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Dwarka In The Gulf Of Khambhat, India’s Ancient Underwater City

National Institute of Oceanography/Current ScienceStone blocks discovered at the ancient underwater city of Dwarka.

Previously known as the Gulf of Cambay, the Gulf of Khambhat on India’s west coast holds the remains of a sprawling settlement that stretches five miles long and two miles wide. When the announcement of the sunken city’s discovery was made back in 2001, experts suggested it could rewrite the modern view of the ancient world.

Perhaps the most incredible thing about this underwater city, however, is that it was built 9,500 years ago — more than 5,000 years before the first great cities began to appear in Mesopotamia.

“Nothing else on the scale of the underwater cities of Cambay is known,” author Graham Hancock told the BBC at the time.

The discovery of such a massive city in India that was built so long ago, he said, completely changes the current understanding of human history. “It means that the whole model of the origins of civilization with which archaeologists have been working will have to be remade from scratch,” stated Hancock.

The city was lost for thousands of years under 120 feet of water in the Gulf of Khambhat, and it was only uncovered when officials from India’s National Institute of Ocean Technology stumbled upon the ruins while testing pollution levels. Experts believe it sank when the ice caps melted at the end of the last ice age some 9,000 years ago.

The site is called Dwarka, which is the same name as an existing city nearby. Legend says that the underwater Dwarka was created by the Hindu god Krishna and sank beneath the sea when the deity died.

While much of the underwater city is destroyed, some walls remain, as well as artifacts such as pottery and beads — and even human bones and teeth. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi scuba dived to the ruins in February 2024 and called it a “very divine experience.”

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