Can anyone tell me more about the lost city under the sea, off India

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A.� Thanks to seeker for the question. It's an amazing find and might, according to experts, force historians and archaeologists to reconsider their view of ancient human history. The remains have been discovered 120ft underwater in the Gulf of Khambhat off the western coast of India.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Q.� It's big

A.� Huge: five miles long and two miles wide. What's more, it's believed to be more than 9,000 years old - that's 5,000 years older than the Harappan civilisation, which was the oldest known in the subcontinent.

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Q.� How was it found

A.� The site was discovered last year by oceanographers from India's National Institute of Ocean Technology during a pollution survey. Using sidescan sonar, they identified huge geometrical structures. What the Indian scientists found could challenge our perception of where and when civilisation began.

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Q.� What and how

A.� The scientists' leader, Dr Badrinarayan, sent down a large underwater grab. It was primitive, but did the trick. It scooped up human figurines, pottery, carved wood and beads. It brought back a stone slab covered in marks that may the earliest form of writing. It also uncovered human remains including a jawbone, a spine and teeth. The debris has been carbon-dated and found to be nearly 9,500 years old.

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That shows that humans were building cities at a time when most archaeologists believe we were just beginning to emerge from the Stone Age.

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Q.� More theories

A.� It fits in with the ideas of Graham Hancock, an author and film-maker. He has written books claiming the Earth had once been dominated by a single civilisation that disappeared when the ice caps melted and the oceans expanded. He angered conventional scholars with a controversial theory that owed much to the story of Atlantis theory, which began in the ancient Greek writings of Plato.

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Hancock described the Indian discovery as a 'gift from God'. He has taken a film crew to the Gulf of Khambhat and compiled a picture of what the submerged cities might have looked like. His findings will be shown in a three-part series for Channel 4 starting on 11 February.

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Q.� So - an Asian Atlantis

A.� Not so fast. Hancock said of the discovery: 'It means that the whole model of the origins of civilisation with which archaeologists have been working will have to be remade from scratch.' But others aren't so sure.

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Q.� Why

A.� Carbon dating isn't always such an exact science. Garrett Fagan, professor of classics and history at Penn State University, said the method was inexact, especially when the artefacts had been underwater for thousands of years. He also said there was no evidence from detailed excavations on land to support the idea that the city was 9,500 years old.

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Justin Morris, curator of south Asian antiquities at the British Museum, is also sceptical. He has spent years working around the Indus valley and Gujarat peninsula and says there is no evidence for cities earlier than 5,500 years ago.

'Civilisations do not exist in isolation. Towns and cities have a big impact on the agriculture and settlements for hundreds of square miles around them. There is no sign of such an impact in this area,' he said.

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Steve Cunningham