The link below doesn't work for me. But it hasn't been all a bad
day; the October issue of Jour. Geol. Soc. India was returned to the
library, so I finally was able to follow Kalyanaraman's Feb. 19
recommendation (Cybalist 18909) to read about the city discovered 20-
30 m. below the Gulf of Cambay.
The lead in the issue is an editorial by the Society President
promoting Hancock's claims of traces of sunken Pleistocene
civilizations off India, of which the less said the better. This is
an introduction to the scientific report on the Cambay discoveries.
These are supposed artifacts, a chunk of wood carbon-dated to about
8000 y. b.p. (I don't have the Journal before me and am writing from
memory) and structures that look like building foundations and are
said to stretch for 9 km along both banks of a palaeochannel, which
would make quite a city.
The artifacts are a mixed bag, from supposed Mesolithic scrapers
to furnace slag. It's hard to tell from the photos, but I suspect
some of their prize specimens are natural stones. Anyway these and
the wood are context-free recoveries from grab samples, and could
have been washed in or dropped from boats.
The important findings are in the side-scan sonar images. The
two that show enough for me to discuss are labeled something
like "tank with stepped sides" and "major structure." The first
thought of anyone looking at these would indeed be of an
archaeological excavation of an ancient city. On closer look, it's
not so good. What there is, is a strong closely-spaced linear
pattern in one direction and at what gives the impression of right
angles to this (I can't judge real angles in the images) a much more
widely spaced set of cross features. By themselves, the first set
looks very like an erosional surface cut on tilted or cross-bedded
strata. If the "steps" down into the "tank" were that, the builders
were exceedingly tolerant of irregular and variable step intervals.
The nature of the cross structures is harder to judge. They do seem
to have straight sides and apparent thicknesses reasonable for
building walls. My guess is that they are erosional features
reflecting mineralization along a set of joints. The unit I believe
they are associated with (the article really doesn't make the
relation of the structures to the stratigraphy clear) is a calcite-
cemented sand with a high percentage of goethite (iron hydroxide).
Iron cemetation along joints is very common in sediments, even quite
young and poorly consolidated ones.
A sample from one of the structures should allow unambiguous
decision between a geological and an archaeological origin. This
should be easily obtained by a diver, without even needing a
submersible vehicle. I hope to read about such and won't prejudge
the results. I do have to admit that the matter brings back thirty-
year-old memories of when I was on the imaging team for the Mariner
Mars Orbiter. Among the first images was one of an area of
orthogonally intersecting features that the team called "The Inca
City." I remember someone saying as we were writing captions for
the weekly photo release, "For God's sake, don't call it that; some
people will take it literally!"
Dan Milton
Geologist
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "S.Kalyanaraman" <kalyan97@...>
wrote:
> More maritime contacts of proto-Indo-Aryan with IE linguistic
area,
> attested by archaeology. May be of interest. Kalyan
>
> Ancient seals found at Hatab excavation site
> JAHNAVI CONTRACTOR
>
> TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, MARCH 08, 2003 01:03:13 AM ]
>
> ..."The city has been recorded in history as a flourishing port in
> the 2nd, 5th and 6th Century AD. The seals come from a pocket of
the
> mud fortified ancient town, which is surrounded by a moat. The
moat
> has an inlet that leads to the Gulf of Cambay thus suggesting sea
> trade," says Pramanik.
>
> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?
> artid=39605371