The Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 remains one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history.
Some 230,000 people died as the result of the cataclysm, which was sparked when a massive undersea earthquake off the western coast of Sumatra unleashed a series of devastating waves .
These crashed over coastal areas across the region, hitting countries including Indonesia, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.
And yet, moments before an unimaginable tragedy was about to strike, a startling discovery was made.
As the water receded from a beach in Mahabalipuram, India, readying itself to return as a raging tsunami, a group of fishermen found themselves gazing at a portal into the past.
The men claimed to have glimpsed the remains of ancient temples that had been lying buried in the seabed, before the water returned to swallow them up once more.
"You could see the destroyed walls covered in coral, and the broken-down temple in the middle," a fisherman called Durai told the Associated Press (AP) news agency back in 2005.
"My grandfathers said there was a port here once and a temple, but suddenly we could see it was real, we could see that something was out there."
In addition, just a few hundred metres away, the furious waves scoured away six feet (around 1.8 metres) of sand from a section of beach, uncovering a handful of ancient boulders carved with animals and gods.
The sightings led many to believe that the mysterious structures could be the remains of a once-thriving ancient port city that had become the stuff of local legend.
The myths of Mahabalipuram were first documented by British traveller James Goldingham, who visited the South Indian coastal town in 1798.
Back then it was known to sailors as the Seven Pagodas. This is because, according to legend, seven temples once lined the shore of the bustling town.
However, they were – so the story goes – so beautiful that the gods grew jealous and sent a flood that swallowed up the entire town.
In so doing, they drowned all of the pagodas but one – the so-called Shore Temple – an elaborately carved 7th Century complex that stands proud to this day, and was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984.
And yet, some fishermen insisted that they saw more than the six vanished temples when the waters retreated.
"There must have been at least 20," a young man called Sunderasan told the AP at the time. "We had no idea there were so many out there."
Then, in April 2005, researchers from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Navy began scouring the waters off the coast of Mahabalipuram by boat, using sonar technology.
"We discovered that the row of large stones people had seen immediately before the tsunami were part of a six-foot-high, 70-metre-long wall,”archaeologist T Sathyamurthy told The Times of India .
“We also found remains of two other submerged temples and one cave temple within 500 metres of the shore," he said.
However, the team wasn't equipped to take underwater images at the time, and it would take another 10 years for experts to dig deeper into the remains of the fabled port.
In 2016, members of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) discovered a series of ruins which they said may either have been part of the port city itself or one of the six “lost” pagodas.
The 10-member team, made up of divers, geologists and archaeologists, found a 10 metre-long wall, a short flight of stairs, and chiselled stone blocks scattered on the seabed, The Times of India reported at the time.
These were unearthed 800 metres (around 2,600 feet) from the shoreline at a depth of around 8.2 metres (27 feet).
Nevertheless, Rajiv Nigam, head of the NIO’s marine archaeology unit, admitted that the divers had found it difficult to identify many of the structures as they were covered with thick aquatic growth.
"Some of them are badly damaged due to strong underwater currents and swells. However, we could make out that they were part of a building complex," he said.
Historians have suggested that these structures, including the port, may have been submerged by a tsunami-like event that took place in 952AD.
Geophysical survey data from past explorations have also confirmed the submergence of a large area comprising a building complex which, they say could be the remains of a drowned township.
At any rate, experts have reluctantly admitted that the 2004 tsunami offered them valuable new insights into the past.
"From an archaeological perspective, maybe the tsunami was good. We found some new things," one researcher told the AP .
"But from a human perspective, there were a lot of deaths, a lot of damage, a lot of destruction."
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