From: wtsdv
Message: 27941
Date: 2003-12-04
> Here is a report from Hindustan Times. It makes me feel very old,- edit -
> older than my grandmother, because I was born not far from
> Poompukaar, in a coastal village where River Ka_veri joins the Bay
> of Bengal, a village called Kid.a_ran:kond.a_n
>
> Kalyan
>
> Submerged city may be older than Mesopotamia
> Utpal Parashar
> Speaking of being "a little less gullible and a little more
> skeptical when it comes to such "reports"", please read the
> article at http://www.intersurf.com/~chalcedony/geofact.shtml
> entitled "Artifacts or Geofacts? Alternative Interpretations
> of Items from the Gulf of Cambay". Here are some excerpts from
> the article but please see the site itself to view the photos
> for yourselves.
>
> "Without the benefit of any detailed peer-review or publications
> in scientific journals, much has been made about the significance
> of these alleged artifacts from the bottom of the Gulf of Cambay.
> The significant problem with both press releases and web pages
> that describe these items is that they provide little, if any, hard
> data that authenticates the identification of these items as valid
> artifacts or bones. Despite the giddy claims of either a "Lost" or
> an ancient Indian civilizations as described in Vedic literature,
> some caution needs to taken by the various parties in the making
> the claims being made about these items.
>
> The Alleged "Artifacts"
>
> Given the significance of the claims being made for artifacts
> recovered from the Gulf of Cambay, remarkably little, if
> anything has been published. As of the time that this article
> was written, nothing has been published in any scientific
> literature about these artifacts. At this time, the only known
> source of pictures had been newspaper articles, popular
> books (Hancock 2002a), and web pages (Hancock 2002b).
> Being an experienced archaeological geologist familiar with
> lithic materials used to prepare artifacts and concretions
> created by both pedogenic and marine processes, these
> artifacts naturally attracted my attention. However, an
> examination of the artifacts illustrated by Hancock (2002b)
> generated a considerable skepticism my part as to whether
> many, if not all, of the so-called "artifacts" illustrated by
> Hancock (2002b) are really artifacts.
>
> Item 1 of Hancock (2002b)
>
> The first item that Hancock (2002b) discussed, Item 1,
> was illustrated at: http://www.grahamhancock.com/
> underworld/cambay3.php?p=1.
>
> About this artifact, Hancock (2002b) stated:
>
> "Ridged or turned effect on outer surface, looks as though
> it could have been turned on some sort of lathe. There is a
> hollow passage through the middle, possibly drilled."
> A better pictures of Item 1 can be seen on NIOT (2002)
>
> Looking at the pictures that Hancock has posted at the above
> URL, Hancock greatly overstates the regularity of the surface.
> Although ridged, the profile of this object undulates quite
> irregularly. Also, the ridges are neither as continuos nor formed
> as a machined object should be.
>
> Furthermore, Hancock (2002b) seems to be unaware that
> concretions known to be natural, not man-made, show the
> same "ridged or turned effect" that he described above. For
> example, Figure 1 illustrates Pleistocene concretions that
> occur in glacial lake deposits along the Fraser River near
> Endako and Quesel, Canada that exhibit identical, if not
> better formed, "ridged and turned effect" that Hancock
> (2002b) presumes to be indicative of man-made origin. In
> addition, these concretions exhibit symmetry that is superior
> to any of the objects he illustrates in the first three items.
> Innumerable carbonate concretions, like the ones illustrated
> in Figure 1, occur in exposures of laminated, Pleistocene
> glacial lake silts within Central British Columbia. One of the
> best localities for finding these concretions is the "Big Slide",
> a large landslide that exposes laminated lake silts a few
> kilometers north of Quesel, British Columbia (Clague 2002).
> Clague (1987) described the laminated silts in which these
> concretions occur in detail."
>
> David W.