The place is called Poompuhar.

It lies on southeast India s Coromandel coast facin

g the Bay of Bengal between modern Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Its immediate offsh
ore area has been the subject of marine archaeological investigations by India s N
ational Institute of Oceanography since the 1980 s and numerous non-controversial
finds of man-made structures dated between the third century AD and the third ce
ntury BC have been made in the inter-tidal zone close to shore at depths down to 6
feet (approximately 2 metres).
These finds of structures in shallow water (some so shallow that they are expose
d at low tide) have been quite widely written-up in the archaeological literatur
e. But for some reason other discoveries that the NIO has made in deeper water o
ff Poompuhar have attracted no attention at all. Most notably these other discov
eries include a second completely separate group of structures fully three miles
from the Poompuhar shore in water that is more than 70 feet (23 metres) deep. T
he lack of interest is surprising because to anyone with even minimal knowledge
of post-glacial sea-level rise their depth of submergence is or should be
highly
anomalous. Indeed according to Glenn Milne s sea-level data the land on which the
se structures were built last stood above water at the end of the Ice Age more t
han 11,000 years ago.
Is it a coincidence that there are ancient Tamil flood myths that speak of a gre
at kingdom that once existed in this area called Kumari Kandam that was swallowe
d up by the sea? Amazingly the myths put a date of 11,600 years ago on these eve
nts the same timeframe given by Plato for the end of Atlantis in another ocean.
Like the cities in the Gulf of Cambay the underwater structures three miles offs
hore of Poompuhar were first identified by an instrument called sidescan sonar t
hat profiles the seabed. One structure in particular was singled out for investi
gation and was explored by divers from India s National Institute of Oceanography
in 1991 and 1993. Although they were not at that time aware of the implications
of its depth of submergence i.e. that it is at least 11,500 years old
the 1991 s
tudy confirms that it is man-made and describes it as:
a horse-shoe-shaped object, its height being one to two metres. A few stone
blocks were found in the one-metre wide arm. The distance between the two arms i
n 20 metres. Whether the object is a shrine or some other man-made structure now
at 23 metres [70 feet] depth remains to be examined in the next field season.
The 1993 study refines the measurements:
The structure of U-shape was located at a water depth of 23 metres which is
about 5 kilometres off shore. The total peripheral length of the object is 85 me
tres while the distance between the two arms is 13 metres and the maximum height
is 2 metres Divers observed growth of thick marine organism on the structure, b
ut in some sections a few courses of masonry were noted
The Lost Continent
Kumari Kandam(?????????????)
To Read More Click Kumari Kandam
After 1993, no further marine archaeology was conducted along the Poompuhar coas
t until 2001 when I arranged with the NIO to dive on the U-shaped structure with
funding from Channel 4 television in Britain and the Learning Channel in the US
. Exclusive footage of the structure was filmed and is shown in episode 2 of the
Underworld television series. Chapter 14 of the book is a report of our dives a
t Poompuhar, and what we found there.
Dr A.S. Gaur of the NIO told me on camera that it would have required a very grea
t technology to build the U-shaped structure
one far beyond the abilities of know

n cultures in India 11,500 years ago. For Dr Gaur this is a reason to doubt the
accuracy of the sea-level-data which suggests that the structure was submerged s
o long ago. However the NIO have not yet been successful in recovering any datab
le materials or artefacts that could tell us its age more directly (for example
by C-14 or TL tests).
My own expedition to Poompuhar with the NIO in 2001 was limited to diving on the
U-shaped structure and one neighbouring structure. But what s really exciting is
that more than 20 other large structures are known to be located in the same are
a down to depths of more than 100 feet. These have so far been identified only b
y sidescan sonar and never yet explored by divers. I ve organised an expedition jo
intly with India s National Institute of Oceanography and John Blashford-Snell s Sci
entific Exploration Society in Britain to map and investigate these other struct
ures in March/April 2002.
The Cambay and Poompuhar discoveries are both reported in depth for the first ti
me in Underworld and set into the proper context of the flood myths and inundati
on history of the broader regions to which they belong.
If they are what they seem to be a caution I must repeat since so little researc
h has actually been done by anyone then they signal an exciting new era in India
n archaeology in which the investigation of submerged ruins will play an increas
ingly important role. How do the Poompuhar finds compare with those in Cambay? A
re they both parts of the same lost civilisation? Or do they perhaps represent t
wo separate Ice Age cultures, one based in the north and the other in the south
of the subcontinent?
Further exploration, involving divers, sonar scans and the recovery and analysis
of artefacts will provide the answers.
And for reasons that I explain in Underworld, I think India s most ancient scriptu
res, the Vedas, also have a lot to tell us. There are tremendously good reasons
to disbelieve the scholarly consensus (certainly the consensus amongst Western s
cholars) that the Vedas were composed as late as 1500 B.C. Parts of them probabl
y do date from then; but some of the hymns could be much older than that
carried
down by oral traditions from much earlier times. I think it all goes back to th
e Ice Age.