Tamil Nadu's Ancient Cities May Predate Mesopotamian Civilization

Jahnava Nitai Das · January 5, 2003

CHENNAI, INDIA, January 5, 2003: A British marine archaeologist Graham

Hancock has been examining a submerged city on the East Coast of Tamil Nadu.

Mr. Hancock says a civilization thriving there may predate the Sumerian

civilization of Mesopotamia in present-day Iraq and definitely existed

before the Harappan civilization in India and Pakistan. He has been

excavating the site off the coast of Poompuhar, near Nagapattinam, 400 km

south of Chennai. At a meeting of the Mythic Society in Bangalore in early

December, Mr. Hancock said underwater explorations in 2001 provided evidence

that corroborated Tamil mythological stories of ancient floods. He said

tidal waves of 400 feet or more could have swallowed this flourishing port

city any time between 17,000 and 7,000 years ago, the date of the last Ice

Age. The Gulf of Cambay was also submerged, taking with it evidence of early

man's migration. The populations Mr. Wells and Mr. Pitchappan (see previous

article) mapped settled on India's East Coast 50,000 to 35,000 years ago and

developed into modern man. According to Hancock, "the Poompuhar underwater

site could well provide evidence that it was the cradle of modern

civilization." Hancock's theory is strengthened by findings of India's

National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), which has explored the site since

the 1980s. Man-made structures like well rims, horseshoe-shaped building

sites are some of the lost city's secrets. At low tide, some brick

structures from the Sangam era are still visible in places like Vanagiri.

The region, archaeologists say, has been built over and over again through

the ages and some of its past is now being revealed. Mr. Glenn Milne, a

British geologist from Durham University, has confirmed Hancock's theory.

Recommended Posts