Our 1,00,000-year-old art gallery : The Tribune India

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Our 1,00,000-year-old art gallery

Tucked away in the rustling sal forests and giant boulders of Madhya Pradesh is the world’s oldest art gallery. It’s named after the strongest of the Pandava brothers. However, the images were painted on the ancient rocks long before the Mahabharata was written.

Our 1,00,000-year-old art gallery

Once upon a time: Linear depiction of human figures, hunting, riding, communal dances, and warfare are found on the walls of caves. It is believed that women created art as men narrated incidents of hunting Photos by the writers



Hugh and Colleen Gantzer

Tucked away in the rustling sal forests and giant boulders of Madhya Pradesh is the world’s oldest art gallery. It’s named after the strongest of the Pandava brothers. However, the images were painted on the ancient rocks long before the Mahabharata was written. 

On NH 69 from Bhopal to Pachmarhi, we turned right at the Bhimbetka sign, drove through a sere landscape of parched grass, a few trees, slabs of rock and rising black boulders, and parked in a green lot. A fence demarcated the area protected by the Archaeological Survey of India and declared as a World Heritage site. 

Straight ahead, down the path that arrowed through the trees, we saw huge masses of rocks towering above the landscape. Many millennia ago, those boulders had looked down on a dense, wet, forest with blue lakes and shimmering green swamps. This was home to herds of elephant, Indian bison and rhinoceros, possibly tigers and leopards as well. The hunter-gatherers, who were our ancestors, needed a place from where they could spot the movements of wildlife and watch out for other, possibly, hostile tribes. That great outcrop of rocks was just what they wanted.

We call them “cave men”, and in colder climates, they probably did prefer caves. Here, however, caves would be dark, damp, and stuffy. If predators or enemies blocked the mouths of the cave, cringing humans would be trapped. Pragmatically, they chose rock shelters. Overhanging slabs of rock gave them protection as well as the freedom to escape. There are plenty of rock shelters in Bhimbetka and many are rich with the first art ever created by humans. In fact, according to our Archaeological Survey of India:

‘These caves were discovered in 1957-58. Out of the 750 rock shelters, 500 are adorned with paintings. This was the centre of human activity right from Lower Paleolithic times, up to the medieval period: Linear depiction of human figures, hunting, riding, communal dances, warfare, etc. and day-to-day activities of ancient man. Mineral colours used are green, red, ochre and white. The cup marks made on the rocks date to 1,00,000 BP (Before the Present). This pushes back the date of the cognitive development of man at Bhimbetka to many thousand years earlier than similar sites in various parts of the world, making it the earliest cognitive human evolution.’

In other words, thinking, creative, humans developed in India. In fact, it was, probably, women who made these paintings. We have seen village huts with striking murals on them: most of them were painted by women. They had the time to recollect and record the tales told to them by the male hunters. It was a tedious process. Mixing coloured earths, vegetable dyes and soot with animal fat, they applied them with brushes shredded out of fibrous twigs, or filled charcoal outlines with fat and blew powdered pigments on to them through hollow bones. In time, the fat and pigments were absorbed by the cellular structure of the rocks and, very gradually, they became as lasting as tattoos on human skin.

The paintings vary in theme. The Zoo Cave, teems with animals and hunters and a man riding a giant elephant with enormous tusks.  At the lower part of the Zoo Cave, there is a man carrying a shield and something resembling an Australian boomerang. The Austrics of India are believed to have migrated to Australia when the last Ice Age had frozen much of the oceans, making it easier for people to hop from island to island, landmass to landmass. 

Every time we visit Bhimbetka, we see something new: The depiction of a surgical amputation, a blood-offering to a sacred tree, a deer used as a saddled animal as only the Sami people of Finland do today and stick-figures and vague symbols, resembling the religious emblems of Shamanic rituals, which often featured women mystics guiding the ancient tribes. 

Most people exposed to Bhimbetka leave with a sense of wonder. We, however, have returned over and over again. And every visit has been a new experience as we enjoyed fresh insights into the evolution of our ancient, and ceaselessly restless civilisation.

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