Author: G.S. Mudur
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: August 3, 2009
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090803/jsp/frontpage/story_11313800.jsp
Pattanam mentioned in Indian & Greek texts
A village in Kerala's Periyar delta may be
the site of a port that has remained untraced for centuries although ancient
Indian and Greek texts had described it as an Indian Ocean trade hub, researchers
have said.
Archaeological excavations at Pattanam, about
25km north of Kochi, have yielded an abundance of artefacts - a 2,000-year-old
brick-layered wharf, a wooden canoe and hundreds of fragments of Roman and
West Asian pottery, including wine jars.
The findings of three years of excavations
suggest that the Pattanam site may have been part of Muziris, a port city
mentioned in an ancient Tamil text, Akanunuru, as well as in the Periplus
of the Erythraean Sea, a navigational guide from ancient Greece describing
ports along the Red Sea and in India. Historians have dated both texts to
the first century AD.
"Pattanam may be the oldest port with
a large amount of evidence of Roman contacts outside the traditional boundaries
of the Roman empire," said Parayil John Cherian, the director of the
Kerala Council of Historical Research and research team leader.
Cherian and his colleagues have published
their findings in the latest issue of Current Science, a peer-reviewed journal
published by the Indian Academy of Sciences. "The artefacts suggest this
was a major trading port," Cherian told The Telegraph.
The excavations revealed a six-metre-long
wooden canoe, a wharf with wooden bollards to hold boats and fragments of
Roman pottery that appear to contain material from southern Italy as well
as shards of Egyptian and Mesopotamian pottery. Scattered alongside in a waterlogged
area near the wharf were grains of black pepper, cardamom and rice.
The researchers said the findings provide
strong circumstantial evidence that Pattanam was part of the port of Muziris
because they match descriptions of the ancient port in Tamil literature from
about the first century AD.
"The text mentions a port named Muchiri
where ships arrived with gold and jars of wine and returned with pepper,"
said Veerasamy Selvakumar, a team member from the department of epigraphy
and archaeology at Tamil University, Thanjavur.
"We now have evidence for spice trade
from this site, and the Roman Amphora fragments point to wine jars,"
Selvakumar said.
Scientists at the Institute of Physics in
Bhubaneswar who helped the archaeologists date some of the materials discovered
at the site found that wood from the wharf was about 2,000 years old - between
the first century BC and the first century AD.
The researchers believe ships would sail from
a port on Egypt's Red Sea coast into the northern Indian Ocean and into Muziris.
"We've estimated that the voyage would have taken about 70 days,"
Cherian said.
He said the discovery of jars from Mesopotamia
and turquoise-glazed pottery from a layer at the archaeological site where
no Roman amphora was found suggests that some West Asians may have predated
contacts with the Romans.
The excavations suggest the site was first
occupied about 1,000 BC and remained active until about the 10th century AD.
During that period, it engaged in extensive trade with cultures from the Mediterranean,
West Asia and even Southeast Asia.
