Grooves dated 3000 BCE found near Pathari.
Grooves on a bed rock, which were used for sharpening polished stone
axes of Neolithic times, have been found at Pathari, a hamlet on the
Javadi hills, an offshoot of the Eastern Ghats, in Tiruvannamalai
district, Tamil Nadu. The grooves can be dated to circa 3000 BCE, that
is, 5,000 years to the present. K. Umapathi, a student of post-graduate
diploma course in Epigraphy and Archaeology, conducted by the Tamil Nadu
Archaeology Department, discovered the grooves in a forested area a few
weeks ago. Pathari is about 15 km west of Athipattu village in
Kalasapakkam taluk, Tiruvannamalai district. Umapathi found 36 grooves
on a bed rock in the middle of a jungle rivulet on the western side of
Pathari.
Six more grooves were found about 700 metres north-west of Pathari in
another hamlet called Periyavazhi Kollai. This is the second time that
such grooves used for polishing Neolithic stone axes have been found in
Tamil Nadu. Similar shallow grooves were reported earlier at Keezhanur
on the Javadi hills in Vellore district . They had been found earlier at Sangnakallu-Kupagal in
Ballari district Karnataka. According to Umapathy, Pathari villagers
call the grooves “Bheeman Sunai” because they believe that Bheema of
Mahabharatha, during the Pandavas’ sojourn in the forests, knelt down on
the bed rock to drink water from the rivulet and the grooves were
formed by the pressure from his toes, said Umapathi.
Many polished Neolithic stone axes were found around Pathari hamlet. Villagers had worshipped them as sami kal (divine stones) at temples in the nearby villages such as Nachamalai, Vazhakkadu and Nelvayal.
The grooves measure from nine cm to 45 cm in length, 2.50 cm to eight cm
in width and 5.90 cm to 26.84 cm in depth at Pathari. The six grooves
at Periyavazhi Kollai also vary in length, depth and width.
A team including P.T. Nagarajan, assistant epigraphist, Archaeological
Survey of India (ASI), Chennai Circle, and local villagers visited the
site and documented the grooves.
K. Rajan, Professor of History, Pondicherry University, said that the
cultural transformation from food-gathering to production of food is
considered a revolution in human history and it happened during the
Neolithic times, about 5,000 years ago. He said that the stone tools,
found around Pathari and Periyavazhi Kollai, were collected from
cultivated fields in the vicinity.
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