Mystery Menhirs
In comic books, this fat friend of Asterix the Gaul liked to carry around these long big stones on his back as though they were pieces of feather.
By Vithal C Nadkarni, ET Bureau | Updated:
So far we had known about menhirs mainly because of Obelix. In the comic books, this fat friend of Asterix the Gaul liked to carry around these long big stones on his back as though they were pieces of feather. Then recently, your columnist got to meet some real-life menhirs at Nilaskal in Karnataka’s Agumbe Western Ghats region.
Of course the menhirs did not return our greetings. (If they had, would we not have made it to every front page on the planet as an instance of the first vocal contact between mineral and man?)
No, the menhirs remained mute as they had through the millennia, revealing nothing about their enigmatic history. Some historians speculate that the Nilaskal site became strategically important in Neolithic times because it was close to the sources of the West Coast rivers Sharavathy, Chakra and Haladi, and provided easy access to the sea coast.
“The region is richer in prehistoric remains than anyone has suspected,” says Manipal-based conservation architect Srikumar Menon, who has made pioneering forays in the study of these free-standing single stones many of which seem to be oriented in a north-south direction.
Some pairs are placed in such a way that they frame the rising/setting sun at both solstices. Also, the megaliths in the Nilaskal-Byse region are unique in that they seem to be sepulchral menhirs arranged in a pattern dictated by solar astronomy. That immediately makes us tread lightly! We could be disturbing inhabitants long gone to southerly regions of a Proto-Yama. In Vedas, he was the first man who died.
Of course the menhirs did not return our greetings. (If they had, would we not have made it to every front page on the planet as an instance of the first vocal contact between mineral and man?)
No, the menhirs remained mute as they had through the millennia, revealing nothing about their enigmatic history. Some historians speculate that the Nilaskal site became strategically important in Neolithic times because it was close to the sources of the West Coast rivers Sharavathy, Chakra and Haladi, and provided easy access to the sea coast.
“The region is richer in prehistoric remains than anyone has suspected,” says Manipal-based conservation architect Srikumar Menon, who has made pioneering forays in the study of these free-standing single stones many of which seem to be oriented in a north-south direction.
Some pairs are placed in such a way that they frame the rising/setting sun at both solstices. Also, the megaliths in the Nilaskal-Byse region are unique in that they seem to be sepulchral menhirs arranged in a pattern dictated by solar astronomy. That immediately makes us tread lightly! We could be disturbing inhabitants long gone to southerly regions of a Proto-Yama. In Vedas, he was the first man who died.
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