From 1992 comes another fascinating, mysterious discovery: that of an ancient city in India that appears to have been leveled by an atomic blast 8,000 - 10,000 years ago. 

Reported in January 1992 by the UK's World Island Review, a construction team discovered the site in Rajasthan, India while preparing to build at housing development. 

The heavy layer of radioactive ash found in a three-mile-square area concealed "an ancient city where evidence shows an atomic blast dating back thousands of years, from 8,000 to 12,000 years, destroyed most of the buildings and probably a half-million people. One researcher estimates that the nuclear bomb used was about the size of the ones dropped on Japan in 1945," said the newspaper. 

After its discovery, the ancient city became suspect as the cause of a high rate of birth defects and cancer in the region. "The levels of radiation there (the city site) have registered so high on investigators' gauges that the Indian government has now cordoned off the region," said the newspaper. 

Interestingly, the Indian Mahabharata appears to have recorded the historic blast event. "A single projectile charged with all the power in the Universe...An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as 10,000 suns, rose in all its splendor...it was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes an entire race," says the sacred text. 

Archeologist Francis Taylor told the paper that etchings in some nearby temples he has managed to translate suggest that they prayed to be spared from the great light that was coming to lay ruin to the city. "It's so mind boggling to imagine that some civilization had nuclear technology before we did. The radioactive ash adds credibility to the ancient Indian records that describe atomic warfare." 
 

Staff Writer Sally Suddock