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 …
on agricultural productivity in India before the imposition of the British system: Sketches and descriptions of tools give us an idea of productivity in agriculture and seed varieties in previous centuries. According to data collected by the British, agriculture productivity was quite high around AD 1800. In the journal Edinburgh …
A recent archaeological find in this Latin American country has indicated that Asian migration had begun far earlier in the Americas than is currently presumed. The immigrants got to South America thousands of miles from Clovis in New Mexico - that is conventionally accepted as the oldest known in the …
about 65 million years ago the dinosaurs, at that time the dominant animals, became extinct probably because of the secondary consequences of a meteorite impact suffered by the earth. The mammals, an inconspicuous group of rodent-like creatures, seized the opportunity to diversify into an enormous variety of forms within a …
INVASIONS OF THE LAND Malcom S Gordon and Everett S Olson University Press, New York, 1995 that organic evolution on earth began first in the sea is certain, but the manner in which land was colonised by biota has largely remained in the realm of conjecture. The two earlier books …
THE study of Neandertal bones discovered in the Vindija Cave, Croatia, in the '70s has provided important clues about the lives of these hunter-gatherers, who occupied this cave some 50,000 years ago. The first Neandertal fossils were named after Neaderthal or Neander Valley in Germany, where they were discovered in …
A recent study by Fred Spoor, a researcher from University College, London, has given fresh insights illto the lives of Cro-Magllons alld Nealldertals. The study hints at trade alldcultural contacts between some Neandertals and the Cro-Magnons, who ultimately replaced them, Researchers had excavated sophisticated tools and ornaments made from bones …
A partially mummified skeleton of the Spirit Cave Man lying in the Nevada State Museum in the US, is at the centre of a controversy. Recent tests have revealed that the Cave Man was at least 10,000 years old and several dozen artifacts found with it provide a rich view …
FLANNERY'S prime supposition is that as and when competition with other carnivores and primates increased, hominids turned to new habitats. Such rivalry between different species and the consequent migrations resulting from the same constituted the main driving force of evolution (Natural History, Vol 104, No 12). Fighting it out for …
"LARGE parts of Uttarakhand now lie denuded ... the whole region is turning into a desert. If this trend continues for another 50 years, it will become impossible to save the Himalaya from total collapse," environmental activist Chandi Prasad Batt had said at a public rally in 1980. One could …
"IF EVER there were to be a paradise in this land of Indians, this" Frary Pedro Simon, a 16th century chronicler, had 1i At a dizzying 5,775 metres (in) above sea level, the fd stiountains in Sierra Nevada, Colombia, make up the rs highest coastline range. just 300 years ago, …
AT A time when Western societies were still in a primitive state of development, the Indus valley civilisation had evolved sophisticated systems for drainage, water supply and urban planning. Centuries later, India continued to be in the forefront of astronomy, metallurgy, medicine, mathematics and a host of other fields of …
QUESTION: What do you do if you get lost in an Icelandic forest? ANSWER: Stand up You've got it right, because how do you get lost, when there is no forest? Less than 1 per cent of this Arctic Circle island's expanse of 102.776 thousand square miles is wooded, and …
A court ruling in the US in January 1995 cleared the way for an ambitious plan to reintroduce the gray wolf (Canis lupus) to parts of its former range. One of the 2 sites selected is the famous Yellowstone National Park, which was established in 1872 and is well known …
COLONIAL logic has often found it convenient to adopt and adapt "native" logic, and later drop it to suit its changing needs. Taungya is the name of a forestry game the British played in erstwhile Burma. The taungya system was first practiced here in the mid-19th century. Taung is "hill" …
FOR the 18th century colonial explorer, archaeology meant a treasure hunt and for the Orientalist a search for lost civilisations. From the mid-20th century, the chill hand of science laid claim to it. Archaeology became a quest for knowledge about prehistoric peoples and their environment. Today, the key to a …
High on a massive rock, 200 metres above the surrounding plain and 10 km from Colombo, are located the ruins of a magnificent ancient city called Sigiriya. Asia's oldest landscaped gardens flower here. It is an accepted theory that urbanisation could emerge only because of complex environmental, social, economic and …
Although the Mayan civilisation of central America flourished almost 1,000 years ago, archaeologists are increasingly intrigued by the modern echoes of its political and social life. A generation ago, when its language was still Greek to researchers, the Mayan civilisation was imagined to be a haven for mystics and astronomer-priests. …
All things old carry time's signatures. Just as human faces develop wrinkles and trees annular rings, metallic objets d:rt acquire a bluish green veneer called the patina. Till recently, this time-daubed smear, much valued by connoisseurs and historians, was lost in the restoration process. Now, thanks to a new chemical …
SCIENTISTS are often awestruck by the quality achieved by craftspersons hundreds of years ago which, they believe, would be hard to equal even using the tools of modern technology. For instance, experts have been intrigued by the rust-resistant alloy of the Iron Pillar at the Qutab Minar in Delhi, whose …
IN ANCIENT times, it was seen as a curse from the gods. The Romans believed it to be a blast hurled down by one of their angered deities. In the 2nd century, at the height of the plague during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the toll is said to have …
