Discovering the sunken city of Dvaraka

In 2001, during routine pollution studies in the Gulf of Khambhat (formerly Cambay), on the north-west coast of India, sonar equipment on National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) survey boats detected regular, geometric shapes. Divers investigated and found large, rectangular blocks embedded 30-40m below water. The manmade blocks, possibly foundation stones of buildings, reignited curiosity about an ancient city that had flourished centuries before Egyptian and Chinese civilisations, and which was devoured by the sea.

The area where the sonar images were taken was around 8km x 1.6km – about the size of the city of Manhattan or 150 times larger than the early known settlement of Jericho in today’s West Bank.

On the other side of the bay today stands the city of Dwarka. Its name means ‘gateway’, and its location made it the entry way for traders coming from west Asia to India via the Arabian Sea. The city was the first capital of the state of Gujarat and is one of the country’s seven sacred cities. It is a place of pilgrimage for Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. Archaeological excavations here show it was a busy port from around 200 BCE.

In the 1930s, the Archaeological Survey of India began excavations around the pilgrimage site at Bet Dwarka, about 30km north of today’s Dwarka. They uncovered evidence of settlers from the late Harappan or Indus civilisation era (2500-1700 BCE) and some submerged settlements. Although it was concluded that these settlements became submerged due to coastal erosion, the finds renewed interest in finding the legendary lost city of Dvaraka (also known as Dvaravati).

The possibility of finding the lost city of Dvaraka would be as significant to Hindus as the discovery of Noah’s ark would be to Christians. Additionally, evidence of a civilisation which pre-dates the ancient Sumerians, Egyptians and Chinese would require academia to re-evaluate the development of urban civilisation.

In 1979, archaeologist Dr Shikaripura Ranganatha (SR) Rao was excavating a temple when he found a second foundation layer underneath. He uncovered more foundation layers, the final one 100m below the surface. There he found shells, pottery shards and iron artefacts, which he believed were from the 15^th century BCE and from the lost city, transported to the site as the temples had shifted inland over the centuries.

From 1984 to 1988, Rao’s teams of divers searched off the coast. They found large sandstone walls, jetties and stone anchors, similar to those retrieved in Cyprus and Syria. These underwater architectural finds have been dated to the 12^th century CE and are evidence of a thriving medieval port city. Other artefacts have been brought to the surface, however, which are much older. Pieces of wood, shards of pottery, some hand tools, bones and a tooth were brought to the surface. Carbon dating showed they are from 1600-1500 BCE, in keeping with the inland Indus settlement. One piece of carbonised wood was carbon-dated as being 9,500 years old, far earlier than the Indus period. The wood is not identifiable as being a human-made object, say detractors. If it is a piece of natural timber, changes in water level (100m in 20,000 years) explain its presence as the area would have once been a forest.

The archaeology community is split into two camps: the ‘Dvaraka discovered’ and ‘Dvaraka deniers’. Dr David Miano, presenter on YouTube channel ‘World of Antiquity’, is sceptical about the NIOT survey images. He questions why the GPS co-ordinates of the sonar scans have not been published nor replicated. He says that sonar imaging relies on many factors such as the speed of the vessel, the lateral and side ranges of the sonar systems, and may even be subject to software glitches.

Radiocarbon dating, which is used to date microfossils in sea level reconstructions, showed sea levels in the area had receded around 3,500 years ago and then risen again, which corresponds with the legendary city’s reclaimed land and subsequent submersion. This strengthens the belief in the existence of Dvaraka which, according to legend, was built on land reclaimed from the sea.

For the sceptics, no positive proof of an earlier civilisation has been found. They maintain that the use of dredging to recover artefacts means that they cannot be definitively tied to the area in which they were found.

They also argue that the pottery shards are too small to determine if they have been crafted using a wheel or handmade and point out that some finds may be natural geofacts or pottery pieces that the currents have carried from shipwrecks to the site. The pottery to date does not bear distinctive patterns, colours or seals, and the shards are too small to be identified with certainty.

The believers and the sceptics will continue to explore the area. Dr Rao died in 2013 without having established the existence of Dvaraka, but there are many who continue to hope and search for the lost city.