by Patrick Nunn
The subsidence experienced in the Rann during the 1840s served to extend its lowland area, but it also raised the Allah Bund to new heights, creating a more effective dam for the Kori and ensuring that the landscape changes enacted in 1819 would endure.
Differential tectonics have affected the area now occupied by the Rann of Kachchh for probably millennia, but details of the earliest changes that the people of this area witnessed have probably been lost forever. Yet maybe they contributed, along with countless other similar examples, to oral traditions that eventually became formalised when literacy reached India more than 3,000 years ago, and the earliest and still some of the most revered books about the history of the subcontinent were produced. For example, the poems of the Rig Veda, perhaps the earliest extant Sanskrit text, include one about Varuna, the Hindu god of water and the ocean, who ‘led the watery floods of rivers onward … [and] made great channels for the days to follow’. The poem talks about when ‘he sinks in Sindhu … ruling in depths and meting out the region, great saving power hath he, this world’s Controller’. It may not be beyond the bounds of probability to link the tradition of Varuna, who occupies an underwater world, with millennia-old observations of land subsidence along the coast of India.40
There is more such material in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Sanskrit sagas considered to have been originally compiled from oral traditions. Three case studies, each deriving from one or both of these texts, which recall the submergence of coastal land, are recounted below: Dwaraka (Gujarat), Ramasetu (Tamil Nadu) and Mahabalipuram (Tamil Nadu) (Figure 5.3). The imprecision of these stories – compared to some described earlier in this book – makes it impossible to reconstruct the depths of sea level to which they might refer, and therefore to calculate minimum ages for the stories using known sea-level history.
Figure 5.3 The coasts of India and Sri Lanka today and during the coldest time of the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago. Locations of key places are shown, together with a satellite image showing a shallow Ramasetu. Satellite image credit: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC.
The golden city of Dwaraka (sometimes Dvaraka or Dwarka), long the abode of Lord Krishna, was somewhere close to the western extremity of the Saurashtra Peninsula, about 250km (155 miles) west of the Rann of Kachchh, and well positioned to play a prominent role in former cross-ocean exchange networks, especially within the Arabian Sea to the west.41 The Mahabharata tells that a town existed on the site of Dwaraka before it was built, a place called Kusasthali that was destroyed by the sea. Dwaraka was then constructed on the same part of the coast, including an area of 12 yojana reclaimed (or needing to be protected) from the sea.42 Why anyone would want to reclaim land on which to build a city when plenty was available above sea level is unclear.43 A plausible explanation is that two separate (and significant) stories are conflated here, as often happens with such ancient traditions. The first concerns the construction of a coastal city, the second the growing need – its urgency perhaps amplified by the destructive impacts of an extreme wave event – to protect that city from rising sea levels, a process involving major earthworks along the shoreline. But in the end all this proved insufficient, and shortly after Lord Krishna left the city was submerged … since which time it has become lost, its precise location uncertain. It is possible that extreme waves (storm surges or tsunamis), superimposed on a rising sea level, brought about the end of Dwaraka. A story in the Mahabharata states that many residents vacated the city before it was flooded,44 implying that the submergence was neither sudden nor unexpected. In fact, it may be that this detail conflates the experiences of many generations, and that submergence, perhaps punctuated by extreme short-lived events presaging the ‘end’, could even have taken 100 years or so to accomplish.45
Today, thanks largely to the efforts of Indian underwater archaeologists, we are fairly sure that Dwaraka was located in coastal Okhamandal and included offshore Bet Dwarka Island. At the latter site, underwater surveys have shown the existence of stone walls – perhaps jetties – and slipways, as well as numerous anchor stones and other artefacts (see colour plate section). Similar features are found on the adjacent mainland around the mouth of the Gomati River. Widely heralded as ‘proof’ of the stories in the Mahabharata, these discoveries do yet pose some difficulties concerning the time when Dwaraka was submerged.
Three dating methods have been employed. The first involved thermoluminescence dating of buried potsherds at Bet Dwarka; the earliest set of dates suggested that these were fired some 2,220–3,870 years ago (an average of about 1100 BC).46 This result is broadly consistent with that obtained from celestial observations during the lifetime of Lord Krishna that are found in many ancient texts; an age range of 1500–1400 BC has been suggested.47 But then there have been several suggestions that Dwaraka (or perhaps earlier Kusasthali) existed during the later part of the Harappan Period, perhaps around 2000 BC or even earlier.48 Whether or not we might confidently ascribe the submergence of Dwaraka to postglacial sea-level rise is dealt with below, after the discussion of the other two sites in India.
The rock bridge of Ramasetu (Rama’s Bridge), between part of the South-east Indian coast and that of nearby Sri Lanka, is reported in the Ramayana as having been constructed by the monkey army of Lord Rama, who used it to cross the gap to rescue his wife, Sita, who had been kidnapped by the demonic king Ravana.49 The monkeys built the bridge using rocks from the hills and trees ripped up by their roots (see colour plate section). Led by Lord Rama, a huge monkey army then crossed to Sri Lanka, and Sita was eventually restored to him. Astronomical and historical-genealogical dating places the writing of the Ramayana, generally thought to pre-date the Mahabharata, some time between 4000 and 2000 BC.50
When the sea level was lower during the last ice age, there would have been a broad land bridge in the area connecting what are now India and Sri Lanka. As the sea level rose, so the land bridge would have gradually been reduced in size and eventually drowned, undoubtedly to the consternation of people living at its extremities. Perhaps, as elsewhere in the world, memories of the time when a land connection between India and Sri Lanka existed found their way into folk traditions that in turn informed the stories in the Ramayana. Tens of generations after such a bridge existed, how would people ever explain that it had? Perhaps they melded the story with religious beliefs and culture heroes, massaging their reported antics to accommodate the story, resulting in the memory of Ramasetu being preserved.
One point of interest to geologists is that in some stories about Ramasetu, before Rama’s monkey army built its bridge, there had been another: one that ultimately failed.51 Might this represent the memory of a rise of sea level that drowned the land connection between India and Sri Lanka and was followed – perhaps hundreds of years later – by a fall of sea level that once again exposed it? Then came its final submergence, leading to the situation we see today where an underwater trace of such a connection is visible on satellite photos (see inset in Figure 5.3). That may strike you as a bit far-fetched, a deus ex machina, but actually from a geological standpoint it is not, for many scientists studying postglacial sea-level rise have found evidence consistent with oscillations – wiggles – rather than a smooth rise. So it may be that people witnessed the submergence of the India–Sri Lanka land bridge on more than one occasion, a detail that has also succeeded in finding its way down to us today.52
The final case study refers to the city of Mahabalipuram on India’s east coast, which has a long history of submergence, so much so that its earliest part once slipped into the realm of legend – once, that is. For shortly before the great Indian Ocean Tsunami struck Mahabalipuram on 26 December 2004, local fisherfolk saw the sea draw back an incredible 500m (1,640ft), exposing on the bare sea floor the remains of temples and associated statuary, numerous pieces of which were subsequently ripped from their shallow sandy graves and dumped inland as the massive waves rushed onshore. In the aftermath of the tsunami, the sho
reline here was found to be littered with huge granite blocks (once parts of defensive walls), and statues of lions and elephants that once sat proudly above gates to a Pallava-era port city, perhaps 1,300 years ago.53 However, Mahabalipuram was an important port far earlier, perhaps as much as 2,000 years ago, and had trade links with Imperial Rome, China, Sri Lanka and of course other parts of India.54 Subsequently, at least since Marco Polo’s time (around ad 1275), Mahabalipuram was known as the City of the Seven Pagodas for its seven famous temples (topped with iconic pagodas, or kalash), all but one of which later disappeared beneath the ocean surface. In the year 1776, memories of these were fading, for then only older people
… remembered to have seen the tops of several pagodas far out in the sea, which being covered with copper, probably gilt, were particularly visible at sunrise as their shining surface used to reflect the sun’s rays. 55
A Dutch portolan chart made in ad 1670, named DE CVST VAN MALEBHAER (The Coast of Malabar), is believed to show some temples at Mahabalipuram that were at the time very much onshore. It is possible that some of these later disappeared and perhaps gave rise to – or helped sustain – older stories about submerged temples here.56 Yet most evidence, including that provided by underwater surveys, suggests that the six vanished temples with their pagodas were submerged at least 1,000 years ago, but perhaps no earlier than ad 600, when the Pallava culture, which seems likeliest to have created these gilded temples, began to flourish at Mahabalipuram.
We now, therefore, turn to look at the history of sea-level changes along the coast of India to try to determine the antiquity of the stories from these three locations. Surprisingly, there has been little effort to utilise the vast amount of local information about the evolution of the coast of India to produce a region-wide picture of sea-level change since the last ice age. In the absence of such information, sea-level histories from Malaysia, Singapore and the offshore islands of the Maldives can be brought together to produce a reasonable approximation of the situation in India. That is not really good enough, you might charge, but remember that its purpose is not to interpret with a very high degree of precision, but only to obtain an approximate measure of how old particular stories might be.
Our synthetic sea-level curve for India involves the sea level rising rapidly after the end of the last ice age to reach its modern level about 6,800 years ago – similar to Australia. It slowed down a bit after that before rising again to a maximum, perhaps 2m (6½ft) higher than it is today, about 5,200 years ago. It then started falling but then once again started rising, reaching another maximum – a bit lower than the earlier one – about 2,350 years ago, after which it fell, probably with some minor oscillations, to its present level (Figure 5.4). What this means is that the drowning stories from India recounted above could recall any one of these three highstands of sea level. The question is which one.
Figure 5.4 Sea-level changes around India over the past 9,000 years or so. These are represented by an envelope to show the uncertainty based on imprecision of dating, as well as the tidal niches in which particular indicators are found. The sea reached its current level (dashed line) about 6,800 years ago, and stabilised for a while before peaking about 2m (6½ft) higher than it is today about 5,200 years ago. Then it fell, reaching a low about 3,200 years ago, before rising once more to a lower peak about 2,350 years ago, from which it fell more or less to its present level. Likely age ranges for stories about Dwaraka, Ramasetu, and Mahabalipuram are shown as solid bars.
If we accept that Dwaraka – and its predecessor Kusasthali – were indeed Harappan cities, then the most likely scenario is that Kusasthali was established about 3,000–3,500 years ago. Then, as the sea level started rising thereafter, the city began to suffer from the effects of this. A bold new leader – Lord Krishna – arose and declared that Kusasthali should be comprehensively redesigned so that it might be protected from the rising sea. This leader oversaw the building of the sea defences recalled in the Mahabharata, and the new city, when completed around 2,800 years ago, flourished in the twilight centuries of the Harappan culture, as the focus of this was driven southwards into moister Sausashtra by an increasingly drier climate further north. Yet the sea level continued rising and gradually the golden city succumbed to the waves by about 2,400 years ago.
It is a different situation when it comes to Ramasetu, simply because the Ramayana, in which it was first written about, is thought to have been produced some time between about 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, so that the story is likely to pre-date the most recent sea-level maximum. Perhaps we should not place too much trust in that deduction, for ancient books are notoriously difficult to date and of course many evolve; it is even possible that the story about the building of Rama’s bridge, today considered such a defining detail of the Ramayana, was in fact a more recent addition. But for the sake of argument, assuming that this was not the case, then the most parsimonious interpretation is that Ramasetu was last visible when the sea level was lower than it is today some 6,800 years or more ago. This may make it a clear contemporary of the majority of the Australian Aboriginal stories described earlier.
Finally to Mahabalipuram, jewel of the Pallava monarchy. Given that the sea level has been largely stable since Pallava times, the most likely explanation for the progressive submergence of Mahabalipuram’s coastal fringes over the past 1,300 years or so is that the land has been slowly sinking.57 This indicates that the City of Seven Pagodas came into existence only around a millennium ago. Of course, for Mahabalipuram as well as other comparatively young stories of submergence along the coast of India,58 just as for the ‘young’ stories about Bremer Bay and Oyster Bay in Australia, the probability of a story being young does not render it immune from earlier influences. And it may well be that the story of the drowning of Ramasetu and similar places echoed through Indian cultures for millennia, influencing later observations and inferences about the history of India’s coast.
If drowning stories could have endured many millennia as oral traditions (in Australia, Europe and India, among other places), then so, perhaps, have other types of story that are based on eyewitness accounts of other memorable events. This is the subject of the next chapter.
CHAPTER SIX
What Else Might We Not Realise We Remember?
Back in the 1990s a greenhorn geologist, intrigued by the theoretical possibility of volcanic eruptions having occurred within the Fiji Islands archipelago during the period of its human occupation of some 3,000 years, determined to investigate a likely candidate for activity – the imposing, rainforest-cloaked mountain named Nabukelevu (meaning ‘the big yam mound’) at the western extremity of the island of Kadavu. A succession of boats got him to his destination, and the hospitable people of Daveqele village housed and fed him, while he spent several days on the mountainside following tracks made by feral pigs – the only thoroughfares – hoping to stumble across field evidence for recent volcanic activity. The nights he spent in Daveqele, listening to the people’s stories, enlivened by drinking kava made with the magical water that gushes from springs around the base of Nabukelevu, ultimately proved far more fruitful.
One of the stories told of a god named Tanovo, who resided on Ono Island, 50km (30 miles) north-east of Nabukelevu, and made a habit of sitting on the beach every evening contemplating the sun sinking slowly beneath the horizon. He did this until one day he found the horizon completely changed, besmirched even, by a monstrous protrusion – Nabukelevu – which had suddenly appeared to obstruct his view of the setting sun. In fury, Tanovo flew to western Kadavu to confront Tautaumolau, the upstart god of Nabukelevu. A battle ensued, but Tanovo was eventually bested and flew away, dropping earth as he went at the islands of Dravuni (meaning ash) and Galoa. Could it be, wondered the geologist, that an eruption of Nabukelevu – unarguably a youthful volcano – was witnessed by humans on nearby islands, who encoded their observations in myth so they might be passed on through the centuries to warn their descendants … and to intri
gue outsiders? That geologist still thinks this is the case.1
Up to this point the focus of this book has been on memories of coastline drowning – some plausibly recalling postglacial sea-level rise – that have come down to us today through largely oral means. The implication is that some such memories have been successfully passed continuously between hundreds of generations for several thousand years. This deduction is so astonishing yet apparently so unassailable that it seems worthwhile to now consider what other ancient memories we, as a species, might have … and whether the antiquity of any of them matches those of the drowning stories. The example above is fairly solid evidence for a memory of a volcanic eruption having been preserved for perhaps 2,000–3,000 years. There are, of course, others, including the remarkable Klamath story of the eruption of Mt Mazama (and the associated formation of modern Crater Lake) recounted in Chapter 1, which appears to be around 7,600 years old. But how common are these stories? Are these examples anomalies, predestined for preservation by unique cultural circumstances, or are they representative of a largely undervalued body of knowledge? This chapter attempts to answer this question by looking – with a focus on Australia, where circumstances seem especially favourable – at stories of volcanic eruptions, abrupt land movements, meteorite falls and extinct animals.
Volcanic eruptions provide excellent material for mythmaking: they are frequently dramatic and therefore memorable; often shockingly disruptive and therefore imperative to explain to future generations so that they might recognise the warning signs and know what might follow. Volcano myths are common in the pantheons of collective memory created by many of the world’s cultures whose people live or have lived in areas of volcanic activity. Japanese, Italian and Norse cultures, to name but three, are replete with volcano stories – about the fires within the Earth, about how feuding deities rain fire on one another, and about how fire is used as a weapon or as punishment. However, this exemplifies one of the main challenges of identifying the antiquity of volcano myths in such places, namely that across a timespan of perhaps a few thousand years, volcanic activity has occurred so regularly that it is likely an original myth has been many times rejuvenated, and even embellished, by successive observations of similar phenomena.
