‘Yes. And totally up to twenty structures were identified round about.’
‘But you’ve not had a chance to dive on the other ones?’
‘No,’ said Kamlesh, ‘we didn’t get the opportunity to come back and work like this. So maybe in future we shall come and concentrate on them. Then also we should seek information and try side-scan sonar surveys and diving to see if there are other structures in other areas along the coast. Because this one place may be in isolation. But if there are three or four other major groups of structures in other locations …’
He looked out to sea and stopped speaking without completing his sentence.
‘It feels to me like a very exciting area,’ I offered after a moment, ‘with so many, as you say, anomalous structures And they are anomalous. We don’t know what they are. But it seems to me an area that deserves more attention.’
‘Mysterious,’ Kamlesh replied after a moment more.
The mound at 27 metres
When we were parting company with our NIO friends well after nightfall on the darkened beach, Gaur took me aside to tell me that he had remembered a dive done during 1993 at Poompuhur that might be of interest to me. The dive had been a first exploration, never subsequently followed up, to check out one of the anomalous mounds in 27 metres of water – 4 metres deeper than the U-shaped structure. Gaur had not dived on this deeper structure himself but had been told about it by colleagues who had: ‘It was a heap,’ he said, ‘of things … It’s quite high. I mean 2 metres high.’
‘Is it in the same general area as the U-shaped structure?’ I asked.
‘No,’ Gaur replied. ‘It’s further out. A 4 metre difference in depth here means you have to go out at least another 500 to 600 metres.’
‘All the more obvious, then, that there’s a need for a really extensive survey and much more marine archaeology here …’
‘I agree,’ said Gaur, ‘even if only to prove that these things are not man-made.’
Secrets of the Reinal map
February/March 2001
Readers will recall that three days before our dives at Poompuhur I had received an e-mail from my researcher Sharif Sakr concerning an intriguing Portuguese map – the Reinal map of the Indian Ocean, dated 1510. But not until I was back in England at the beginning of March did I have the time to consider in detail what Sharif had to say about it or compare his attached scan of the Reinal map and other maps that he mentioned with Glenn Milne’s sequence of inundation maps covering the end of the last Ice Age.
Sharif Sakr to Graham Hancock
23 February 2001
Hi Graham,
I’ve noticed an interesting correlation between the Jorge Reinal map of 1510 (see attached scan from facsimile in Hapgood, fig. 77) and Glenn Milne’s inundation maps of India. It is perhaps not immediately obvious, so please let me know what you think. (There is a good facsimile of the Reinal 1510 in vol. 1 of the Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica in the Bodleian Library, Oxford and I’ve ordered a reproduction. Until it arrives we must rely on the tracing in Hapgood, which lacks detail but is basically accurate.)
I was first attracted to the Reinal by its remarkable accuracy, and its obvious relationship to the Cantino 1502, and also the Ptolemaeus Argentinae 1513. While the map is not as accurate as the Cantino in terms of the ratio of India’s long and lat extensions, it is nevertheless an amazing development relative to the older Ptolemaic model, especially considering that Portuguese naval exploration of India only began after 1498. E. Kemp (Asia in Maps) suggested that Cantino’s depiction of India came not from Portuguese observation but from contacts with the traders of Calicut – perhaps Reinal’s map of India was based on the same sources (and perhaps these sources were the Indian Ocean nautical charts mentioned by Polo?).
Despite the map’s general accuracy, there are a number of glaring mistakes. Firstly, at the precise latitude of the mouth of the Indus there is a large gulf rather than the delta which exists today. Secondly, moving south along the map, Reinal makes the same mistake as the author of the Cantino, and fails to show the important Kathiawar peninsula or the gulfs (Kutch and Cambay) that flank it. Instead, Reinal has given this north-west corner of India a distinct bulge, such that it appears ‘fatter’ than it should. Thirdly, Reinal has apparently ignored the proper portolan convention of depicting very tiny islands (too small to be drawn to scale) as crosses (or some other diagrammatic symbol) and has instead drawn the Lakshadweep and Maldives as rather large islands – far larger than they really are. Lastly, Reinal has failed to give the southern tip of India its proper south-easterly orientation. Instead, he has given it a south-westerly orientation, and distinct ‘lips’ which make it look like an open mouth, ready to bite off the top of the Maldives.
Outline of India’s coastlines in Jorge Reinal’s map of AD 1510, based on tracing by Charles Hapgood (1966).
Outline of India’s western coastline as it was 21,300 years ago.
While these deviations are all errors relative to a modern map of India, they in fact match up extremely well with Glenn Milne’s map of India 21,300 years ago at LGM. This inundation map shows a large indent at the mouth of the Indus, a bulge obscuring completely the Kathiawar peninsula, enlarged Lakshadweep and Maldive islands, and, most surprisingly, a SW-pointing ‘mouth’ shape at India’s southern tip that is virtually identical to that shown by Reinal. (Note that the ‘errors’ match up even better with a basic bathymetric map of India that shows the very distinct outer shelf, which I use as a kind of benchmark for the basic shape of India’s coastline around LGM.) As you travel in time through the sequence the correlation is still good 16,400 years ago but is gone by 13,500 years ago when a large island appears south of the Kathiawar peninsula.
The correlation is not perfect – the inundation maps show a clear land-bridge between India and Sri Lanka, whereas Reinal has not drawn a land-bridge. Being Portuguese and living during the exciting time of the Portuguese discovery of India, Reinal would have been a laughing stock if he’d failed to depict the island of Ceylon. Curiously, however, Reinal has drawn dots in the shape of the land-bridge across the Palk Strait, giving the impression that Ceylon is too close to the mainland. Perhaps Reinal was indicating dangerous shallows. But a glance at my bathymetry data suggests there are no such shallows – most of the Strait is over 6 m in depth. Alternatively, Reinal may have wished to indicate tiny islands, but even this would have been inaccurate, as the real distribution of islands in the Palk Strait today is nothing like the shape of Reinal’s dots or of the land-bridge that would have existed at LGM. So I wonder why Reinal drew these dots between India and Sri Lanka – was he perhaps trying to reconcile common knowledge of Ceylon as an island with other sources that depicted a land-bridge?
A final point of interest is that as the years went on, after 1510, Reinal began to correct all the mistakes described above (for example he added the Gulfs of Kutch and Cambay). But as he made these corrections, the basic outline of India actually worsened rather than improved. To me, this suggests that the earlier 1510 map was based on the same unknown sources as the Cantino (very accurate in terms of long and lat, but with some strange features), whereas the later maps were based on contemporary Portuguese observational mapmaking and all its inherent weaknesses. Regards, Sharif
Although Hapgood had reproduced the Reinal map, he had analysed it only from the perspective of its mathematics and inclusion of anachronistic geographical knowledge (e.g., of Australia, not discovered at that time).3 He had not considered the possibility of a correlation between the way in which it portrayed India and the actual appearance of the Indian coastline during the Ice Age. On the contrary, he concluded:
It seemed evident to me that this map showed much more geographical knowledge than was available to the Portuguese in the first decade of the sixteenth century, and a better knowledge of longitudes than could be expected of them. The drawing of the coasts, however, left much to be desired. The map looked much like a map, once magni
ficently accurate, that had been copied and recopied by navigators ignorant of the methods of accurate mapmaking.4
So Sharif’s approach to the Reinal map did not duplicate Hapgood – something that I was determined to avoid – but looked at its depiction of India in the light of the new science of inundation mapping that had already provided us with an extremely effective and revealing research tool.
I agreed with Sharif that in the light of that science Reinal had in fact drawn a weirdly accurate map of the south-west, west and north-west coasts of the Indian subcontinent between roughly 21,000 and perhaps 15,000 years ago. It was also potentially the strongest lead that I had seen for a long while on the extraordinary possibility that accurate maps could have been made of the world during the Ice Age and that some copies of these maps could have survived and got into circulation again – always in use and subject to constant modification – during the European Age of Discovery.
Maps of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.
Maps of the Pacific and the Far East.
Maps of the North.
Maps of Africa.
Maps of the Americas and the Atlantic – perhaps including the map, never found, that Columbus is rumoured to have used to guide his journey to the New World in 1492.
Even maps of Atlantis …
I decided to investigate further.
Cambay: another ghost rising from the deep?
May 2001
Our final filming trip to India, which would focus on Dwarka, and inland Harappan sites such as Dholavira in Gujerat, was scheduled for November 2001, still many months away.
Then in May, although hardly reported at all by the international media, the following story made headline news in the Indian press:
The Times of India
Saturday 19 May 2001
HARAPPAN-LIKE RUINS DISCOVERED IN GULF OF CAMBAY
In a major marine archaeological discovery, Indian scientists have come up with excellent geometric objects below the sea-bed in the western coast similar to Harappan-like ruins.
‘This is the first time such sites have been reported in the Gulf of Cambay,’ Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi told reporters.
The discovery was made a few weeks ago when multi-disciplinary underwater surveys carried out by the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) picked up images of ‘excellent geometrical objects’, which were normally man-made, in a 9-kilometre stretch west of Hazira in Gujerat.
‘It is important to note that the underwater marine structures discovered in Gulf of Cambay have similarity with the structures found on land on archaeological sites of Harappan and pre-Harappan times,’ Joshi said.
The acoustic [sonar] images showed the area lined with well-laid house basements, like features partially covered by sand waves and sand ripples at 30–40 metre water depth.
At many places channel-like features were also seen indicating the possible existence of possible drainage in the area, he said.
Possible age of the finds can be anywhere between 4000 and 6000 years, Joshi said, adding the site might have got submerged due to a powerful earthquake.
This guess seems perfectly reasonable in line with the orthodox chronology of Indian history and prehistory. But it is also perfectly wrong.
Cross marks position of Cambay underwater site discovered by NIOT.
What Joshi could not have known without studying inundation maps first is that earthquakes or not (and admittedly this part of India does suffer from severe earthquakes) no site anywhere in the Gulf of Cambay could possibly have been above water as recently as 4000 years ago – although 6000 years ago is getting closer. As we have seen, the Gulf of Cambay remained a valley until it was completely flooded by rising sea-levels at some point between 7700 years ago and 6900 years ago.
Then we must consider the scale of the ruins that the researchers from the National Institute of Ocean Technology seem to have identified – this city that is now underwater extends continuously for 9 kilometres, meaning that it is many times larger than Harappa or Mohenjodaro or any other city of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization yet discovered.
Think how long it takes to build a city 9 kilometres long. A long time, surely? So even if the Gulf of Cambay was flooded at the latest possible date indicated by Milne – 6900 years ago – we cannot reasonably suppose that the construction of this enormous metropolis could have begun only one or two centuries before that. Surely it would require a millennium, maybe much longer, to build a city so big?
But if we allow a millennium, then that takes us back to somewhere around 8000 years ago – 6000 BC – as the very latest date at which the city beneath the Gulf of Cambay could have been founded.
A city 9 kilometres in extent and more than 3000 years older than Harappa and Mohenjodaro would rewrite not only the history of the Indian subcontinent but of the world.
It was the Holy Grail, all over again.
PART FOUR
Malta
15 / Smoke and Fire in Malta
Lord grant him eternal rest.
SCICLUNA – COMMENDATORE SALVINO ANTHONY, passed peacefully away at St Luke’s Hospital on June 11, aged 73, comforted by the rites of Holy Church.
Sunday Times of Malta, 18 June 2000
There is nothing looking remotely like one of these temples outside the Maltese Islands.
D. H. Trump
8 November 1999
Some months begin badly, then get worse. November 1999 was like that for me.
It started when Horizon, BBC TV’s flagship science series, aired ‘Atlantis Reborn’ – a one-hour blitzkrieg on my character, my reputation and my work.1 But life had to go on, and Underworld was not going to research and write itself.
A central part of my research task, as I define it, is to check out personally -by scuba-diving – any and every sighting of anomalous underwater ruins that comes to my attention. On 8 November 1999, therefore, just four days after being blitzed by Horizon, a sense of duty compelled me to fly to Malta to follow up a story that was then circulating on the Internet. Accompanied by ambiguously blurry colour photographs captured from videotape, the story concerned the discovery – by a German named Hubert Zeitlmair – of a ruined megalithic temple 8 metres underwater off Malta’s north-east coast.
I had contacted Zeitlmair, and Santha and I had arranged to meet him on our arrival in Malta later that afternoon. But now, as I passed the flight reviewing the thin file of documents I had downloaded to my laptop, I had to admit that the auspices were not encouraging.
A joke or a hoax?
For example, in various unexplained but worrying ways something called the ‘Palaeo-Astronaut Society’ was involved – thus virtually guaranteeing that the academic authorities would treat the discovery as a joke or a hoax, irrespective of any merit it might have. Moreover, it very probably was a joke! By this time I had done enough diving to know that 99.999 per cent of all mysterious ‘man-made’ structures sighted underwater prove to be just weird geology or tricks of the light combined with wishful thinking. Only a tiny fraction check out, and these are usually found by level-headed professional divers with no particular theories to promote.
As he was presented on the official ‘Maltadiscovery’ website, Hubert Zeitlmair seemed the antithesis of all that. He was described, unpromisingly, as a ‘real-estate investor’, a ‘part-time archaeologist’, and a ‘fan’ of author Zecharia Sitchin (who believes that extra-terrestrial beings had a hand in the construction of megalithic sites around the world). Perhaps this was why Zeitlmair had chosen to announce his discovery of the Maltese underwater temple ‘at a meeting of the Palaeo-Astronaut Society’ in his home town of Augsburg, Germany on 18 August 1999:
The final dive that led to the discovery took place on July 13, 1999 at 10:00 AM; and subsequent dives and underwater photography confirmed the nature and megalithic size of the structures.
The temple sits on an underwater plateau about 500 to 900 metres long. The lowest point of the
plateau is more than 25 metres below sea level and the highest point of the plateau is about 7 metres below sea-level.
The structure itself shows the same characteristics as the other above-ground temples on Malta. Gigantic stone blocks aligned with astronomical significance, thought to be used as a calendar. The basic diameter of the interior rooms are 6–7 metres and some of the highest walls that are still standing are about 4–6 metres high. There is an avenue that goes up the centre of the structure indicating an orientation to the equinoxes. There are kidney-like formed rooms orientated to an easterly direction, which would coincide with the rising sun and the winter or summer solstices. The main difference is this structure is underwater.
Since the structure, as the others on Malta, had to be first built on solid ground, its present underwater position could result from either the sinking (due to earthquakes?) of coastal parts of the island, or from a marked rise in the sea-level (due to an immense flooding).
Dr Zeitlmair adheres to the second possibility, and wonders whether the cause was the Great Flood described in the Bible and in the lore of many ancient peoples, the so-called Noah’s Flood.
He is inclined to this explanation because the west side wall of the structure is more overgrown by sea grass than the east side wall, apparently because there was more sand deposited on that side. Therefore, the stones on the east side are mostly free of sea grass. This could indicate that the destructive water flow came from the west into the Mediterranean Sea, adding confirmation to theories that the water broke through the Strait of Gibraltar, filling the Mediterranean basin. A couple of big stones were lifted up and dropped down in a valley below, apparently by the destructive water flow.2