Ratnagiri’s Prehistoric Rock Art

Why in news?

• Experts have raised concerns that the construction of a petrochemical refinery in Barsu village of Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district might damage around 250 prehistoric geoglyphs found in the area.

About Geoglyphs:

• Geoglyphs are a form of prehistoric rock art, created on the surface of laterite plateaus by removing a part of the rock surface through an incision, picking,carving or abrading.
• They can be in the form of rock paintings, etchings, cup marks and ring marks.

Ratnagiri’s prehistoric rock art:

• Clusters of geoglyphs are spread across the Konkan coastline in Maharashtra and Goa.
• Ratnagiri district has more than 1,500 pieces of such art, also called “Katal shilpa,” spread across 70 sites.
• According to carbon dating, these sites are believed to be over 12,000 –20,000 years old.
• The sites are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).
• The figures depicted in the geoglyphs include humans and animals such as deer, elephant, tiger, monkey, wild boar, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, cattle, pig, rabbit, and monkey.
• They also include a high number of reptilian and amphibian creatures such as tortoises and alligators, aquatic animals such as sharks and stingrays, and birds like peacocks.

Significance:

• Ratnagiri’s rock art is evidence of the continued existence of human settlements from the Mesolithic (middle Stone Age) to the early historic era.
• The geoglyphs also show the existence of certain types of fauna that are no longer present in the region today.
• Imagery from these sites shows how people “adapted to ephemeral wetlands in a dry-arid plateau having shallow rock pools, streams and watercourses”.

Add ons:

• In 2022, these sites in the Konkan region were added to a tentative list of UNESCO’s world heritage sites.

PRACTICE QUESTION:

Ratnagiri rock art, recently seen in news, is situated in which of the following region?

(a) Konkan

(b) Coromandel Coast

(c) Malwa

(d) Bundelkhand

Answer