Kolkata (PTI): Archaeologists have stumbled upon traces of an ancient civilisation in Bengal dating back to nearly 20,000 years.

About 200 small stone tools, knives and needle-like 'microliths' among others were excavated at a small village in West Bengal's Murshidabad district.

"The discovery indicates that an ancient civilisation existed in this part of Bengal and the stone tools, besides agate, quartz, chert and chalcedony were found to be used by a hunting tool-producing community in the pre-historic period," state Archaeology department's superintendent Amal Roy told PTI over telephone from the excavation site at Haatpara mouza in Sagardighi block.

Roy said that some fossilised fish fins and seeds were also found in the excavation site spread over an 1,000-metre area on a cultivable land along Santhalpara.

Noting that it was a one-and-a-half-year-long effort that led to the discovery of the stone tools, Roy said 2-3 metres of digging through the "yellowish soil" yielded the results.

State archaeologists carried out the excavation with the guidance of geo-archaeologists S N Rajguru and B C Deodare of Deccan College, Pune, he said.

"The finds have been closely examined and found to be beyond Holocene period (much over 10,000 year-old)," he added.

The archaeologist said that the excavation of the stone tools had dropped broad hint that an ancient civilisation existed in this part of Bengal.

The deposit pattern in the area, Roy said, was also indicative of a hitherto-unknown information of the primitive life in this part of the country.

"We dug out only a smaller part of the land and the pre- historic traces are believed to be scattered over 4-5 km area," he said, adding more excavation was required to unearth more about the ancient civilisation.

The state archeology directorate had earlier excavated a few such stone implements at Birhanpur in Murshidabad district in 1954 and 1957 which were found to be not more than 12,000 years old.

Eminent archaeologist B B Lal of the Archaeological Survey of India helped the state archaeologists in the excavation at Birhanpur, Roy said.

Dwelling on the excavation at Haatpara mouza, he said,"we guessed after just having a first glance at the features of the mounds of earth that it might yield startling findings."

The first digging, he said, opened up fine quality ceramics and decorated bricks of the Sultanate period, besides terracota and bangles of the medieval period.

Further digging (to a depth of 2-3 metres) led to the deposit of older alluvium soil of the Pleistocene period (about 1.8 million year-old).

"The stone tools were found underneath that," he said.

He said that apart from the stone tools, excavators also dug out stone-sharpeners "which gave an impression that there existed a stone tool-producing community".

A carbon-dating test of some fish fins, found in fossilised forms in the area, also indicated that roasted fish formed a part of the primitive people's diet.