Two kilometres off Tamil Nadu’s coast, a lost world emerges from the sea
8 min readChennaiOct 3, 2026 06:53 AM IST First published on: Oct 3, 2026 at 06:45 AM IST
About 2 kilometres from the present-day Tamil Nadu coast, archaeologists searching the seabed off Poompuhar have recovered something that travelled a much greater distance. Found in 10-12 metres of water, the fragments of pottery were believed to have originated in West Asia, including pieces of a torpedo jar, a distinctive transport vessel associated with long-distance maritime trade in the Indian Ocean.
Archaeologists recovered the fragments during the third phase of underwater exploration, about 1.8 to 2.2 km from the present shoreline. For archaeologists trying to reconstruct ancient Kaveripoompattinam — the celebrated Chola port known today as Poompuhar, parts of which now lie beneath the Bay of Bengal — the find provides a new material clue to a world that Tamil literature described nearly two millennia ago.
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