Blog dedicated to the life and works of the path breaking Indian historian and mathematician.
When did early humans reach India?
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Author(s): Tiasa Adhya
Issue: May 15, 2011
Stone tools suggest a million years ago, previous assumption was 0.5 million years ago
imagePappu and her research team started studying the site in Tamil Nadu in 1999 (Courtesy: Shanti Pappu)EARLY humans arrived in India from Africa more than a million years ago, indicate newly discovered stone tools. The discovery overturns the earlier assumption that our ancestors reached India about half a million years ago.
A research team led by Shanti Pappu of non-profit Sharma Centre for Heritage Education in Chennai discovered 3,528 stone tools at a prehistoric site in Attirampakkam in the Kortallayar river basin of Tamil Nadu. The tools fall into a class of artefacts called Acheulian tools that scientists believe were first created by Homo erectus— ancestors of modern humans—in Africa more than 1.6 million years ago. The Acheulian tools largely include handaxes and cleavers.
The conclusion of Pappu’s study was earlier voiced by Robin Dennell of University of Sheffield in England in a commentary published in 2005 in the journal Nature.
The Old Stone Age, or Palaeolithic Age, is divided into three periods— Lower Palaeolithic, Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic. Each period is characterised by typical stone tool assemblages. The Acheulian is a phase within the Lower Palaeolithic, characterised by a stone tool assemblage consisting largely of handaxes and cleavers.
Acheulian populations were primarily hunters and gatherers, skilled at adapting to different environments. “We know this from fossil remains found at sites in India and world over,” says Pappu. The Acheulian tools were probably used to butcher and skin animals and to exploit plant resources like roots and tubers, she adds.
imageAcheulian handaxeDating, for the first time The archaeologists found the artefacts at a depth of one to nine metres in thick layers of clay.
To date the tools, the research team analysed traces of certain elements embedded in them and by correlating the archaeological layers excavated at the site with changes in the earth’s magnetic field. Many such artefacts have been found in south India, but this is the first study that has dated the tools.
The team used two dating methods, palaeomagnetic dating of the sediments that covered the Acheulian tools and cosmogenic nuclide burial dating of the stone tools. The former is based on the principle of periodic reversal of the earth’s magnetic fields over geological time periods. The palaeomagnetic measurements showed a reversed polarity, meaning the sediment samples predate the period after the last reversal of the earth’s magnetic field.
“The sediments date to more than 1.07 million years,” says Pappu. The burial dating technique measures isotopes of two earth metals, aluminium and beryllium, which gives the age of burial of the tool.
The finding “is one of the finest in Indian archaeology”, says V N Misra, retired professor of anthropology at Deccan College in Pune. “It proves, for the first time, that early humans migrated from Africa to Tropical Asia and Europe. They did not go to the Himalayan side of India because of the colder climate,” he adds. It proves that early humans were present in Asia much earlier than in Europe, he concludes.
The study, published in the March issue of Science, is part of an ongoing research project of Sharma Centre for Heritage Education. The research aims to understand prehistoric stone tool technology and changes in patterns of adaptation of Homo erectus to changing environments at Attirampakkam.
“We examine what type of development (agriculture and infrastructure development) is destroying prehistoric sites. This will help pave the way for methods that could be adopted to conserve the sites,” says Pappu.
Tags: Science & Technology, Africa, History, India, Life Science, Tamil Nadu
Union Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh has asked Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to undertake a thorough archaeological survey of the Girnar reserve forest and the Gir sanctuary in Junagadh district in the Saurashtra region of the State.
In a letter dated April 21, Mr. Ramesh said he was giving the advice on the suggestion of a noted historian from Delhi University Nayanjot Lahiri, who recently visited the reserve forest and found the remnants of two “stupas” which she believed could be of the Mauryan dynasty.
Mr. Ramesh said Dr. Lahiri located one of the stupas, locally known as Lakha Medi, near the Bhordevi temple inside the forest.
The historian reckoned that the stupa must have been about 50 feet high. Its core was of solid bricks, similar to the “Sanchi Stupa – I” (Madhya Pradesh) and the “Stupa at Piprahwa” (Uttar Pradesh), believed to be of the Mauryan era.
She had also found many loose bricks around indicating there could have been other stupas in the vicinity. But what was more alarming was that the bricks from the stupas were being taken away by the locals for renovating the temple.
“Therefore, it is urgent, that there is a complete survey of the stupa with accurate line drawings and photographs followed by careful archaeological conservation,” Mr. Ramesh said.
Better stupa
The historian located another “stupa,” locally called “Rathakot,” near another temple known as “Jina Baba ki Madi,” beyond Hasnapur dam in the Girnar reserve forest. This stupa was found to be in a much better condition.
Mr. Ramesh said Dr. Lahiri believed that if a proper survey was carried out, the reserve forest and the sanctuary could become famous for not only being the only abode of the Asiatic Lions, but also of the country's “historic heritage.”
The survey would require close cooperation between the State Forest Department and the Department of Archaeology.
‘Coral Atlas'
Meanwhile, a first comprehensive “Coral Atlas” of the State — giving not only the figures and extent of the coral reefs across the State's coastline, but also the details of the habitat scenario in each of the reefs — has been released by the State government. The Atlas was prepared by the State-owned Gujarat Ecology Commission with technical assistance from the Bhashkaracharya Institute of Space Applications and Geo-Informatics.
According to Principal Secretary of the State Environment and Forests Department S.K. Nanda, the Atlas would serve as an important baseline in the preparation of the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan for Gujarat initiated by the Union Environment Ministry. “It is also a contribution to the State's earnest efforts towards sustainable development,” he said.
Website launched
Along with the Atlas, a dedicated website on Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project was also launched by the State government. The Atlas was the second publication of the GEC after the “Mangrove Atlas of Gujarat” last year featuring thematic maps of mangrove distribution along the State's coastline.
“The initiative by GEC is an attempt to come out with the baseline documentation on the natural heritage in order to ensure effective management of the coastal zone in line with the rising developmental activities on the coastal belt,” GEC member-secretary E. Belaguruswamy said.
Keywords: Jairam Ramesh, Girnar forest, Mauryan-era
A Tamil-Brahmi script on a pot rim, reading “a ma na”, meaning a Jaina, has been found at Pattanam in Ernakulam district, Kerala, establishing that Jainism was prevalent on the west coast at least from second century CE (Common Era). The script can be dated to circa second century CE. The three Tamil-Brahmi letters are followed by two symbols generally called Megalithic graffiti and these two symbols could not be identified. This is the third Tamil-Brahmi script to be found in the Pattanam excavations.
The Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) has been conducting excavations at Pattanam since 2007, with the approval of the Archaeological Survey of India. The pot-rim was found during the sixth season of the excavation currently under way. Pattanam is now identified as the thriving port called Muziris by the Romans. Tamil Sangam literature celebrates it as Muciri.
P.J. Cherian, Director of the Pattanam excavations, said: “The discovery, in the Kerala context, has a great significance because of the dearth of evidence so far of the pre-Brahminical past of Kerala, especially in relation to the socio-cultural and religious life of the people. We have direct evidence from Pattanam now with the Brahmi script which mentions “a ma na” [Jaina] and so we have evidence that Jainism and Buddhism were extensively practised in Kerala.”
Iravatham Mahadevan, a scholar in Indus and Tamil-Brahmi scripts, said the discovery showed that “there was Jainism on the west coast at least from second century CE. The importance of the finding is that it stratigraphically corroborates the earlier datings given to the Tamil-Brahmi cave inscriptions in Tamil Nadu on palaeographic evidence. I will date this sherd, on palaeographic evidence, to circa second century CE.”
The Tamil word “a ma na” meaning a Jaina was derived from Sanskrit Sramana via Prakrit Samana and Tamil Camana, said Mr. Mahadevan. The two megalithic graffiti, following the three Tamil-Brahmi letters, could not be identified. “But we know from similar finds in Tamil Nadu, especially at Kodumanal, that Tamil-Brahmi letters and megalithic graffiti symbols occur side by side,” he said. Mr. Mahadevan was sure that “many more exciting finds will be made at Muciri [Pattanam] which was a flourishing port on the west coast during the Sangam age in Tamil Nadu, which coincided with the classical period in the West.”
Mr. Cherian, who is also Director of KCHR, said the discovery “excites me as an excavator because it was for the first time we are getting direct evidence relating to a religious system or faith in Kerala.” The pot might have belonged to a Jaina monk. The broken rim with the script was found at a depth of two metres in trench 29 in the early historical layer which “by our stratigraphic understanding could belong to third-second CE period,” he said. The associated finds included amphora sherds, iron nails, and beads among others.
In a trial trench laid earlier at Pattanam by Professor V. Selvakumar, Assistant Professor, Department of Archaeology and Epigraphy, Tamil University, Thanjavur and K.P. Shajan of KCHR, a pot-sherd with the Tamil-Brahmi letters reading “ur pa ve o” was found. Later, another Tamil-Brahmi script with the letters “ca ta [n]” was found. Mr. Mahadevan praised the Pattanam excavations as “the best conducted excavations in south India.” He said it was “a potentially important site and excavations are being done in a competent way by Mr. Cherian and his team from the KCHR and they have involved experts from around the world.”
Star-studded line-up for D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas
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Panjim, Feb 4: Chief Minister Digambar Kamat will inaugurate the D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas on Saturday at Kala Academy, Panjim, to be followed by a lecture delivered by eminent scientist Dr Raghunath Mashelkar. This is the fourth edition of this lecture series, and will be held from February 5 to 10 at Kala Academy, Panjim.
Other speakers will include another great scientist and former President of India Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, Tibetan leader and Buddhist luminary His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Indian-born British economist and intellectual Lord Meghnad Desai, Human Rights activist and former Judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court Justice Albie Sachs and Rajya Sabha MP, Hindu leader and President of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) Dr Karan Singh.
Saturday’s talk will have Dr Raghunath Mashelkar speaking about ‘Making the Impossible, Possible’, from 5 pm to 7.30 pm. Dr Mashelkar is the former Director General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a chain of 38 government research and development (R&D) institutions employing 20,000 scientists, which includes the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), located in Goa.
A son of Goa, Dr Mashelkar was born on January 1, 1943 in Mashel, Tiswadi, in a modest family. He went to school barefoot and almost had to give up studies owing to his family’s strained economic circumstances. Nevertheless, he was a rank holder in the matriculation examination.
An apocryphal story says that his school principal and science teacher, Bhave, once concentrated the rays of the sun through a magnifying lens on a paper till it burned and told him, “This lens is you. If you concentrate on your studies, one day you will reach the sky.” Though his mother could not support his college education, Dr Mashelkar managed to become a chemical engineer, won a Tata scholarship, went overseas and got his PhD degree.
He did ground-breaking work in polymer science and engineering, going on to become the head of the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL). He was then named Director General of the CSIR. Under his leadership, the CSIR was first in the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO’s) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) filings among developing nations in 2002. CSIR still has a 30-40 per cent share of all US patents granted to Indians in India during the last three years.
His personal experience of reaching the very top of his profession from the most dire of circumstances has convinced him that India is fated to become one of the world’s greatest intellectual and economic engines. He has been responsible for creating an unprecedented national awareness in India on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).
He led the challenge to successfully revoke the US patent on the wound-healing properties of Turmeric. He also chaired the technical committee that successfully challenged and revoked US patents on Basmati Rice. This set in motion a movement for the protection of traditional knowledge in the entire developing world.
Two Sundays ago, Dr Mashelkar and former Atomic Energy Commission chief Dr Anil Kakodkar sat and listened to the dreams, hopes and aspirations of young people from across Goa at the youth convention for the Vision Document for Goa-2035 – to prepare a roadmap for the development of Goa – at Ravindra Bhavan, Margao. He remarked, after listening to the ideas of dozens of young Goan men and women that it was possibly among the finest three hours of his life.
Mashelkar is presently the president of the Global Research Alliance, a network of publicly funded research and development institutes from the Asia-Pacific region, South Africa, Europe and the USA with over 60,000 scientists. He is also the President of India’s National Innovation Foundation.
Other topics and timings:
Sun Feb 6: Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, ‘Imagination Leads to Creativity’, 5 pm to 6 pm.
Mon Feb 7: Dalai Lama, ‘Ethics for the New Millennium’, 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm.
Tue Feb 8: Lord Meghnad Desai, ‘Kosambi, Modernity and the Question of Social Inclusion’, 5 pm to 7.30 pm.
Wed Feb 9: Justice Albie Sachs, ‘Light on a Hill’, 5 pm to 7.30 pm.
Thu Feb 10: Dr Karan Singh, ‘The relevance of Vedanta in today’s context’, 5pm to 7.30 pm.
An interaction session between the public and the speaker is held subsequent to the talk.
The Directorate of Art & Culture initiated the D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas to commemorate the birth centenary of Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi, Indian mathematician, statistician, physicist, historian and polymath, and a great son of Goa. This festival is the only one of its kind in the country.
I conclude by saying that the Epic Mbh, is a dramatized version of the btk and there is no historicity involved in the Epic. There is only one ‘bhårata war’ ie., the Vedic battle of ten kings. It is believed here that this communication would start an interesting debate in the study of the ancient history of India.
“I can hear music in a colour,” says eminent film maker Kumar Shahani. This becomes quite evident when one looks at his repertoire of films all of which have a lingering musical quality. Shahani seems to carry music with him. There is an innate sense of music in his words; music colours his thoughts and many of his major films like ‘Khayal Gatha' and ‘Bamboo Flute' are based on music.
However he says he had no formal training in music as a child and later he began to train himself, not to perform but to enjoy music. Mumbai in those days was a centre for Khayal Gayakies and in the post-independence era was the hub of many music maestros.
Shahani considers singing to be the basis of Indian arts. For him without vocal music there is no orchestra, without which there is no dance, without dance there is no sculpture and without sculpture there is no painting.
Ocean of music
When he made the ‘Bamboo Flute' with Hariprasad Chaurasia he recollects how he kept on dreaming of life under the sea. He later interpreted this as an unconscious ‘knowing' of the pressure of water, of the pressure of life, the water in the womb and the water in the sea and their primeval music. Interestingly enough water is a predominant metaphor that figures in most of his movies.
Important works
Groomed under the tutelage of the likes of D.D. Kosambi, Ritwik Ghatak and Robert Bresson, his most important works include ‘Maya Darpan' (1972), ‘Tarang' (1984), ‘Khayal Gatha' (1988), ‘Kasba' (1990), ‘Bhavantharana' (1991), ‘Char Adhyay' (1997) and ‘Bamboo Flute' (2000). ‘Maya Darpan' was made in 1972 and in reply to the question whether his approach would be any different if he remade it today he said that he hadn't yet found out the final practice of either living or film making. “And I don't think I'll ever find it out in an absolute sense.”
In response to the comment that in his films one can see the struggle between the aesthetic and the ideological, he said he was grateful to both Marx and Kosambi for helping him bring forth and even represent that struggle itself.
It is the brilliant exploration of the visual in the performing and traditional arts of India that make his films resonate with a curious synesthetic beauty that is indeed rare in Indian cinema. Going by the Godardian definition of cinema as truth at 24 frames per second, for Shahani this truth itself is multivalent with oblique meanings offering the possibility of numerous perspectives.
The beauty of cinema for him is that so many subjectivities and so many arts come together in a film, making it a composite art
Shahani said that he was working on two projects: one on Odissi with Ileana Citaristi, a disciple of Kelucharan Mohapatra, and another with internationally renowned sculptor Anish Kapoor.
Speaking on the relevance of serious cinema in the age of digitisation he pointed out that we need to differentiate between the digital and cinematic art.
Although they overlap, each has a different potential and take off in different directions. It is important therefore that young film makers understand that the digital is not a cheap variant of the cinematic. Responding to questions regarding the philosophical and spiritual in his works he said in a jocular vein that his friends accuse him of not being carnal enough.
Surrounded as we are by film makers who seem to carry baggage of their films on their shoulders and are unable to digest any criticism, Shahani's view that the work has its own life and as an artiste he prefers to move on mentally and emotionally holds great significance.
Choosing not to speak on his own films he waxed eloquent on his master Ghatak and his student M.R. Rajan's films.
It was the humility and grace of this consummate artiste, his erudition and humaneness that held listeners spellbound during his lecture at the Institute of English, Thiruvananthapuram. The talk was in connection with the ‘Erudite Scholar Programme' of The University of Kerala.
Points to ponder
Shahani made a fervent plea to the youngsters of today to make attempts to preserve their rich heritage and their past. It is indeed the need of the hour to revive the works of major film makers and landmark films of India. Aravindan's films he said make the best case in point.
