Order of the Madras High Court dated 07/06/2021 in the matter of Suo Motu Vs Archaeological Survey of India & Others regarding safeguarding of archaeological monuments in Tamil Nadu. The Madras High Court, June 7, 2021 in a slew of measures directed the concerned authorities to establish Mamallapuram World Heritage …
Over thousands of years, the written word from ancient India has outlived man, moth and moisture, thanks to the ingenious ways followed by our ancestors in preparing writing materials. From the little-known Sancha Vidya of Himachal Pradesh to the Ola tradition prevalent across southern India and beyond, to the Buddhist …
Northumberland's rolling moorlands, in the northern-most corner of England, are home to Britain's richest concentration of prehistoric rock art. Since the early nineteenth century, over a thousand carvings have been rediscovered nestling in the wilds. More may yet lie beneath the rambling undergrowth covering Northumberland's moors. Etched on to slabs …
An important find at Gona in Ethiopia's Afar region, about 500 kilometres from Addis Ababa, is likely to fill a major gap in the story of human evolution. Fossils of Ardipithecus ramidus, one of the earliest humans who lived about 4.5 million years ago, are expected to provide insights into …
Little humans with small heads, of the size of a large grapefruit, and long arms might rewrite the story of human evolution. Australian archaeologists have found the remains of this new species, Homo floresiensis or
About 80 kilometres from Ahmedabad, Gujarat stands the ancient Harappan town, Lothal. The town has no great wealth, its landscape is miserably sun burnt and its soil dry and parched. It is little wonder that Lothal means the mound of the dead in Gujarati. But 4,000 years ago, the city …
better chick-pea variety: Scientists from New Delhi-based Indian Agricultural Research Institute have developed a drought-resistant variety of chick-pea. The variety, Pusa-1053, has a yield of about 1,300 kilogrammes per hectare, which is significantly higher than the 700 kilogrammes produced per hectare by the traditional varieties of the seeds. more heat, …
A curious search for blankets is currently taking place in the plains around the Great Lakes in North America. These are not ordinary blankets. They are actually bison skins that were smeared with body fluid tainted with smallpox and used, two hundred years ago, to obliterate American Indians. Post 9/11, …
Throughout the 1860s a frail young European woman with a medicine chest was a conspicuous presence at the women's ghats of the river Yamuna in Delhi. This was Priscilla Winter, an Anglican missionary who had absolutely no training in medicine. Missionaries like Winter were quite common in European colonies in …
At one point in the epic Mahabharata, the pandavs and kauravs go to warfare school. Amid thick forests, they train hard. Then, the time comes when they must leave. Yudhister, the eldest pandav, gifts the space as guru dakshina to his guru, Dronacharya. In time, there came up a town …
This article is a history of the last stage of the global smallpox eradication programme, christened in India as the National Smallpox Eradication Programme (NSEP). Here I have attempted to show how the Intensive Campaign of the NSEP was forced to abandon its erstwhile language of targets and returns, whose …
The Dutch East India Company was formed c 1602. As the Dutch Armada set sail for the East Indies from Amsterdam, surgeons and apothecaries on the fleet were instructed by the great European renaissance botanist Carolus Clusius "to bring, laid between paper, branchless carrying leaves and fruits' foremost of commercially …
Extreme climate events such as aridity, drought, flood, cyclone and stormy rainfall are expected to leave an impact on human society. They are also expected to generate widespread response to adapt and mitigate the sufferings associated with these extremes. Societal and cultural responses to prolonged drought include population dislocation, cultural …
As we peek into our past, the number of our ancestors seems to double in every generation. For every human being has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, 16 great great grandparents and so on. By this yardstick, the number of ancestors that each of us had about 50 generations …
During my tenure as Divisional Forest Officer in Mahasamund Forest Division, I came across the oldest teak plantation of Chhattisgarh. The Gidhpuri beat of Lavan Range of Raipur Forest Division is proud of having the oldest Teak plantation of Chhattisgarh state. The teak plantation is now 111 years old.
Spanish researchers say a hand-axe, recently found at an archaeological site in northern Spain, may have been used in the world's first funeral. According to them, the discovery implies that humans were capable of symbolic thought much earlier than was previously assumed. The axe was found among the fossilised remains …
Italian scientists have stumbled across three fossilised footprints of early humans dating to about 350,000 years ago. The discovery was made on the sides of an active volcano. The footprints are believed to be the oldest ever found of Palaeolithic humans. One of the footprint trails zigzags down to follow …
new mummies: Ancient Britons started mummifying their dead at the same time as the Egyptians. British archaeologist Mike Parker-Pearson has found four Bronze Age bodies showing signs of mummification in the remote Scottish isle of South Uist. The 3,000-year-old bodies are believed to be the first ever discovery of mummification …
