35K-year-old Ambadevi rock-art shelter may be Asia’s oldest

Amravati/Mumbai: Ostriches, the world’s tallest species of giraffe, cheetahs and other wild creatures once thrived freely in central India as revealed by paintings in the Ambadevi rock shelters along the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border near Amravati.

Latest studies and research suggest that many of the Ambadevi rock shelters, could be over 35,000-years old – much older than the Bhimbetka rock art shelters, near Bhopal (MP), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, around 300 kms away, said multifaceted scientist and amateur archaeologist Dr. V. T. Ingole of Amravati.

Incidentally, Dr. Ingole and his team - Padmakar Lad, Manohar Khode, Shirish Kumar Patil, Dnyaneshwar Damahe, and Pradeep Hirurkar – discovered the rock shelters accidentally in January 2007, drawing global attention.

Later, the Archaeological Survey Of India (ASI) carried out extensive searches and diggings, revealing around 500 such sandstone shelters which bear a close resemblance to similar rock art sites in other parts of India, South Africa, France and Australia.

Dr. Ingole said that carbon-dating and other studies spanning a decade now suggest that the Ambadevi site is estimated to be around 35,000-years old, making it the oldest in India and Asia, overtaking Bhimbetka in ‘seniority’.

The Ostrich eggs discovered around Ambadevi and their carbon dating by Sonal Jain and others, indicate their origins to be around 35,000 BC, belonging to a similar painted image of the flightless bird ostrich species, found here.

“Further, Aardvarks (ant-eater) and one of the biggest giraffe species, Sivatherium – all now extinct in India - feature alongside the imposing ostrich painting. We surmise some of these species may have travelled from Africa via the Red Sea and Suez regions, traversing the Arabian deserts, then towards the east via territories of modern-day Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and into India till Kerala,” Dr. Ingole, 78, told The Perfect Voice.

Among the rock arts in Mungsadev Shelter is a striking four-feet tall painting of a long-necked, feather-plumed bird whose morphology matches the African ostrich, now extinct in India, but genetically confirmed to have lived here during the Late Pleistocene era, besides many other animals that prowled on earth in the prehistoric eras, he explained.

Images found

The images of these extinct creatures are found on the same wall of the rock shelters, plus a clutter of many other familiar wild animals and birds living around the primitive humans, who witnessed them at close quarters and engraved/painted them for posterity.

“Bhimbetka was considered the cradle of Indian rock arts, but the new discoveries in Ambadevi (Gavilgarh range) point towards an earlier genesis. My research paper on it proposed that the Ambadevi shelters - based on multi-disciplinary evidence of direct visual documentation of extinct fauna, genetic dating anchors and compelling neuro-visual logic - contain the oldest pictorial depictions in the subcontinent,” Dr. Ingole explained.

Of the 500-plus rock art sites scattered over 40 square km, around 230 are decorated with paintings, carvings, and though the colors have faded, still enthrall the visitors who flock here from all over the world.

Amravati: Extinct creatures grace rock art shelters

The paintings depicted in Ambadevi rock shelters – predating Bhimbetka - comprise humans, tortoises, fish, birds, human hand-impressions, geometric figures, hunting scenes, war stages, or abstract geometrical figures.

Painted/carved out on vertical walls, ceilings and rock cavities, the images are a collection of herbivores and carnivores like aardvarks, ostrich, sivatherium, tigers, leopards, hyenas, jackals, wild dogs, bears, spotted deers, nilgai, barasingha, sambars besides the one-horned rhinoceros, and is aptly named as the ‘animal zoo’.

While aardvarks, ostrich, sivatherium became extinct in India many millenia back, the majestic one-horned rhino, which once roamed vast regions, is now relegated to Assam-West Bengal in India, and parts of Nepal.