Karnataka   

Museum of ‘earliest village settlements’ getting ready

BELLARY: A museum of the “earliest village settlements in South India” in Sangankal village, from the Neolithic period (where the hunter, gatherer settled and took up farming — 3000 BC to the beginning of the Christian era), located on the outskirts of Bellary city is likely to be inaugurated on August 15.

The purpose of setting up the museum by the district administration at the Cultural Complex was to bring into focus the history and cultural heritage of the people of Bellary and its environs and create awareness among the people and to help inculcate in them a sense of commitment to preserve their heritage with pride and concern.

The need for setting up the museum arose following concerns being expressed by naturalists and archaeologists over the site getting destroyed due to large-scale commercial quarrying there.

The immediate response of Arvind Srivatsav, then Deputy Commissioner, who made efforts to get Rs. 8 lakh, has helped the cause.

The site assumes importance and needs to be preserved as there is evidence of the first settlers in the earliest south Indian village of Sangankal residing in a cluster of rocky hills and cultivating small millets and pulses.

These settlers also traded stone tools among the Neolithic people in that region and it was the largest stone tool-producing centre anywhere in South India.

Spread over around 1,000 acres, the site is considered to be the largest village complex known so far going by the evidence found there, according to Ravi Korishettar, Professor, Department of Archaeology, Karnatak University, Dharwad, who has done research on the site.

There are several evidences of human settlements and their activities in these hills. Perennial water source with a number of natural springs oozing out of the granite rocks (now dried up), several ash mounds (believed to be the charred remains of heaps of cow dung burnt as part of a ritual), burials and others are still found at the site.

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Museum of ‘earliest village settlements’ getting ready

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