Konkan's 12,000-Year-Old Petroglyphs Reveal A Lost World Through Rare Traces Of Stone-Age Art

Excavation sites across the world hold keys to the past - a time when civilisations not just existed but thrived without modern technology, the internet, and social media. Scientists on these sites study rock carvings, artefacts, non-portable remains, ecofacts, soil, and material culture, depending on what they find.

One of the oldest sites in India is the Ratnagiri petroglyphs in Maharashtra. How old are they? The ancient rock carvings date back 12,000 years, older than the Indus Valley Civilisation (3,300-1,300 BCE) and Egyptian Civilisation (3,100-3,150 BCE).

The Ratnagiri Petroglyphs

Spread across 900 km of the Konkan coast in Maharashtra and Goa, the geoglyphs of Ratnagiri are recognised as protected monuments by the government of Maharashtra. They are also on the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list. 

Why would a state government protect a site with historic remains? According to the archaeological studies, the petroglyphs of Ratnagiri show animal and human figures and abstract motifs dating back to the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. The Mesolithic period or Middle Stone Age, 10,000-4,000 BCE, was characterised by warmer climates, and the Neolithic period or New Stone Age, 10,000-2,200 BCE, saw humanity's shift from nomadic life to settled domestication and farming.

There are rare geoglyphs made on horizontal, open rock beds in the Indian subcontinent. They are currently the only evidence for human life between the Palaeolithic period and the early historical periods in the Konkan region. The Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age, from 3.3 million years ago to 10,000 BCE, is distinguished because humans developed stone tools.

 
Over a thousand petroglyphs exist across 50 sites in just Maharashtra, in the southern districts of Sindhudurga and Ratnagiri. On the unoccupied plateaus, the carvings are in clusters. According to reports, the locals knew about these sites, but scholars only came across them in the 1990s.

The sites show arrangements of animal and human figures    - large or life-size - and complex abstract compositions. They are discrete pictograms that do not indicate any recognisable narrative, but they point to the artistic skills of people during the period.

The carvings were made on the laterite rock, which has a unique appearance - it has a darker surface compared to a lighter layer underneath. Most of these engravings are not more than 5 cm deep and 3-4 cm wide. However, at some sites, the carvings dig as deep as 10 cm. The scholars think that hard stone tools were used to make the engravings, which suggests the evolution of humans from the Mesolithic era to later periods.

Important Petroglyphs

Some of the petroglyphs are more important than the others. For example, an elephant carving, among 128 engravings, measuring 13 x 18 metres, is one of the most prominent sites, along with 82 smaller animals carved around and within its outline. The other species include tigers, peacocks, stingrays, monkeys, and sharks.

The Konkan petroglyphs showcase animals in a 2D format, which means two of their four legs are visible. In Barsu, there is a site with 60 engravings, one of which is a 4-metre-tall man flanked by two larger tigers. Scholars have compared it to one of the Harappan excavation sites, where they found a seal of a man between two leaping tigers, holding them by their throats. Other carvings in Barsu include fish, peacocks, and rabbits.

Another site has grooves arranged in parallel lines, quite similar to the arrangement in chennemane or alagulimane, a game played in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Significance Of Petroglyphs

The petroglyphs of the Konkan region offer a rare insight into Indian rock art. While most carvings across the world and even in the country are on vertical surfaces, the petroglyphs are on horizontal laterite rock, proving a continuity of human occupation in the span of 20,000 years.

Since most of these sites are near water bodies and do not comprise carvings of domesticated animals, metal weapons, or agricultural scenes, it suggests that humans in the pre-pastoral communities relied on fishing, hunting, and foraging for sustenance.

The engravings also provide insight into the ecological history of the Konkan belt. For example, hippopotamus and rhinoceros have been extinct in the region for thousands of years, but they appear in the petroglyphs, indicating that they were once a part of the ecosystem.

The local indigenous communities see these sites as ancestral heritage and honour them. Carvings of footprints are thought to be associated with ancestral worship rituals. Not to mention other engravings of animal sacrifices being offered to other carved figures during festivals and celebratory gatherings.

In 2024, the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Maharashtra, designated the Ratnagiri petroglyphs as Protected Monuments under the Maharashtra Ancient Monuments and Sites and Remains Act, 1960.

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