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Scientists claim that the archaeological findings from Gujarat's Kachchh reveal evidence of human presence dating back 9,000 to 9,500 years. This is a collaborative finding by IIT-Gandhinagar, IIT-Kanpur, the Inter University Accelerator Centre (Delhi), and PRL-Ahmedabad. On scientists claiming to find evidence of an ancient human civilisation in Kachchh, VN Prabhakar, Associate Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, IIT Gandhinagar, says, “... One of our colleagues found many broken shells in Bambhanka, 10 kilometres away from Dholavira. It was found to be about 6,000 years old. When I joined IIT here in 2020, he showed me the findings. I immediately identified that. Those were shell middens... Where shells broken by humans are found collected in one place, archaeologists call it shell middens or shell scatters. We also found some stone tools, which they must have used in the olden times. These are called composite tools... We found evidence of a shell midden in at least 15-16 places... Out of these, we dated about 10 samples, and we found that they were from 7,500 BC to 4,000 BC. In such a big-time bracket, people lived there in the hunter-gatherer stage. Much before the civilisation, much before the arrival of Harappa. These people understood the local environment completely... This research project is a sponsored project by the Ministry of Earth Sciences. It is a collaborative project of IIT Kanpur and IIT Gandhinagar... We are studying archaeology and the humans who lived there, and the result is that we have found very good evidence. We are going to further expand this research in other islands and Kachchh mainland...,” said VN Prabhakar.