey with New York right next door. We plan to explore other overlooked palaces such as Canada as well."

-

Re:Still more evidence for creationism

[gartogg]

"The word translated to day in most English Bibles actually means period of time in Hebrew"

Ummm... no.
"Vayikra elokim l'oar yom u-l'chosech karah layla, vayihi erev vayihi boker yom echad." (transliteration, Genesis 1-5)
"And god called the light day, and the dark he called night, and it was evening and it was morning of the first DAY" (Genesis 1-5)

To go through the last part of the phrase, "yom echad", or "day one," is a very good translation, because "yom" means day. Nothing else, no more, no less.

Many people attempt to reconcile modern astrophysics with the bible, and most will tell you that you should not take the word "yom" literally, but not one will tell you it should be translated as "period of time." There is much literature written on the subject, but I would be amazed if you could find a single book that was published that claimed the word "yom" does not translate as day.

In essence, you are correct that there is no single aspect of the bible (understood only somewhat symbolically) that disagrees with any part of evolution that is scientifically accepted. The most common point I have seen raised is that evolution would work better if one postulated the existance of certain creatures. Each of the "explosions" that is discussed in biological histories corresponds well with a certain interpretation of the time scale, which is not linear.

I agree with you, but you argue the point so badly it is painful.