97 replies to this topic

[Harsh86_Patel]

About the structures recorded by the sonar, Raman says: "There seem to be some formations. A platform of some sort and something like a tank, though I think the pillars that are seen look like natural formations."

A quote from the article that you linked cormac, also if any man made structure exists there it definitely has to be older then the time the whole place sank.

http://www.archaeolo...cts/cambay.html

[Immunetoplacebo]

The supposed disc-shaped structure looks a little like the one in the Baltic sea. Not sure everything they've found are structures. They should be able to find some better evidence than simply stones IMO before getting all exited.

Edited by Immunetoplacebo, 08 August 2012 - 05:13 PM.

[Harsh86_Patel]

http://www.archaeolo...cts/cambay.html

[cormac mac airt]

Quote

The results of the analysis clearly reveal that there is one to one match between the archaeological material and Cambay bed sediments.

All that that means is that the material tested originates from that geographical area. And we know how these samples were acquired, by core sampling and by dredging. The latter of which is not part of the acceptable archaeological protocol at any underwater site.

Quote

The ternary and Binary plots of both the materials show clustering of all samples in one place indicating the samples are of same host chemistry and are insitu i.e. that the archaeological material are not transported but are made from locally available material only.

Evidently the writer of this article doesn’t actually know what “insitu” means, to whit:

Quote

Adj.
1. in-situ - being in the original position; not having been moved; "the archeologists could date the vase because it was in-situ"; "an in-situ investigator"

Unmoved, unaltered, unchanged - remaining in an original state; "persisting unaltered through time"

http://www.thefreedi...ary.com/in-situ

Quote

All these indicate that they are genuine artifacts, made from locally available material and are insitu.

Again, the writer clearly doesn’t understand what "insitu" means.

cormac

[Harte]

As far as anyone with any expertise can tell, there is actually nothing remarkable there.

Read this.

With regard to the supposed "pottery" dredged up out of the ocean sediment there, read thisto see why it's not pottery at all.

A piece of wood was dredged up out of the ocean floor and dated to 7500 BC.

In an area that receives the drainage from almost a third of the Indian subcontinent, are we to be astonished that there may be some old pieces of wood buried under the silt?

Sorry, Patel, but it seems there's nothing there.


Harte

[DieChecker]

There are stories constantly about underwater ruins off India and in the Atlantic, and I've never seen one that was an authentic ruined city of stone. There are several ruins off the coasts of Greece,the MIddle East and Egypt that had slowly been covered by rising waters over the last 3000 years, but those are not mysterious. There are also underwater archeological sites from before and during the ice age, but these were small settlements or camps, AFAIK.

The more popular stories are...
- Yonaguni - a underwater rock... maybe man carved a little, but no evidence of a settlement has been found, and it is not a structure.
- Dwarka in the Bay of Cambray - No real evidence shows this is a city. Bits of wood, stone, pottery and maybe some other things were sent off for testing in 2004 and nothing about this was ever updated. Seemingly the evidence probably shows this is not a city, but a Reef, with debris from the neighboring coastal communities, or the thousands of fishing boats that trawl the area, being found among the rocks/corals.
- Atlantis off Cuba - Only known from aerial photos. Totally shows anchor drag marks and rocks poking out of the sand.
- Pyramids in the Carribean - Found once and never found again, by anyone, even with bottom reading sonar and aerial photographs and treasure hunters boating all over the Carribean all the time.
- Bimini Road in Bahamas - Corals....

I've just never seen any good evidence to show any of these are true.

[DieChecker]

 Harte, on 08 August 2012 - 05:47 PM, said:

In an area that receives the drainage from almost a third of the Indian subcontinent, are we to be astonished that there may be some old pieces of wood buried under the silt?

Exactly. With wave action and various drainages into that area, it would be remarkable if remnants of previous civilizations going back 4000 years were NOT found in the sediments off the coast.

And the dredging they did was not fine tuned or done with care. From what I've read, they only did so twice and both times basically just dragged the bottom and then examined what they found. If they found a glass coca-cola bottle, and a brass spearhead together, they obviously would toss aside the bottle and then say the spearhead is 3000 years old, so all things found were 3000 years old, conviently ignoring that modern trash is mixed in with the artifacts.

[Immunetoplacebo]

 DieChecker, on 08 August 2012 - 06:01 PM, said:

Exactly. With wave action and various drainages into that area, it would be remarkable if remnants of previous civilizations going back 4000 years were NOT found in the sediments off the coast.

And the dredging they did was not fine tuned or done with care. From what I've read, they only did so twice and both times basically just dragged the bottom and then examined what they found. If they found a glass coca-cola bottle, and a brass spearhead together, they obviously would toss aside the bottle and then say the spearhead is 3000 years old, so all things found were 3000 years old, conviently ignoring that modern trash is mixed in with the artifacts.

The "cities" are located along popular sea-lanes in ancient times as far as I can tell. Lots of ships would have sunk in the area, spreading cargo all over the place.

[Harsh86_Patel]

 DieChecker, on 08 August 2012 - 06:01 PM, said:

Exactly. With wave action and various drainages into that area, it would be remarkable if remnants of previous civilizations going back 4000 years were NOT found in the sediments off the coast.

And the dredging they did was not fine tuned or done with care. From what I've read, they only did so twice and both times basically just dragged the bottom and then examined what they found. If they found a glass coca-cola bottle, and a brass spearhead together, they obviously would toss aside the bottle and then say the spearhead is 3000 years old, so all things found were 3000 years old, conviently ignoring that modern trash is mixed in with the artifacts.

Modern trash being mixed with old relics is not going to impact the radio carbon-dating of old relics. I understand that there can be an issue with dating the samples they found by dredging the sea-floor but what still surprises me is the man-made structures which resemble advanced cities,can this be refuted?

[Harsh86_Patel]

 Harte, on 08 August 2012 - 05:47 PM, said:

As far as anyone with any expertise can tell, there is actually nothing remarkable there.

Read this.

With regard to the supposed "pottery" dredged up out of the ocean sediment there, read thisto see why it's not pottery at all.

A piece of wood was dredged up out of the ocean floor and dated to 7500 BC.

In an area that receives the drainage from almost a third of the Indian subcontinent, are we to be astonished that there may be some old pieces of wood buried under the silt?

Sorry, Patel, but it seems there's nothing there.


Harte

Not relying on the artifacts pulled out from the site but what are the man made structures under the sea which look like planned advanced cities.You have raised good amount of ambiguity regarding the dating of the artifacts dredged out but any comments on the structures that in the highest probability are there underwater in a location which was last above ground thousands of years ago.Not only in cambay but in many spots around the world around modern coastlines.
Btw- i am not claiming to have anything,would just like to know more about these findings

Edited by Harsh86_Patel, 08 August 2012 - 06:18 PM.

[Harte]

 DieChecker, on 08 August 2012 - 05:56 PM, said:

- Dwarka in the Bay of Cambray - No real evidence shows this is a city. Bits of wood, stone, pottery and maybe some other things were sent off for testing in 2004 and nothing about this was ever updated. Seemingly the evidence probably shows this is not a city, but a Reef, with debris from the neighboring coastal communities, or the thousands of fishing boats that trawl the area, being found among the rocks/corals.

You've made a very common mistake here.

Ancient Dwarka, which does exist, is underwater, and is off the west coast of India, is not in the Gulf of Khambat.

It's in the next gulf south of there (or north, can't remember right now.)

These two sites, one real - one Hancockian in its bogusness, have been confused for years at websites all over the internet, so it's understandable.

Harte

[questionmark]

Now wait, there is something I don't understand about the title, so the civilization was underwater, did they all have gills?

[The_Spartan]

NIO is not an archaeological entity. It is simply National Institute of oceanography. They did stuff in their manner. They dredged.
I seriously doubt Dr. S. R Rao's contention that they discovered the city of Dwaraka.
Elsewhere, in this very forum, i had written with links to prove that S.R Rao was mistaken. I cant find those links now.

I feel that the main culprit for all this is Politics. Dr. Murali Manohar Joshi who  was India's Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Science and Technology,  and member of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party),  a Hinduism oriented religionist Party.
He had his own agenda to push since if the ancient city of dwaraka was indeed found during the tenure of his party and his misnistership, its boon for both.
Seriously, he should have waited for detailed analysis but he didnt. He jumped the gun.
He announced to the press that the ancient city of Dwaraka was found  and there are such and such structures that has been  discovered, while in reality they were just weathered stones /stone formations on the sea bed.

Dr. S.S Rao would naturally be his lackey in the whole incident.

If Dr. Rao  was indeed a proper archaeologist, he would have asked NIO to stop dre4dging and would have asked insisted on proper marine archaeological proceedings.
He too  was in a hurry for the glory.

[Harsh86_Patel]

 Harte, on 08 August 2012 - 06:19 PM, said:

You've made a very common mistake here.

Ancient Dwarka, which does exist, is underwater, and is off the west coast of India, is not in the Gulf of Khambat.

It's in the next gulf south of there (or north, can't remember right now.)

These two sites, one real - one Hancockian in its bogusness, have been confused for years at websites all over the internet, so it's understandable.

Harte

If you are referring to another set of ruins just of the coast from the present day city of dwarka in Gujarat,it is located north to the gulf of cambay ruins

[The_Spartan]

Thank you cormac for the links.

The research paper titled  "Ancient shorelines of Gujarat, India, during the Indus civilization (Late Mid-Holocene): A study based on archaeological evidences" by A. S. Gaur* and K. H. Vora researches the ancient coastlines of Gujarat during the times of Indus Valley Civilization.

The name Bet Dwarka indicated in the paper is a name given in the modern times.

Indus Valley Civilization  and the Civilization to which Dwaraka /People, Places and events of Mahabharatha belonged are mutually exclusive.

Lothal, Dholavira etc are real evidences of the maritime capabilities of the ancient Indus Valley Civilizations.

Lothal was the first Dry Dock in the world.
Dholavira is one of the most predominant examples of the systematic planned cities of Indus valley civilization.

But neither, nor the civilization  to which they belonged had anything to do with dwaraka.

Dwaraka belonged to the Aryan era, to the epoch of the Mahabharatha.

In the research  paper, in the beginning  there is this statement to which i take offence

Quote

During the historical
period several coastal towns had international trade and commerce including Bet Dwarka,
Somnath, Hathab, Vallabhi, and Bharuch. Maritime activity reached it’s zenith in Gujarat during
the Medieval period (8th to 14th century AD) when Arab traders dominated the Indian Ocean for
over a millennia.

All the places mentioned do not belong to the Indus Valley Civilization nor were they built during the period of the Indus valley Civilization. They were established long after the Indus valley civilization had died out.

The Bet Dwarka in the research paper is not the same as the City of Dwaraka.

Cormac had provided two links to the research  paper by Drs. Gaur & Vora. Thank you Cormac.
Links are at
http://www.themua.or...118f5f28a4f.pdf

http://drs.nio.org/d..._Sci_77_180.pdf

Edited by The_Spartan, 08 August 2012 - 07:25 PM.