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OTHER STORIES RELATED TO COVER The World In 7500 B.C. Rewriting History Life In Cambay City

Great archaeological discoveries have mostly been uncovered by chance. In 1991, German tourists out on a walk in the Alps stumbled on the perfectly preserved Ice Age man. That turned out to be the find of the 20th century. Eleven years later, it is the turn of oceanographers from the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) in Chennai. They did it while trawling the murky sea 30 km off the Gujarat coast in the Gulf of Cambay, measuring the levels of marine pollution. As part of the routine, they took sonar photographs of the ocean floor.

Only months later while analysing the images did the team realise that it had unknowingly photographed the ruins of a vast ancient city submerged 40 m under the sea. Last fortnight, after spending weeks dredging the site and picking up over 2,000 artefacts, the NIOT team made some astonishing revelations. It found that the ruins under the sea were strung across a 9-km stretch on the banks of an ancient riverbed which even had signs of a masonry dam. The submerged city bore striking similarities to Indus Valley Civilisation sites in the mainland. One of its structures, the size of an Olympics swimming pool, had a series of sunken steps that looked like the Great Bath of Mohenjodaro. Another rectangular platform was 200 m long and 45 m wide-as big as the acropolis found in Harappa. A larger granary-like structure made of mud plaster and extending to 183 m was discernible.

URBAN SPRAWL: Sonar images show rows of rectangular foundations which may have been homesteads

Not far from these mammoth constructions were rows of rectangular basements that resembled the foundations of crumbled homesteads with outlines of a drainage system and mud roads. The artefacts recovered included polished stone tools, ornaments and figurines, broken pottery, semi-precious stones, ivory and the fossilised remains of a human vertebra, a jaw bone and a human tooth.

The real stunner came when the team sent samples of a fossilised log of chopped wood to two premier Indian laboratories-the Birbal Shahni Institute of Paleobotany (BSIP) in Lucknow and the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) in Hyderabad-to determine its antiquity. The BSIP dated it as 5500 B.C. But the NGRI found its sample to be much older: possibly dating back to 7500 B.C.

TRUE ARCHITECT: A geometrically shaped structure with sunken steps resembles the Great Bath of Mohenjodaro

The implications are mindboggling. Cambridge University historian Dilip Chakrabarti, an expert on ancient Indian archaeology, went so far as to say, "If the dates are true it would be revolutionary in terms of understanding the growth of villages and cities in the world."

Till now the first major urban settlements in the world were believed to have appeared in the river valleys of ancient Mesopotamia around 4000-3500 B.C. They were soon followed by the Nile Valley civilisation in Egypt that produced the great Pharaonic culture. The Indus Valley settlements flourished 1,000 years later around 2500 B.C. Now suddenly the lost city of Cambay throws up the tantalising possibility of a civilisation that predates the oldest known ones by 2,000 years. It could, as Chakrabarti puts it, "completely alter all our notions of history".

UNLIKELY PROSPECTORS: The scientists chanced upon the site while monitoring pollution

TEAM SPIRIT:(Top) scientists lower a dredge to grab artefacts; and the NIOT group with project leader Kathiroli (seated centre)

Current history tells us that the period between 7500 B.C. and 5000 B.C.-the era that Cambay possibly thrived in-produced radical transformations in society. Classified by archaeologists as the Neolithic or New Stone Age, it was the beginning of the end of hunting as a way of life and saw the invention of the ploughshare that brought a revolution in farming. It produced food surpluses that could support large settlements which slowly crystallised into civilisations.

During this extremely creative period, societies developed a dramatic range of skills including pottery, the use of polished stone tools and the domestication of animals. The technological marvel of the wheel opened up a range of innovations. Much of these sprang up in what was known as the Fertile Crescent that forms part of the whole arc of territory running northward of Egypt through Palestine and the Levant, to the hills between Iran and the south Caspian to enclose Mesopotamia.

BONE OF CONTENTION: Fossilised human remains of unclear antiquity were in plenty

In Jericho in Palestine, there is evidence of a 7000 B.C. settlement of four hectares which had built thick fortifications and an extended circular watch tower with moats resembling a proto-township. By 6000 B.C. the use of metals instead of stone for tools began to formalise, with residents of a settlement in Catal Huyuk in modern Turkey hammering copper into shape without smelting. Later the technique of blending copper with tin to produce bronze was discovered. The new metal was both easier to cast and retained a much better cutting edge for tools. It took another 2,000 years before its full potential could be exploited, giving birth to the so-called Bronze Age during which the earliest civilisations, including the Indus Valley, flourished. These were characterised by a degree of political consciousness, an advanced form of writing and urban settlements.

LIFE SIGNS: An inscription on a rock and (below) a human jaw bone are among the artefacts that indicate human presence

In the Indian subcontinent, the only evidence of large agricultural settlements dating back to 7500 B.C. were discovered in Mehrgarh in the Bolan river valley in Baluchistan, now in Pakistan. But as S.R. Rao, India's most experienced marine archaeologist, points out, there is no evidence of parallel development of the hinterland in Saurashtra to support the growth of a big city like Cambay during that period. Rao, who was called in by the NIOT team to examine the evidence, concedes that it does show the existence of a prehistoric site. That would make Cambay at least the oldest known settlement in India.

Others believe that if validated, the findings could lead to a paradigm shift in the basic premises that Indian history has been built on. Delhi University historian Nayanjot Lahiri is "excited by the possibilities" and says that it could give the heave-ho to the diffusion theory of civilisation that proposes urbanisation spread from West Asia to the Indus and thence downwards to India.