Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

by Graham Hancock

  In 2000 while researching his new book Underworld (Michael Joseph, £20), Hancock visited Mahabalipuram once more, where he interviewed a number of local fishermen. Many described having seen underwater ‘temples’, ‘palaces’ and ‘walls’ – even ‘roads’ – while diving to free trapped nets or anchors. Others talked of hidden doorways and rooms beneath the ocean which emitted strange musical sounds. ‘If you just go where the fish are,’ one said, ‘then you will find them.’ Yet the underwater investigator had to wait a further two years before travelling out to Mahabalipuram in an expedition organized in conjunction with the Dorset-based Scientific Exploration Society and India’s National Institute of Oceanography. On April 3, half a mile from the shore, Hancock plunged into the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal – and what he saw lying beneath him almost took his breath away.

  ‘What was staggering was that the ruins lay directly beneath the boat,’ he says. ‘I swam down to a depth of about 20 ft and reached out to scrape the sand away from the stone. It was clear from the masonry joints that the structure was unmistakably man-made, rather than a natural formation. I could see straight and curving walls, all made from clearly defined blocks of stone, and I followed one which was still completely intact for 50 ft. The site contains a conglomeration of large, distinct blocks which seem like several big ceremonial buildings surrounded by a number of smaller ones. My initial reaction was, not surprisingly, one of excitement. This was a man-made site which was new to archaeology, a place where no one had ever dived before. It felt like diving into a lost world.’

  Accompanying Hancock on the dive was Monty Halls, a former major in the Royal Marines who led the expedition for the Scientific Exploration Society. During the 17 years he has been diving, Halls, 35, a freelance expedition leader, says he has never seen anything like the majestic underwater structures of Mahabalipuram. ‘These enormous granite blocks looked like huge sugar cubes, about 20 ft tall, and there was a cluster of small stones around them,’ he said. ‘Although it’s hard to say with any certainty, what we are seeing could have been a granite shrine surrounded by the remains of four temples.’

  Central to the significance of the discovery is the age of the structures. Although mainstream archaeology believes them to date from 1200 years ago -the same time the rock-hewn sculptures and temples on the shore were carved from granite – Hancock believes the underwater ruins to be in the region of 6000 years old. If the flooded city did indeed date from only 1200 years ago, to the time of the Pallava dynasty, one would expect to find evidence of inscription on the stone. Yet during the 49 separate dives done over the course of three days by the team, not one inscription was found. In addition, the two structures differ widely in their architectural styles. The shore sculptures are ornate and highly decorative, while the underwater city is made up of simple, austere, rectangular blocks.

  The greatest single piece of evidence so far to date the lost ruins of Mahabalipuram as 6000 years old comes from geophysicist Dr Glenn Milne at Durham University’s world-renowned Department of Geological Sciences. Milne has built up a large database of figures and a sophisticated computer programme that can print out images of any shoreline at any period in history. When Hancock relayed data from Mahabalipuram, Milne was able to tell him that the site was at least 6000 years old. ‘Assuming there was no tectonic movement at the site, and it looks like there wasn’t, then it appears that the area was flooded by a rise in sea levels about 6000 years ago,’ says Milne. ‘The computer programme is accurate to within 1000 years either side of the allotted date.’

  When Hancock heard this, he felt vindicated. ‘It proved that the methods I was using – the combination of deciphering ancient myths and new technology – actually worked,’ he says. ‘Of course, I am still keeping an open mind, but it does suggest I’m on the right track after all. It’s mainstream archaeology and science that are blinkered.’

  However, this is not the first time Hancock’s theories have been bolstered by the application of hard science. In January, it was revealed that the carbon dating of artefacts discovered at two submerged sites in the Gulf of Cambay, off the north-western state of Gujarat, show that these underwater cities are likely to date from 9500 years ago – 5000 years older than any city recognized by mainstream archaeologists. The cities – which are 15 miles apart and lie 12 ft beneath the waves – were discovered in May of last year, during routine pollution testing by India’s National Institute of Ocean Technology.

  ‘Since then, of course, archaeology has done everything it possibly can to dispute the evidence,’ says Hancock. ‘Experts have claimed that the samples could have been contaminated by sea water, and that the wood tested could have sat on the seabed for thousands of years before the cities were built. Scientists will do anything they possibly can to rubbish my name. I’m a threat to them because I’m an amateur – however, I’m an amateur who is able to pinpoint, with remarkable accuracy, a series of lost underwater cities which could force us to rethink everything we have ever learned about the origins of civilization.’

  In the next couple of months, Hancock predicts an announcement from Cuba which will reveal the discovery of an ancient man-made city 2200 ft under the ocean. He is also confident that more lost civilizations will be found off the coasts of Malta, Japan, China, Florida, the Bahamas and Central America. ‘After all, when the ice caps flooded ten million square miles of land were submerged,’ he says. ‘Discoveries such as Mahabalipuram are just the beginning – during the next 20 to 30 years I’m sure we will have uncovered dozens of underwater cities. It’s not so much the quest for one Atlantis, but the search for many, many underworlds.’

  Appendix 7 / Press Report on Paulina Zelitsky’s Exploration in Cuba

  EXPLORERS TO RETURN TO OCEAN FLOOR

  By Anita Show, The Associated Press

  Sunday May 19, 2002, 5.10 p.m.

  HAVANA (AP) – Floating aboard the Spanish trawler she chartered to explore the Cuban coast for shipwrecks, Paulina Zelitsky pores over yellowed tomes filled with sketches and tales of lost cities – just like the one she believes she has found deep off the coast of western Cuba.

  Zelitsky’s eyes grow wide as she runs her small hand over water-stained drawings of Olmec temples in a dog-eared 1928 study of Mexican archaeology. The Russian Canadian explorer compares the shapes with green-tinted sonar images captured in March while studying the megalithic structures she discovered two years ago off Cuba’s Guanahabibes Peninsula.

  Amid piles of sonar-enhanced maps is a well-worn copy of Comentahos Reales de las Incas, or Royal Commentaries of the Incas, a classic of Spanish Renaissance narrative by the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador. Zelitsky is particularly fascinated by Garcilaso Inca de la Vega’s account of ancient ruins at the bottom of Lake Titicaca, Peru.

  ‘You would not think that a reasonable woman of my age would fall for an idea like this,’ chuckled Zelitsky, a 57-year-old offshore engineer who runs the exploration firm Advanced Digital Communications of British Columbia, Canada.

  Zelitsky passionately believes the megalithic structures her crew discovered 2310 feet below the ocean’s surface could prove that a civilization lived thousands of years ago on an island or stretch of land joining the archipelago of Cuba with Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, about 120 miles away.

  The unusual shapes first appeared on the firm’s sophisticated side-scan sonar equipment in the summer of 2000, during shipwreck surveys off Cuba’s western coast, where hundreds of vessels are believed to have sunk over the centuries.

  The company is among five foreign firms working with Fidel Castro’s government to explore the island’s coast for shipwrecks of historical and commercial interest. But the mysterious shapes have become the focus of this crew’s exploratory efforts.

  Puzzled by the shapes with clean lines, the team has repeatedly returned to the site – most recently in March – for more sonar readings, more videotapes of the megaliths with an unmanned submarine. The crew left in mid-M
ay for a month.

  Evidence for Zelitsky’s hypothesis is far from conclusive, and has been met with skepticism from scientists from other countries who nevertheless decline to comment publicly on the project until scientific findings have been made available. Submerged urban ruins have never been found at so great a depth.

  Elsewhere in the Caribbean, the ruins of Jamaica’s Port Royal are located at depths ranging from a few inches to 40 feet below the ocean surface. The once raucous seaside community was controlled by English buccaneers before it slid under the waves in earthquakes beginning in 1692.

  Located at just 20 feet at the mysterious megalithic structures discovered in the 1960s and 1970s in the sound between the Bahamas islands of North and South Bimini. Scientific expeditions there have produced inconclusive results about the shapes’ origins.

  Back in Cuba, a leading scientist recently admitted there is no easy explanation for the megalithic shapes found by Zelitsky’s crew. The shapes on the sonar maps look like walls, rectangles, pyramids – rather like a town viewed from the window of an airplane flying overhead.

  ‘We are left with the very questions that prompted this expedition,’ geologist Manuel A. Iturralde Vincent, research director of Cuba’s National Museum of Natural History wrote March 13. At the time he was visiting the area aboard the 270-foot long Ulises, the Spanish trawler Zelitsky outfitted with sophisticated computer and satellite equipment for her surveys.

  In his written comments, later delivered at a scholarly conference here, Iturralde concluded it was possible the structures were once at sea level, as Zelitsky theorizes.

  Because of the large faults and an underwater volcano nearby, Zelitsky supposes the structures sank because of a dramatic volcanic or seismological event thousands of years ago.

  Providing some support for that argument, Iturralde confirmed indications of ‘significantly strong seismic activity’.

  Zelitsky shies from using the term ‘Atlantis’, but comparisons are inevitable to the legendary sunken civilization that Plato described in his Dialogues around 360 BC.

  There have been untold, unsuccessful attempts over the ages to find that lost kingdom. One common theory is that Atlantis was located on the Aegean island of Thera, which was destroyed by a volcanic eruption nearly 3600 years ago.

  Zelitsky does, however, mention known archaeological monuments when discussing her find.

  Numerous photographs are scattered throughout a video show of the megaliths, showing well-known ancient sites: the 1st century fortress of Masada high above the Dead Sea, Britain’s circular monument of Stonehenge, the Roman fortress of Babylon in Cairo, the walls of Chan Chan, Peru, whose inhabitants were conquered by the Incas.

  Perhaps, Zelitsky mused, the megaliths off Cuba are remains of a trading post, or a city built by colonizers from Mesoamerica. Those civilizations were far more advanced than the hunters and gatherers the Spaniards found upon arriving here five centuries ago.

  Zelitsky admitted much more investigation is needed to solve the mystery.

  But that doesn’t keep her from believing, or from smiling slyly as she opens her agenda for 2002 to the first page.

  Written there are the words Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei uttered under his breath at the height of the Inquisition, right after abjuring his belief that the Earth revolved around the sun.

  ‘E pur si muove,’ it reads – ‘Nevertheless, it does move.’

  Appendix 8 / Press Report from Times of India, 6 July 2002

  Submerged structures found off the coast of Mahabalipuram in the Bay of Bengal could well solve the mystery of seven pagodas dating back to the Pallava Period (7th century AD)

  By Akshaya Mukul, Times of India, Times News Network, New Delhi, 6 July 2002

  The Archaeological Survey of India’s Underworld Archaeology Wing (UAW) has discovered three walls and a number of carved architectural members of ancient temples running north to south and east to west. Also found are seven big submerged rocks 500 metres offshore.

  According to UAW in-charge Alok Tripathi, who undertook the diving 500 metres east and north of the Shore temple in November 2001 and March this year, ‘the walls are made of thick slabs of granite. Two long stone slabs, each with two verticle slits to receive two other stone slabs, were kept upright. Several such blocks arranged in a row formed a wall.’

  The technique of construction, he says, is so effective that these structures are still in place despite violent seas and high-energy surf.

  ‘The remnants are well carved and look like mouldings and pillars of temple. They are similar to the carvings in the existing temples of Mahabalipuram,’ he says. Tripathi is hopeful of discovering more structures near the Shore temple. The ASI is planning to undertake diving towards the south of the temple.

  ‘We are planning to dive during the Tamil month of Tai which falls between December and January. We will trace the extension of submerged structures and clean them to reconfirm our conclusion about their nature and purpose,’ he says.

  Part of the local legend, the story of submerged offshore temples, was first recorded by William Chambers, a British traveller, in the Asiatic Research Journal in 1788. He quoted older people having seen the ‘tops of several pagodas far out in sea’, covered with copper. By the time Chambers visited the place ‘the effect was no longer the same as the copper had been incrusted with mould and verdigris’.

  What lends credence to the UAW’s excavation is a search carried out by divers of UK-based Scientific Exploration Society and Indian National Institute of Oceanography in April. They claimed to have found ruins spread over several square kilometres off the coast. During the expedition, divers came across structures believed to be man-made.

  Online Appendices and Photographs

  A number of appendices prepared for this book, which could not be included in the printed edition for reasons of space, are available online at my website: http://www.grahamhancock.com. Go to the section marked Underworld, where a full listing of the appendices appears. In addition, updates to the research, new underwater discoveries subsequent to publication and elements of debate raised by the book will be featured on the website. Many more of Santha Faiia’s photographs of the submerged structures explored in Underworld will also be made available there.

  Graham Hancock

  January 2002

  Notes

  PART ONE: Initiation

  1 / Relics

  1. Journal of Marine Archaeology, vols. 5–6, 1995–6, 14–15, Society of Marine Archaeology, National Institute of Archaeology, Goa, India, 1997

  2. Ibid., vol. 2, July 1991, 14

  3. Ibid., vol. 2, 15

  4. Ibid., vol. 2, 15–16

  5. Ibid., vol. 2, 16

  6. Ibid., vols. 5–6, 14

  7. E.g. see British Museum Encyclopaedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology, 203, British Museum Press, 1997

  8. Journal of Marine Archaeology, vol. 1, 8–9

  9. Dr Glenn Milne, Department of Geology, Durham University, personal communication

  10. This structure was badly damaged during particularly heavy typhoons July-September 2000

  11. Privately commissioned research report from Akira Suzuki, 1999

  12. Models of sea-level rise are generally unable to take account of local tectonic events in calculating sea-levels at specific locations

  13. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 9, 356, Chicago, 1991

  14. Jean-Yves Empereur, Alexandria Rediscovered, 82 and 86–7, British Museum Press, London, 1998

  15. See Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis (US: Message of the Sphinx) and Heaven’s Mirror

  16. Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson (eds.), British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, 23–4, British Museum Press, London, 1995

  17. Empereur, op. cit., 37

  18. Ibid., 74–5

  19. Ibid., 75

  20. Ibid., 75

  21. For details of the earthquakes see ibid., 86–7

  22. Ibid., 80


  23. E. M. Forster, Alexandria – A History and a Guide, reprinted 1968 by Peter Smith, Gloucester, Mass., USA

  24. Roy Macleod, The Library of Alexandria – Centre of Learning in the Ancient World, I. B. Tauris, London, 2000; Mostafa El-Abbadi, Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, UNESCO, Paris, 1992; Dorothy L. Sly, Philo’s Alexandria, Routledge, London, 1996; Luciano Canfora, The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, Hutchinson Radius, London, 1989

  25. These figures are approximate. For the Pyramid’s statistics see Fingerprints of the Gods, chapters 33–8

  26. Empereur, op. cit., 71

  27. Cited in E. M. Forster, op. cit., 141

  28. Ibid., 141

  29. Ibid., 141 and 142

  30. Empereur, op. cit., 37

  31. Plato, Timaeus and Critias, 36, Penguin Books, London, 1977

  32. Ibid., 36

  33. See J. G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament, vol. 1, 104–361, Macmillan, London, 1918

  34. Alan Dundes (ed.), The Flood Myth, 1, University of California Press, 1988

  35. — J. G. Frazer, op. cit., 105, 343–4

  36. Dorothy B. Vitaliano, ‘The Deluge’, in Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins, 142–78, Indiana University Press

  37. Dundes, op. cit., 1

  38. Roger Lewin, Human Evolution, 74–7, Blackwell, Oxford, 1984