SPECIAL SECTION: UNDERWATER CULTURAL HERITAGE
Submarine prehistoric archaeology of the Indian
continental shelf: A potential resource
N. C. Flemming
Southampton Oceanography Centre, European Way, Southampton, Hants, SO14 3ZH, UK
Submarine prehistoric archaeology enables us to discover how early man lived on the continental shelf
during the Pleistocene Ice Ages, when the eustatic sea
level dropped to more than 100 m lower than now.
The archaeologists have found the remains of hominid
and modern human occupation, including stone tools,
bones, fireplaces, food remains, and cut timbers from
5000 to 1 million years old off the coasts of South Africa,
Japan, Australia, North America, and many European countries. The spread of humanity throughout
the globe has been influenced by the exploitation of
the continental shelf during glacial phases, by the use
of coastal food resources, and by the effect of changed
migration routes, connected land masses, or channels
which were easier to cross. Archaeologists using data
from the study of DNA of modern populations have
proposed that people crossed the southern Red Sea
from Eritreia to the Arabian peninsula about 100,000
years ago, and then spread throughout southern Asia
to Australia, migrating most rapidly along the coast,
that is, along the now submerged continental shelf. The
archaeological evidence to support this theory is very
thin. The only way that the theory can be proved or disproved on the ground is if we can find evidence of
Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) on the continental shelf, either on the shelves of the southern Red
Sea, or around Yemen and Oman, or the coast of India.
THE archaeology and palaeo-anthropology of human evolution during the last four million years has been described by many competent authors, but I will refer here to
only one modern textbook1 which provides a convenient
overview in one set of covers. From this magisterial summary of the process we can see that the continental shelf
played an acknowledged role in human and hominid expansion in Africa, and onward to Asia and Australia.
However, Klein also says, ‘the boats they used probably
perished long ago and in any case the sites where remnants might persist are now inaccessible on the drowned
continental shelves of Sunda and Sahul’. This assumption
that submerged prehistoric remains were (a) probably
destroyed by the forces of the rising post-glacial marine
transgression; and (b) even if they survived marine transgression we cannot find them; and (c) even if they were
found we could not study them, is prevalent in all texte-mail: [email protected]
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 86, NO. 9, 10 MAY 2004
books and monographs on prehistoric archaeology. In fact I
have never found a standard textbook, which took any
other view. This is unfortunate, because students and professionals starting a career in archaeology are being given
a false impression of an important aspect of prehistory.
Some major specialist books have addressed marine
aspects of human dispersal and the use of the coast2–8.
Clottes and Courtin7 discussed in detail the artistic features
of the cave known as the Grotte Cosquer, which can only
be entered through a submerged cavern with its entrance
at a depth of 40 m below sea level, and shows an exquisite reconstruction of the landscape of the continental
shelf outside the cave at low sea level, but curiously do
not consider the way of life of the people who were living
on the continental shelf at that time. The consistent source
of information on the progress of submarine prehistory in
the last 30 years is through specialist academic papers and
articles, which are scattered throughout the journal literature, and which have not filtered through to the mainstream textbooks.
In this article I will try to summarize very briefly the
massive evidence which has been accumulated over the
last 30 years, which shows that thousands of prehistoric
settlement and occupation sites do exist on the continental shelves all over the world; that it is possible to find
and study submerged prehistoric sites as carefully as if
they were on land; and finally to look at the key situation
of the Indian continental shelf as a component of this new
area of research.
The scope of submarine prehistory
The successive glacial cycles of the last one million years
have each had a duration of the order of 120,000 years
(120 ky), and the associated glacio-eustatic amplitude of
sea level change has been of the order9–11 of 100–150 m.
Prior to one million years BP the fluctuations were more
frequent but with a smaller amplitude.
Throughout the last million years plants, animals, and
people who lived on the coast were living on what we
now call the continental shelf, and they migrated slowly
towards the edge of the shelf when the sea dropped, and
retreated back to the present shoreline at each inter-glacial maximum high sea level. Since this cycle of expansion
and retreat took over 100 ky, the people concerned were
not in any way conscious of a ‘migration’ within one generation. The duration of the high sea level turning point
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was, in each case, a very few tens of thousands of years.
Thus, for the last million years, 80–90% of the evidence
for people living on the coast is submerged below present
sea level. The archaeological record on land shows almost
no trace of early peoples exploiting the sea, collecting shellfish, catching fish, or building boats. The significance of
this missing data is discussed by Bailey12. Only occasionally do we find some hints that people were exploiting
marine resources, usually in caves on steep coasts where
people were bringing their food up the steep slope from the
shore which was quite closeby in terms of horizontal distance, and then only during the short interglacial still-stands.
The great majority of early shell midden sites showing
consumption of shellfish date after 6000 yrs BP, when the
sea level was rising rapidly and was already close to present level. Earlier than that the data are lost and yet it has
been known since the 1960s that the first human occupants
of Australia arrived there at least 30 ky BP, and that they
had to cross many sea channels of tens of km width2,13 to
reach Australia. Modern dating of Australian sites shows
that people were in Australia at least 50–60 ky BP1, and
the only way they could have traversed the sea channels
was by using sufficiently sophisticated floating craft to carry
many tens of people within the space of a few years. A
breeding population of the order 100–200 people is needed
to ensure a continuous growth in population, which can be
stable against the threats of predators, disease, drought, and
bad hunting seasons14. If people could make such crossings 50–60 ky BP, then they could probably make smaller
crossings of 2–10 km many thousands of years before that.
The extent to which hominid artefacts can survive in
sedimentary context on the continental shelf is demonstrated off the coast of Table Bay, South Africa15 (Figure
1) where three Acheulean hand axes were found in depths
of 7–8 m. The hand axes were embedded in oxidised soil
resting on bedrock, and covered by a metre or more of
marine sand. This find suggests that hominid artefacts can
survive multiple marine transgressions over a timescale
of the order of 500 ky. In the southern North Sea fishermen have dredged up bones of early Pleistocene mammal
fauna showing that such materials can survive multiple
marine transgressions16. These two sites demonstrate that
materials related to hominid activity and the animals which
formed the food source for early hominids, both existed
on the continental shelf, and can survive marine transgression in certain circumstances.
The great majority of submarine finds of palaeontological materials and prehistoric archaeological artefacts
are restricted to the last glacial cycle, that is, the last 120 ky.
Artefacts in situ dating from 45 ky BP have been found at
a depth of 20 m off the North coast of France17, and off
Corfu, in a depth of 5 m18. The Grotte Cosquer, with an
entrance 40 m below sea level, has dates of occupation between 21 ky and 17 ky BP7. For dates younger than this, many
hundreds of sites have been found under the sea19–22, and
some will be described later.
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The usual concept of hominid diffusion (Homo erectus,
Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo
sapiens) out of Africa and into Europe and Asia during
the last million years implies a land route through the Sinai
into the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant. Tool-making
hominids had reached Mount Carmel in Israel and Dmanisi
in Georgia, close to the Black Sea, more than one million
years ago. It is usually assumed that if marine crossings
did take place, they were restricted to Anatomically
Modern Humans (AMH) during the last few tens of thousands of years (ky). However, the distribution of the
Acheulean hand-axe tradition and the east and central
Asian tradition of Chopper or Flake- and Chopper traditions (Figure 2) shows the Acheulean tools distributed far
north through Spain into France, in Italy, and eastwards
into Arabia and India. The Movius line in north India,
and the boundary through Eastern Europe, does not look
like dispersal exclusively across the Sinai. Rather, it looks
as if there has been contact across the Straits of Gibraltar
and possibly from Tunisia into Sicily and Italy. Figure 2
Figure 1. Three Acheulean hand axes found under the sea at a depth
of 8 m in Table Bay Cape Town, South Africa. The artefacts are between 300,000 and 1.2 million years old. The artefacts were found by
Bruno Werz. See Werz and Flemming15.
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shows the boundary at roughly 500 ky BP. Another alternative to the localized short bursts of migration through
Sinai alone is the possibility of multiple smaller crossings
with interfaces and two-way crossings23. While there is
no doubt about the major broad implications of the successive out-of-Africa migrations, the details are greatly
influenced by the possibility of multiple routes.
This idea was first proposed by Alimen24 who studied
the distribution of Acheulean tools, and also examined
the detailed bathymetry of the straits of Gibraltar and
Sicily to check the feasibility of crossing routes. Many
other scholars25–27 expressed similar concepts, but none
of these authors considered the possibility of searching
for and studying submerged prehistoric sites, which might
provide supporting data. Circumstantial data continue to
accumulate slowly, such as the recent discovery of Acheulean tools in caves in Gibraltar (Finlayson, pers. commun.,
2003), and the discovery of hominid footprints in volcanic ash about 380,000 years old in southern Italy28. A large
quantity of supporting evidence has been brought to light
from submerged prehistoric sites in Gibraltar, France, Italy,
Greece, and Israel29 to show how such material can contribute to the thesis that people lived on the continental
shelf at all low sea level periods, and that they were capable of crossing narrow sea straits hundreds of thousands
of years ago (Figure 3). The thesis is not yet proven to reliable scientific standards, but several teams of researchers
within the UK project ‘Environmental Factors in the Chronology of Human Evolution and Dispersal’ (EFCHED) are
studying different components of the problem (Figure 4).
In northern Europe the timescales of interest vary from
consideration of the first hominid occupation of Britain at
about 700 ky BP, through to the last human diffusion after
the last glaciation when tribes skilled in fishing and hunting
spread across what is now the floor of the North Sea, and
expanded into Scandinavia, Britain and Russia4,6,16,21,22,30–33
between 12 and 6 ky BP. Thousands of Mesolithic settlements have been discovered by the archaeologists on the
floor of the Baltic, containing hearths, fish weirs, canoes,
burials, flint-knapping sites, flint tools, and artefacts of
bone, wood, and antlers. The data are sufficiently robust
to determine the population and age structure of communities, the family structure of occupants of dwelling huts,
aspects of age distribution and diets, and hunting patterns.
The main source of food was marine, both fish and
marine mammals, with frequent excursions inland along
river valleys to establish temporary hunting camps for
reindeer and other large mammals34. The amazing ability
for people to travel far and live on coastlines at an early
date is confirmed by the findings on the Siberian Arctic
coast of the Laptev Sea dating back to 27,000 BP, before
the last glacial maximum33.
Other sites have been discovered around the North Sea,
and fishermen continuously retrieve several tons of Pleistocene mammal bones each year from the sediments of
the southern North Sea22. Large numbers of cold climate
fauna bones are retrieved, including mammoth, reindeer,
ox, wolf, and bear, dating back to 35 ky BP35.
Figure 3. The distribution of known submerged prehistoric sites in
the Mediterranean is shown in this map. Sites age from 5000 years to
45,000 years old. (From Flemming et al.29).
Figure 2. The shaded portions of the map were inhabited in about
500,000 years BP, as well as India, the Middle East, Africa, and western Europe. The different shaded zones show the Acheulean hand axe
tradition and the chopper and flake-and-chopper tradition of stone tools.
(From Klein1, p. 258). See text for discussion.
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 86, NO. 9, 10 MAY 2004
Figure 4. Potential migration routes for early humans and hominids
out of Africa into Europe and Asia.
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Before considering the importance of the Indian continental shelf I will refer briefly to submarine prehistoric
sites in other parts of the world, to make the case that the
evidence is not restricted to the Mediterranean and European seas. Several submarine prehistoric sites were found
on the coast of California36, and a few flint tools were
discovered at a depth of 50 m using a geological grab37
off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. Several submerged sites dating back to 10 ky have been reported on
the Gulf coast of the USA38–40. Thousands of square
kilometres of land were exposed between the 100 m depth
and the present shoreline, and much of this landscape
contains karstic sinkholes and underground rivers. These
sites have already revealed human artefacts both above
and below present sea level41,42. A few other prehistoric
sites on the USA shelf have been reported earlier43,44.
In East Asia the only submerged site with prehistoric
artefacts more than 5000 years old deposited in situ which
has been published to my knowledge is the Jomon culture
site at a depth of 25 m off the Tokonami River estuary,
and dating from 9000 BP45. Palaeolithic flints have been
found scattered on several Japanese beaches, but not in
situ. Other indicators from the region include extensive
mammoth fauna trawled by fishermen at a depth of 80 m
in the Taiwan Straits (Wu Xinjhi, pers. commun.). Allen
et al.2 were well aware of the importance of the submerged shelf of Sunda and Sahul, and Flemming46 surveyed
the shoals and banks between Darwin and Timor in an
attempt to find archaeological evidence of people living
on the shelf during the earliest migrations into Australia.
This survey revealed complex karstic topography, narrow
limestone valleys, fossil beach lines, and fossil corals,
indicating an attractive indented coastline, which would
have been rich in mangroves and shellfish. No archaeological materials were found.
The ‘Southern Route’ and the Indian
continental shelf
The southern Red Sea crossing from Africa to Yemen has
attracted considerable attention in recent years as the start
of the ‘southern route’ of human migration from Africa to
Australia47–49. The hypothesis is that in the most recent
phase of human dispersal (AMH) from Africa after about
100 ky BP some tribes crossed the southern Red Sea in the
neighbourhood of the straits of Bab el Mandab, and that
they were coast-dwelling, and migrated eastwards over
the course of thousands of years, reaching Indonesia and
Australia about 50–60 ky BP. If this happened during the
last glacial cycle while the sea level was 50–100 m lower
than at present, there would be very little archaeological
evidence of the migration on land, and very little genetic
trace in modern DNA.
The ‘southern route’ hypothesis depends upon several
plausible, but not necessarily correct, guesses or assumptions. The first assumption is that the most favourable
route out of Africa is across the southern Red Sea near
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Bab el Mandab (Figure 5), and that a combination of low
sea level and favourable climate on land on both sides
coincided to make crossing peculiarly easy48. At the present date, in spite of the evidence of archaeological deposits above present sea level on both sides of the Red Sea,
there is no immediate evidence that this is the result of a
southern crossing, and not to due a journey northwards
through the Sinai and back again on the Saudi shore. At
maximum low sea level about 22 ky BP the strait was not
completely dry, and a narrow channel connected the Indian
Ocean with the Red Sea, rather like the Bosphorus50, but
even shallower. This could have been crossed with the
simplest use of any flotation device, but the climate was
also drier than now at some stages, and it is possible that
the land on either side of the strait at lowest sea level was
so inhospitable as to reduce the chance of crossing. Careful research is needed to establish the exact climate and
vegetation in the coastal lands adjacent to the southern Red
Sea at each stage of sea level change to judge the probability of human crossings. This can only be logically concluded by the discovery of archaeological materials on the
submerged shelf showing a continuous culture across a very
narrow channel (Figure 5 b). This has not yet been done.
Further evidence that eastward migration was close to
the coast at low sea level would require a similar effort of research in the region of Oman, and a similar analysis of the
potential for crossing the Straits of Hormuz at low sea
level51. Again, there is no direct archaeological evidence yet.
At the eastern end of the presumed route, no sites have
yet been found submerged on the continental shelf of
Indonesia, although the potential is enormous. The northern shelf of Australia is also an attractive research zone,
as reported by Flemming46 after mapping the detailed
terrain of the Cootamundra Shoals.
To demonstrate that a unique group related to Australian aborigines made such a journey would require both
the discovery of some submerged sites, plus, if possible,
the recovery of some human bones sufficiently well preserved to contain identifiable DNA. This is not as unlikely
as it sounds, since even in the tropics the water temperature is sufficiently low to facilitate the possible preservation of DNA (Gregor Larsen, pers. commun.).
This brings us to the task of actually how one would
find submerged prehistoric sites on the continental shelf
of India. Experience in other parts of the world has shown
that the circumstances which determine the original occupation of a site (precipitation, groundwater, vegetation,
food supplies, travel routes, hunting radius, shelter, proximity to a river/lake/the sea, safety from predators, availability of fire-wood) depend upon topographical and
climatic factors at the horizontal scale of a few kilometres
and less. When the sea rises over a prehistoric site, the
probability of erosion or preservation depends upon
whether the site has become covered by sediments or
soils, and whether the wave and current action is reduced
by the local coastal topography during the few hundred
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years that the sea water is only a few metres deep over
the site. Ideally the site is protected if the coastal topography at the time of inundation protects the site from the
maximum wind-wave fetch; if headlands, bays, or offshore islands further reduce wave impact and protect from
a
strong currents; and if the gradient is such that wave action
tends to be constructive rather than destructive.
Assuming that a site has survived the initial inundation
and we are now searching for it, discovery and the possibility of future submarine research on the site depends upon
artefacts or other signifiers being detectable by eye or using
acoustic methods, and whether the present wind-wavecurrent conditions make work possible on the site. On the
coast of India the conditions are further complicated by
massive river sedimentation, coastal mangrove forests in
some areas, and coral reefs in others. These features need to
be taken into account when seeking to identify those locations where submarine prehistoric sites may be preserved.
The distribution of prehistoric sites on land is a key
indicator. It is important to study the factors, which determine the location of prehistoric sites on the adjacent
dry land, and to try to extrapolate these factors across the
modern beach into the submerged environment. As experience is gained in shallow water, it becomes possible
to modify the model of predicting site occurrence so as to
take into account those attributes, which turn out to be
unique to the prehistoric coastal living culture.
Conclusions
b
Figure 5. a, High resolution bathymetric map of the southern Red
Sea compiled by the Cartographic Section of the Southampton Oceanography Centre. Note that there is a narrow central channel through the
straits of Bab el Mandab. b, A sequence of maps of the southern Red
Sea using the same data as in Figure 5 a, but with the relative sea level
lowered at each stage. No correction has been made for crustal distortion due to hydro-isostatic adjustment. At each level the same colour
code for water depth is used as in Figure 5 a, relative to the new lowered sea level. Note that a very narrow channel survives even when the
sea level is lowered by 120 m. The horizontal scale can be read from
the latitude markings on the margin.
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 86, NO. 9, 10 MAY 2004
Research on submerged prehistoric sites in the age date
range 5000–100,000 years requires a steady effort over
decades to produce results. In every part of the world
where this kind of work has been conducted using underwater observation by scuba divers, supported by accurate
bathymetric mapping, and an understanding of the sediment regime, submerged prehistoric sites have been found.
The rate of discovery has been approximately proportional to the date at which scuba diving equipment became
widely used both by sports divers and young scientists at
the university and in government laboratories, and to the
number of people diving. Observations of this kind started
in the USA, Canada, and European waters in the mid to
late 1950s, and prehistoric sites were being discovered
consistently with officially funded research programmes
by the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since there is a great
deal of diving on the northern Mediterranean coasts and
in Israel, sites have been found there. But up till now
there has been very little archaeological diving in North
Africa, the Red Sea, or on the coasts of Yemen and
Oman, and no submerged prehistoric sites have yet been
found there, although they must exist.
The potential discovery and mapping of submerged
prehistoric sites on the continental shelf of India is of extreme interest, both because of the information it would
provide on early phases of exploitation of marine resources
in a tropical climate, and because of its possible significance in the proof or disproof of the ‘southern route’ theory.
I am in no position to suggest the best strategy for a submarine prehistory programme in India, since I am not
familiar with the nature of the continental shelf in detail,
which is required, and have no first hand knowledge of the
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environment. The factors, which determine the primary existence of settlement sites, their taphonomy, survival, and discovery, are critical at a horizontal scale of less than 1 km.
The submerged landscape therefore needs to be mapped
with this resolution in the areas where prehistoric research
is to be carried out. Thick layers of sediment and rapid coral
reef growth both in their different coastal regimes, make it
extremely difficult to find prehistoric sites, and progress on
the Indian shelf will therefore depend on first locating broad
areas where these two phenomena are absent.
In order to locate the most likely research areas it is
necessary to combine the skills and resources of sea bed
bathymetric mapping, acoustic sediment studies, geological sampling of the seabed, an understanding of the oceanographic regime (waves and currents and their stresses on
the seabed), and the conventional skills of prehistoric
archaeology. These skills are well developed in India.
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