Ancient civilisation traced in WB
29 Mar 2008,
KOLKATA: Archaeologists have stumbled upon traces of an ancient civilisation in Bengal dating back to nearly 20,000 years.
About 200 small stone tools, knives and needle-like 'microliths' among others were excavated at a small village in West Bengal's Murshidabad district.
"The discovery indicates that an ancient civilisation existed in this part of Bengal and the stone tools, besides agate, quartz, chert and chalcedony were found to be used by a hunting tool-producing community in the pre-historic period," state Archaeology department's superintendent Amal Roy said.
Roy said that some fossilised fish fins and seeds were also found in the excavation site spread over an 1,000-metre area on a cultivable land along Santhalpara.
Noting that it was a one-and-a-half-year-long effort that led to the discovery of the stone tools, Roy said 2-3 metres of digging through the "yellowish soil" yielded the results.
State archaeologists carried out the excavation with the guidance of geo-archaeologists S N Rajguru and B C Deodare of Deccan College, Pune, he said.
"The finds have been closely examined and found to be beyond Holocene period (much over 10,000 year-old)," he added.
The archaeologist said that the excavation of the stone tools had dropped broad hint that an ancient civilisation existed in this part of Bengal.
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