The Standing Stones

A friend of mine said they could possibly be fossilized dung of dinosaurs, straight out of Jurassic Park, understandable as he lives in the city of Dream Merchants.

I asked an old woman, who works on a farm cultivating peanuts when the rains are good and she said, “They were shepherds, long ago they were cursed by a Yogi who had turned them into stones and they have been standing here since then.

I tried touching one which was likely looking with my foot, expecting it to turn into a damsel; No luck.

They have survived long, only significant specimen of Menhirs in Peninsular India.

How long did they stand there in those windswept plains, exposed to elements: periodic floods and persistent wind?

Conventional wisdom  places them between 1300 BCE and the beginning of the Current Era, as they belong to a common heterogeneous basket of burials called ‘Megaliths’, Big Stones, which belonged to the Iron Age.

Primarily they are of four kinds: Cists, Dolmens, Stone Circles and Menhirs and they were erected to commemorate a hero or a prominent person after their passing away, usually at the site of their cremation.

The first three are enclosures; they were built around the mortal remains of people.

While the Menhirs are freestanding stones

Before I could consult the only expert in the field, my friend Yogesh restrained me, he probably was scared and didn’t want to trust the temper of this famous companion of Asterix.

However, their names are a clue: Asterix, the Star and Obelix, the Menhir maker.

Yogesh was part of the team which assisted Prof. Kameshwar Rao of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, who was trying to decipher astronomically significant data from the structural remains of the Indian Stone Age.

What they had found is astounding:

The Standing Stones were laid out in rows: in line with the trajectory of the two significant annual solar events, The Solstices.

They belonged to a time probably a thousand years before Aryabhata, or Pythagoras.

The land around these Menhirs was covered by a layer of stones and pebbles; a close look revealed many used and discarded stone implements. From the technology employed and the styling, they belonged to the Middle and Upper Paleolithic: In South India these cultures date back from 3000 to 30000 BCE.

The Menhirs belonged to a different genre in relation to the other types of Megalithic burials.

Were they older than the conventional 2nd Millennium dates they are credited with?

These Menhirs are not far from Hyderabad, probably a hundred miles or so, on a dry rocky spur jutting into River Krishna. A couple of minutes off the highway, under the high tension power lines lay a few acres of cultivated land, but fortunately, not so intensively, in spite of its proximity to the river, which is the only reason for their survival.

But there is ample evidence of damage in the neighboring fields. Many of them were removed and some still lay there serving as bunds.

I must thank my young friend, Yogesh Mallinathpur of Deccan College, who had taken me there. I am sure there will not be any left when I visit next. Pressure on the land will ensure their annihilation in our lifetime.

Cowboys of Karnataka

Was South India a part of Harappan Horizon?

It is a drive down the Bellary Road, now a dual carriageway all the way to Hyderabad. Three hours from Bengaluru Airport, near the town spelled Gooty, but pronounced ‘Gutty’, you take a turn into any potholed apology serving the heavy mining trucks; you don’t have to endure an hour before you find one of them.

The granite hills around this area still literally preserve the footprints of those cattle herders, who had lived in these windswept environs drained by the monsoon spill-offs from the Western Ghats converging into a great riparian system: Krishna.

The landscape is dotted with a profusion of likely hills with their characteristic outcrops. Many an archaeologist from India and abroad had staggered through the wild hillocks daring the thorn and bush and an occasional sloth bear: Bruce Foote, Sewell and the doughty couple, Allchins were followed by our own scientists Paddayya, Korishettar and an exciting crop of young graduates from the premier institutions of Deccan and recent yeoman effort of the South Deccan Prehistory Project, ably supported by Leverhulme Foundation.

If Deccan prehistory: hitherto a short perfunctory footnote in the most advanced textbook of history, takes its due place, its thanks to their efforts.

Ash Mounders?

The Deccan Neolithic sites in the Middle Krishna Valley were predominantly cattle herding communities. There is a strong evidence of some of them being sedentary, characterized by the presence of ‘Ash Mounds’.

What are these Ash Mounds?

They are large accumulations of vitrified material found buried under a layer of soil, usually at the base of a granite hillock.

They belong to an age parallel to the famous Indus Valley Civilization in its mature phase:

2500 to 1700 BC.

The material is very light resulting from intensive burning of cattle dung by our primitive ancestors. The refuge accumulated was burnt periodically creating huge mounds.

“Why did they burn the precious fertilizer … and an excellent coat for the walls and floors of their dwellings?”

These are not rhetorical questions, but puzzles which occupied the minds of many archaeologists who had encountered and studied these sites.

Probably those primitive fools didn’t know how to farm and had no need of a permanent home. But the ash mounds show accumulations over many hundreds of years.

The clue comes from a simple ratio:

‘The size of cattle pens to the human dwellings’

Utnur an Ash Mound site provided evidence of a six hundred head of cattle based on the area of the excavated cattle holding enclosure, whereas, evidence of dwelling spaces is almost negligible. Except in the sites - Kupgal and Budhihal, where the habitations sites are associated primarily with large tool-making / pottery workshops.

While the neighboring districts in the lower Krishna valley showed contemporary peoples cultivating millets and recycling the animal waste, why haven’t these people of the upper river learned that way of life, in spite of a more fertile environment?

It may be assumed that these cattle herders were homeless nomads, following a regular seasonal circuit, visiting the same places year after year and moving to other areas when there is no possibility of grazing.

Where did they come from? And, where did they go to?

Why was such a wide discrepancy in numbers – between cattle and human beings?

Where did exist a significant market for their cattle?

The Harappan Civilization certainly is a suspect – a large urban culture providing a huge consumer base.

But there is no connection. Period

Any speculation is frivolous.

The southernmost Harappan outposts had not extended beyond River Tapi in Maharashtra.

Technologies of the Neolithic cattlemen differed significantly from the highly advanced Harappans.

There is very little if any evidence of trade.

However,

The Neolithic people of South India hadappreciated the value of gold, which they panned from the southern rivers and mined from Hutti and Kolar in Karnataka, but without even an iota of evidence of their using or hording it.

The large workshops of Chert and Dolerite at Budhihal and Kupgal, where a casual walk could accumulate a bagful of finished and unfinished tools even today, only served themselves.

Disc beads of Steatite paste found at Piklihal, another South Indian Neolithic site were a common commodity in Harappan towns, if exchanged for gold and stone tools, should have been found more widely.

Now,

Do we conclude that the South India was the Wild West of Harappans?

Harappan Carpetbaggers?

There is a traditional name for them from the various South Indian folk legends:

Siddhas.

They were alchemists who made gold from the common rock.

Legends associate them with cattle herding communities.

Even today the area abounds with place names near the prehistoric sites with the prefix – Siddha.

The folk legend of Mariamma (the Small Pox Goddess of South) refers to a hundred forts of Siddhas.

Were these Siddhas the citizens of Indus Valley, the people of the Land of Attainment or a cognate for the Northern name for ‘River’, Sindhu?

I have warned you not to speculate!

Fortunately, until recently the rocky hill-slopes have not attracted the cultivators and they remained in their unspoilt state, preserving a record for any archaeologist. But with the availability of seasonal irrigation and the resultant spread of arable land, they are becoming extremely vulnerable.

There is a need for preserving the heritage.

If you care to comment, do so.