Another Underwater City in India

For centuries, local fishermen on the coast of Mahabalipuram in India have believed that a great flood consumed a city over 10,000 years ago in a single day. This story was recorded n by British explorer J. Goldingham, who visited the area in 1798. The legend said there were six temples submerged beneath the water, with the seventh temple still standing on the shore. Now author Graham Hancock thinks he’s found them.

?I have long regarded Mahabalipuram, because of its flood myths and fishermen?s sightings as a very likely place in which discoveries of underwater structures could be made, and I proposed that a diving expedition should be undertaken there,? says Hancock.

In April, he made a diving expedition to the area, working with the U.K. Scientific Exploration Society and India?s National Institute of Oceanography. The SES says, ?A joint expedition of 25 divers from the Scientific Exploration Society and India?s National Institute of Oceanography led by Monty Halls and accompanied by Graham Hancock, have discovered an extensive area with a series of structures that clearly show man made attributes, at a depth of (16-23 feet) offshore of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu. The scale of the submerged ruins, covering several square miles and at distances of up to a mile from shore, ranks this as a major marine-archaeological discovery as spectacular as the ruined cities submerged off Alexandria in Egypt.?

The NIO says, ?A team of underwater archaeologists from National Institute of Oceanography NIO have successfully unearthed evidence of submerged structures off Mahabalipuram and established first-ever proof of the popular belief that the Shore temple of Mahabalipuram is the remnant of series of total seven of such temples built that have been submerged in succession. The discovery was made during a joint underwater exploration with the Scientific Exploration Society, U.K.?

These investigations reveal stone masonry, remains of walls, scattered square and rectangular stone blocks, and a large platform with steps leading up to it. Most of the structures are badly damaged and scattered in a vast area, with barnacles and mussels growing on them. There are two locations, and the construction design and area is about the same at each. One possible date for the ruins may be 1500-1200 BC. The Pallava dynasty, which ruled the area during this time, constructed many similar temples.

Durham University geologist Glenn Milne thinks the underwater construction was built closer to 4,000 BC. He says, ??It is probably reasonable to assume that there has been very little vertical tectonic motion in this region during the past five thousand years or so. Therefore, the dominant process driving sea-level change will have been due to the melting of the Late Pleistocene ice sheets. Looking at predictions from a computer model of this process suggests that the area where the structures exist would have been submerged around six thousand years ago. Of course, there is some uncertainty in the model predictions and so there is a flexibility of roughly plus or minus one thousand years is this date.?

Archeologists believe there was no culture in India 6,000 years ago capable of building anything that grand. Could such a culture have been lost during the Great Flood, which is legendary in many different cultures, all over the world. Hancock says, ?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.

?Between 17,000 years ago and 7000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, terrible things happened to the world our ancestors lived in,? Hancock says. ?Great ice caps over northern Europe and north America melted down, huge floods ripped across the earth, sea-level rose by more than (325 feet), and about (15 million square miles) of formerly habitable lands were swallowed up by the waves.?

Hancock says, ?Of course the real discoverers of this amazing and very extensive submerged site are the local fishermen of Mahabalipuram. My role was simply to take what they had to say seriously and to take the town?s powerful and distinctive flood myths seriously.? To learn more about Graham Hancock?s explorations,click here.

Besides deep diving explorations, ancient submerged structures have also been discovered from space. Space NASA satellite images have revealed a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. The bridge has been named Adam?s Bridge and was created from a chain of shoals, about 18 miles long. It?s unique curvature reveals that it?s manmade.

Archeological studies reveal that the first human inhabitants of Sri Lanka came to the island around 1,750,000 years ago and the bridge is about the same age. This is in line with a legend called Ramayana, which dates from more than 1,700,000 years ago. In this epic, a bridge was built between Rameshwaram (India) and the coast of Sri Lanka under the supervision of the god-like Rama.

Two authors and explorers give convincing proof that prehistoric man sailed around the world in ?How the Sun God Reached America,? click here.

To learn more,click here. To see images of the ancient land bridge,click here.

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