Author: Catherine Philp
Publication: The Times, UK
Date: October 31, 2002
A Loud crash in the jungle brought
the villagers running. As they dashed to the clearing close to the forest
cave, they found labourers pounding the rock face with hammers, hewing
off chunks of stone to sell for silica.
Horrified, they ran to fetch the
police superintendent from the neighboring village. The rocks, they said,
had beautiful paintings on them and although they knew nothing about where
they came from, they were sure it was wrong to destroy them.
When Superintendent Vijay Kumar
arrived, accompanied by the villagers, he knew he had come across something
special. "I felt a thrill go through me," he said. Exhorting the labourers
to lay down their tools, he stood in front of the rock face, mesmerised
by the bold red etchings of people dancing, men on horseback and a tribe
hunting bison with spears.
The villagers did not know it then,
but their action may have saved some of the oldest evidence of human civilisation
found in India, deep in the jungles outside the town of Shankargarh in
the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
Local experts summoned to examine
the paintings said they may be between 10,000 and 30,000 years old. If
their assessment can be confirmed, it would make the new discovery as old
as, or even older than, the prehistoric cave paintings at Bhimbetka in
the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh, discovered in 1957.
"They will be counted among the
oldest found in the country," said D. P. Tewari, a lecturer in prehistoric
archaeology at Lucknow University, who visited the site soon after the
discovery. He compared the scenes of dancing and hunting with those found
in caves such as Lascaux in France, as well as Bhimbetka, which both depict
scenes from the everyday lives of prehistoric cave-dwellers in the Upper
palaeolithic era. The discovery did not stop there. Inside a cave complex
hidden beyond the rock face, the archaeologists discovered further treasures,
more red-paint sketchings stretched across the walls, with further scenes
from prehistoric life as well as detailed diagrams of the internal organs
of animals. On the ground, they found discarded tools, apparently used
by the prehistoric occupants of the caves.
Before the discovery, archaeologists
had always believed that prehistoric man had remained in the
rocky mountain areas where they hunted animals and gathered food. The new
find, 230 miles southwest of the mountain cave complex of Bhimbetka, may
force a re-evaluation of assumptions about where Ancient Indians lived.
"The significance of these findings
is immense," Dr Tewari said. "These caves lie close to the central plains,
challenging the earlier view that palaeolithic man only settled near hilly
areas. Now it seems people were living in the Plains as far back as then."
Officials from the Archaeological
Survey of India in Delhi have yet to visit the site to authenticate the
find and determine its age, but the Uttar Pradesh state tourism department
is already planning to build a road into the jungle to bring tourists to
see it
