RE: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest
« on: 2004-01-07 08:59:58 »
[Blunderov] Happy new year to a very quiet Virus list!
Some while back I posted some material about how it was thought that side-scan sonar had revealed evidence of a possible sunken city off the coast of, I think, Gudjerat in India. The (sadly missed) Hermit was a little skeptical if I recall - but it seems that further evidence has been turning up to support this idea and I cannot help but wonder what he would think now? Possibly he would point out that the article (below) itself cautions that these findings are not to be regarded as confirmed yet.
Best Regards
<q> Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest
16:03 18 January 02
Evidence of an ancient "lost river civilisation" has been uncovered off the west coast of India, the country's minister for science and technology has announced. Local archaeologists claim the find could push back currently accepted dates of the emergence of the world's first cities.
Underwater archaeologists at the National Institute of Ocean Technology first detected signs of an ancient submerged settlement in the Gulf of Cambay, off Gujarat, in May 2001. They have now conducted further acoustic imaging surveys and have carbon dated one of the finds.
The acoustic imaging has identified a nine-kilometre-long stretch of what was once a river but is now 40 metres beneath the sea. The site is surrounded by evidence of extensive human settlement. Carved wood, pottery, beads, broken pieces of sculpture and human teeth have been retrieved from along the river banks, according to a report in the Indian Express newspaper. Carbon dating of one of the wooden samples has dated the site to around 7500 BC.
"The carbon dating of 7500 BC obtained for the wooden piece recovered from the site changes the earlier held view that the first cities appeared in the Sumer Valley [in Mesopotamia] around 3000 BC," said B Sasisekaran of India's National Science Academy.
Tom Higham of Oxford University's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit says submerged wood is often well-preserved and should be relatively straightforward to carbon date. "I don't see how you could get it grossly wrong," he says. "In the past, it has been said that you shouldn't pin all your interpretations on a date from one sample. But that's not so true these days. And dating a sample that's between 5000 and 10,000 years old is pretty easy."
If confirmed, the find would also push back the date of India's earliest known civilisation by 5000 years. The Harappan civilisation has been dated to about 2500 BC. The newly identified site "looks like a Harappan-type civilisation but dating way back to 7500 BC," said minister Murli Manohar Joshi.
However, he cautioned that a "more critical examination" of the finds must now be carried out.
Sharad Rajaguru, a former head of archaeology at the Deccan College in Pune, said: "These collections represent an exciting breakthrough in offshore archaeology. Further investigation of the area is important as this might throw light on the development of human civilisation, besides having a bearing on Indian history."
Joshi said the government is now forming a group of archaeological experts from institutes around the country to investigate further.
RE: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest
« Reply #1 on: 2004-02-02 07:03:57 »
[Blunderov]Some while back I posted some material about how it was thought that side-scan sonar had revealed evidence of a possible sunken city off the coast of, I think, Gudjerat in India.
[Mermaid]Recently, I stumbled upon a discussion about "Journey of Man: A Genetic Odessey" by Spencer Wells. This has also been adapted as a PBS documentary. Wells insists that all of us are 'africans under the skin' because the first man did emerge from Africa. (allowing myself to ditch the blasted grammar and punctuation rules...)...he also maintains that eve is most definitely older than adam(80,000 years earlier), thereby shattering the bible hypothesis...on a trip to southern india, he also unearthed genetic evidence that the dravidians were the first inhabitants and that the aryans came later....the dravidians who populate the southern parts of india, it has emerged through a key genetic marker, were slam bang at the crossroads between africa and man's destinations to central asia and australia..
wells' theory proposes that at the end of the ice age, africa began drying up and people migrated by droves..while one group went on to settle in what is now the middle east, europe and asia...the other went on to settle in the region we now know as australia..(southern india and australia were joined at that time)...part of the australia bound group had to have settled in the western shores of present day india....during the pennsylvanian and permian ice ages, australia, india, africa and middle east were part of the same land mass...it is very likely that the oldest city is the sunken remains of the gujarat ruins...from what i have read the gulf of cambay structure predates the cities of ancient sumeria..
however, one unexpected question that popped up was the eve's seniority over adam...if adam wasnt around until 80k years later, would the male gender be a genetic mutation afterall..this isnt the first time i have heard of such a theory...can anyone enlighten me here?
Re: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest
« Reply #2 on: 2004-02-02 08:23:16 »
Most theories have AFrica as the birthplace of humanity. The only thing people argue about these days is whether it was 200,000 years or 60,000 years ago.
I always figured that the sort of people who left the land of free food and warm weather would be social outcasts.
Re: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest
« Reply #3 on: 2004-02-02 16:16:06 »
...even if 200,000 yrs is the number, how would that give time for australia to drift away from southeast asia? could it be that semi-men trecked off earlier? neanderthals? what accounts for the australoids?
DrSebby. "Courage...and shuffle the cards".
----Original Message Follows---- From: "Erik Aronesty" <erik@zoneedit.com> Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com To: virus@lucifer.com Subject: Re: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 09:23:16 -0400
Most theories have AFrica as the birthplace of humanity. The only thing people argue about these days is whether it was 200,000 years or 60,000 years ago.
I always figured that the sort of people who left the land of free food and warm weather would be social outcasts.
_________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest
« Reply #4 on: 2004-02-02 18:50:45 »
We frequently and consistently underestimate the “right-brained” abilities of our ancestors.
I read an article in Wired about a scientist who was trying to figure out how an African weather “master” was able to realiably predict the weather several days in advance. Accurate readings of pressure drops, humidity and wind pattern changes and averages... all these things were required to make these predictions. Apparently there is an enormous amount of sensory sensitivity and ability hardwired into our existing bodies which we don't make much use of.
Much of the technology of “looking inward” at our own bodies and our innate resources has been scoffed at by scientific “pundits”. Yet every time a scientist goes to, say, measure the brain activity of a Zen Buddhist, they are consistently impressed.
The lack of “machine technology” in our ancient past does not imply a lack of other technologies.
I highly reccomend seeing the movie “Whale Rider”.
Perhaps the technology was “communion with animals?”
Just when I thought I was out-they pull me back in
Re: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest
« Reply #5 on: 2004-02-02 20:05:48 »
I can only parrot what Hermit once told me in a post concerning history and the difficulty in culling the truth from it.
"I suspect you give people too much credit and confusion too little."
-- Walter Watts <Polly wanna cracker......ggggaaaawwwwkkkkkk>
Dr Sebby wrote:
> ...even if 200,000 yrs is the number, how would that give time for australia > to drift away from southeast asia? could it be that semi-men trecked off > earlier? neanderthals? what accounts for the australoids? > > DrSebby. > "Courage...and shuffle the cards". > > ----Original Message Follows---- > From: "Erik Aronesty" <erik@zoneedit.com> > Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com > To: virus@lucifer.com > Subject: Re: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest > Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 09:23:16 -0400 > > Most theories have AFrica as the birthplace of humanity. The only thing > people argue about these days is whether it was 200,000 years or 60,000 > years ago. > > I always figured that the sort of people who left the land of free food and > warm weather would be social outcasts. > > Which would explain why white people can't dance. > > Heh. > > --- > To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to > <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l> > > _________________________________________________________________ > The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail > > --- > To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
--
Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
"Reminding you to help control the human population. Have your sexual partner spayed or neutered."
...even if 200,000 yrs is the number, how would that give time for australia to drift away from southeast asia? could it be that semi-men trecked off earlier? neanderthals? what accounts for the australoids?
DrSebby. "Courage...and shuffle the cards".
----Original Message Follows---- From: "Erik Aronesty" <erik@zoneedit.com> Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com To: virus@lucifer.com Subject: Re: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 09:23:16 -0400
Most theories have AFrica as the birthplace of humanity. The only thing
people argue about these days is whether it was 200,000 years or 60,000 years ago.
I always figured that the sort of people who left the land of free food and warm weather would be social outcasts.
_________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
...even if 200,000 yrs is the number, how would that give time for australia to drift away from southeast asia? could it be that semi-men trecked off earlier? neanderthals? what accounts for the australoids?
[Mermaid]acc to the continental drift theory, several hundreds of millions of years ago, africa, asia and australia were all a single landmass. the broken pieces of pangea started drifting away much earlier than 200k years. the distances between the continents in our present day would probably be greatly exaggerating numbers in those migratory times.
Around 120,000 years ago Homo sapiens emerged as a new species, most likely in central East Africa, and from there migrated into the Middle East, south Africa, Europe, central Asia, and finally into the New World. To reach the Bering Strait from Africa by 14,000 years ago, humans would have had to wander no more than one mile every eight years. -- The timing of Ice Age coolings, and the amount they lowered ocean levels, specifies the geologic periods in which it was possible to migrate to land masses otherwise separated by water.
there have been some claims that australoids are the surviving remanants of neaderthals...however...
One theory posits that modern humans arose as early as 200,000 years ago in Africa, then spread to the Near East, and then colonized the rest of the Old World. This "Out-of Africa" theory claims that these early modern Africans replaced all indigenous populations of archaic humans, including the Neanderthals, by about 30,000 years ago and that all people living today are descended from these Africans. Support for this theory comes from the fact that fossils of modern humans from Africa and the Near East are much older than those found elsewhere. These fossils are 100,000 to 120,000 years old, and some may be even older. This is long before the period 30,000 to 40,000 years ago when modern humans began appearing in other regions. These early modern Africans and Near Easterners could therefore have served as source populations for subsequent migrations of modern humans.
[...]
The multiregional theory finds further support from a recent study in which scientists extracted DNA from cell mitochondria from the bones of an early modern human who lived at least 40,000 years ago in Australia (see Ancient DNA web page). This individual's DNA, like that of the Neanderthals', differs significantly from our own. His DNA sequence is more primitive than the DNA sequences which, according to the calculations of Out-of-Africa theorists, must have existed in the early modern Africans who were supposedly our ancestors. These findings both decrease the genetic divide between Neanderthals and early modern humans and increase the likelihood that early modern humans outside Africa had non-African roots. All of this makes it more likely that Neanderthals and other archaic non-Africans were among the ancestors of modern humans.
New York University paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati said Neanderthals should be considered a separate species from Homo sapiens, and not just a sub-species.
"We interpret the evidence presented here as supporting the view that Neanderthals represent an extinct human species and therefore refute the regional continuity model for Europe," she and colleagues wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (news - web sites).
Some anthropologists believe that Neanderthals, who went extinct 30,000 years ago, may have at least contributed to the ancestry of modern Europeans.
There is strong evidence that Homo sapiens neanderthalis, as they are known scientifically, interacted with the more modern Cro-Magnons, who eventually displaced them. Cro-Magnons are the ancestors of modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens.
The study found that the differences measured between humans and Neanderthals were significantly greater than those found between subspecies of any single group, indicating Neanderthals were not a subspecies of humans. In addition, the difference was as great or greater than that found between closely related primate species, such as humans, gorillas and chimpanzees.
[...]
But a study published in 2002 suggested that the genes of people today carry vestiges of genes of Neanderthals and other extinct branches of the human family.
That report by population biologist Alan R. Templeton of Washington University in St. Louis suggests there were at least two distinct human migrations out of Africa, the first between 420,000 and 840,000 years ago and the second between 80,000 and 150,000 years ago.
According to Templeton, the most recent migration, and perhaps both, were not "replacement events." Rather, he said DNA evidence shows evidence of interbreeding.
RE: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest
« Reply #10 on: 2004-02-03 08:29:16 »
hey JD!! we are just having a discussion about one of your blog entry subjects!!(charles murray article..of course, not favourably)...its 6.30.a.m cst...join us!
hey JD!! we are just having a discussion about one of your blog entry subjects!!(charles murray article..of course, not favourably)...its 6.30.a.m cst...join us!
following the abrupt end to the discussion that stemmed from the charles murray article, i checked out jared diamond's guns, germs and steel from the library. if i have enough time, i might plot my progress with the book..chapter by chapter..in the book talk section of the bbs..i invite those who have already read the book to join me...
RE: virus: Drowned Indian city could be world's oldest
« Reply #12 on: 2004-02-05 01:06:16 »
I love _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, but found that there was no strong reason to read the last two-thirds of it (after I'd done so). It's pretty much covered in the first third; the rest is essentially footnotes.
--Eva
--- Mermaid <hidden@lucifer.com> wrote: > > [quote from: Mermaid on 2004-02-03 at 06:29:16] > hey JD!! we are just having a discussion about one > of your blog entry subjects!!(charles murray > article..of course, not favourably)...its 6.30.a.m > cst...join us! > > > following the abrupt end to the discussion that > stemmed from the charles murray article, i checked > out jared diamond's guns, germs and steel from the > library. if i have enough time, i might plot my > progress with the book..chapter by chapter..in the > book talk section of the bbs..i invite those who > have already read the book to join me... > > ---- > This message was posted by Mermaid to the Virus 2004 > board on Church of Virus BBS. > <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=61;action=display;threadid=29834> > --- > To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
[quote from: Mermaid on 2004-02-03 at 06:29:16] hey JD!! we are just having a discussion about one of your blog entry subjects!!(charles murray article..of course, not favourably)...its 6.30.a.m cst...join us!
following the abrupt end to the discussion that stemmed from the charles murray article, i checked out jared diamond's guns, germs and steel from the library. if i have enough time, i might plot my progress with the book..chapter by chapter..in the book talk section of the bbs..i invite those who have already read the book to join me...
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