At the excavation site of a new community hospital in the Sheil District, Ballyshannon, several finds from the Bronze Period have been discovered.
The Bronze Age urn will undergo further examination
In the course of archaeological research, a large capstone was found last week. It comprises a large flat sandstone boulder complete with rock art in the form of cup marks incised into its upper surface.
Monuments of this kind are classified as Boulder Burials and are thought to date to the Bronze Age 2,500 BC to 500BC.
The capstone did overlay a small amount of cairn material within a large pit, which was fully investigated but contained no burial.
A number of differing burial sites have been found at the site
The National Monuments Service and National Museum were made aware of the unearthing of the capstone last Monday (August 24) and a team of three archaeologists has been on the sites since carefully examining the area where the capstone was unearthed and a wider area close to it.
On Friday, August 28 the capstone was carefully removed from the site for further examination and analysis.
Subsequent further archaeological Investigations have uncovered the remains of an inverted urn burial. Urn burials date to the Bronze Age and comprise a large ceramic pot usually highly decorated, and containing cremated remains.
The urn has been removed by the Specialist Conservator and sent for conservation. All the cremated remains recovered from the site will be analyzed by osteoarchaeologist and the results presented in the site excavation report.
The dig is on the site of a new hospital at Ballyshannon
Mr. Shane Campbell, HSE Estates Manager, North West was present at the unearthing and stated “The earth removal work that started last week is part of an overall €21 million euro construction of the new Sheil Community Hospital. I wish to offer reassurance that work is continuing on site as planned.
The contractor is on-site and continuing with the site clearance, removal of trees, etc and erecting the site Hhoarding, all as planned, the archaeological works will not delay the overall works programme.
The HSE would like to thank Tamlyn McHugh and Fadó Archaeology for their painstaking work in uncovering these significant historical artifacts and ensuring they are properly conserved.”
One of Scotland’s great mysteries: the 5,200 years old carved stone balls
Scottish carved stone balls are a mysterious class of artefacts, and scientists have been the subject of much speculation by scientists over the years.
In all, more than 500 stone balls were collected, the largest to fit neatly into the palm of the hand. They were designed so that a number of knobs protrude from the surface and some have beautiful, intricate patterns incised onto them.
So elaborate are the carvings that early archaeologists didn’t believe it was possible for them to have been made using flint tools, so they dated them to a later period. But we know they were indeed carved using flint and date back to around 3,200 BC to 2,500 BC, a time when people in Scotland were leaving their lives as hunter-gatherers and settling into life in farming communities.
What were they for?
Although no hard evidence exists to definitively determine their function, many have speculated as to the stones’ purpose.
Some believe that they were part of a weighing system for primitive scales, but others argue that their weights vary too much for that to be practical. They might have been used to weigh down fishing nets, or as bearings to move bigger rocks, but then why would they be carved so elaborately?
Australian author Lynne Kelly has proposed that the stone balls served as “memory devices” that could have been used as mnemonic aids to the oral history of the times, much like Australian Aboriginal cultures used rock art and their surroundings.
Three Scottish examples, in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
Some suggest the carved stone balls were used as weapons.
Others have suggested they were used as weapons — either fixed to a wooden handle or simply thrown. But most of the stones show no signs of the kind of damage you’d expect to see on a weapon.
“It is perhaps best to think of them as ceremonial or stylized weapons,” explains Hugo Anderson-Whymark, curator of National Museums Scotland. “Things that could inflict damage if you wanted to use them, and may in some circumstances have been used that way, but are more likely to be objects which represent the status or power of the individual that held them in that community.”
Prehistoric stone balls in 3D
In an effort to gain more understanding, and make the stones more accessible to the public, Anderson-Whymark has created 3D images of the balls. Using a technique called photogrammetry, Anderson-Whymark took hundreds of 2D images from every angle to create very detailed 3D renderings of 60 carved stone balls.
The images, which have been uploaded online for anyone to see, revealed details of the stone balls that had not previously been visible. “Actually being able to see them in virtual reality is hugely valuable,” Anderson-Whymark told CNN. “It allows us to see some fine details which we didn’t spot before.
“There’s one of them that has concentric lines on the circles, and no one had ever seen that before and it’s been in our collection for well over 100 years,” he added.
The 3D images also revealed that some of the stones were modified over time, possibly across generations. It’s still unclear what that could mean, but Anderson-Whymark said that at the very least it opens the door to other possibilities about the balls’ purpose and significance to people of that era.
“It’s telling us how they were worked and re-worked over time. It’s allowing us to explore that bigger story of how they were made and how they developed, which is potentially going to tell us more about that bigger theory of how they were used,” Anderson-Whymark said.
Some of the 3D images of the carved stone balls revealed previously unknown details about their design.
Carved stone balls, classed as Neolithic
Many of the balls have not had their discovery site recorded and most are found as a result of agricultural activity.
While a few of the balls have been found in Ireland and northern England (one even travelled to Norway), all the others have been found in Scotland, mostly in Aberdeenshire. Five were found at the remarkably preserved Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae, in the Orkney Islands, off the northern coast of Scotland.
National Museums Scotland, in Edinburgh, has the world’s largest collection of these carved stone balls at around 200 (including 60 casts). Perhaps most famous among them is the Towie ball. Found in Aberdeenshire in the 19th century, it features neatly carved circles, spirals and lines on four knobs.
“The Towie carved stone ball is the finest example of a carved stone ball from Scotland and the motifs on it are just absolutely incredible,” Anderson-Whymark said. “The very fine grooves on the surface are about a millimetre across and have all been carved with a flint tool. Incredibly fine, delicate workmanship.”
An enduring enigma
According to the museum, the patterns on the Towie ball are sacred symbols resembling those in a passage grave in Ireland. Anderson-Whymark says the similarities in the design raise interesting questions about the relationships between these locations.
“One thing they show is that there was perhaps a long-distance contact in that period which we don’t always give prehistoric people credit for,” he said.
“Certainly, when we look at Orkney, we see objects which are moving up from around the west coast through the western seaways … The grooved ware (a style of British Neolithic pottery) originates in Orkney and it travels south towards Ireland and into southern Britain as well. “We’re seeing things, ideas and people moving with them through that time.”
The enigma of the stone balls will endure for now, and while we may never know exactly what they were used for, we can still appreciate them as fine examples of Neolithic art.
1.8-million-year-old skull gives a glimpse of our evolution
The finding of a 1.8 million-year-old skull from a human ancestor found in a medieval Georgian village is a dramatic example of early evolution and shows that our ancestral tree has fewer branches than some believe, researchers say.
A photo provided by the journal Science shows a pre-human skull found in the ground at the medieval village Dmanisi, Georgia. The discovery of the estimated 1.8-million-year-old skull of a human ancestor captures early human evolution on the move in a vivid snapshot and indicates our family tree may have fewer branches than originally thought, scientists say.
The fossil is the most complete pre-human skull uncovered. With other partial remains previously found at the rural site, it gives researchers the earliest evidence of human ancestors moving out of Africa and spreading north to the rest of the world, according to a study published in the journal Science.
The skull and other remains offer a glimpse of a population of pre-humans of various sizes living at the same time – something that scientists had not seen before for such an ancient era. This diversity bolsters one of two competing theories about the way our early ancestors evolved, spreading out more like a tree than a bush.
Nearly all of the previous pre-human discoveries have been fragmented bones, scattered over time and locations – like a smattering of random tweets of our evolutionary history. The findings at Dmanisi are more complete, weaving more of a short story. Before the site was found, the movement from Africa was put at about 1 million years ago.
When examined with the earlier Georgian finds, the skull “shows that this special immigration out of Africa happened much earlier than we thought and a much more primitive group did it,” said study lead author David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgia National Museum. “This is important to understanding human evolution.”
For years, some scientists have said humans evolved from only one or two species, much like a tree branches out from a trunk, while others say the process was more like a bush with several offshoots that went nowhere.
Even bush-favoring scientists say these findings show one single species nearly 2 million years ago at the former Soviet republic site. But they disagree that the same conclusion can be said for bones found elsewhere, such as Africa.
However, Lordkipanidze and colleagues point out that the skulls found in Georgia are different sizes but are considered to be the same species. So, they reason, it’s likely the various skulls found in different places and times in Africa may not be different species, but variations in one species.
To see how a species can vary, just look in the mirror, they said.
“Danny DeVito, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal are the same species,” Lordkipanidze said.
The adult male skull found wasn’t from our species, Homo sapiens. It was from an ancestral species – in the same genus or class called Homo – that led to modern humans. Scientists say the Dmanisi population is likely an early part of our long-lived primary ancestral species, Homo erectus.
Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, wasn’t part of the study but praised it as “the first good evidence of what these expanding hominids looked like and what they were doing.”
Fred Spoor at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, a competitor and proponent of a busy family tree with many species disagreed with the study’s overall conclusion, but he lauded the Georgia skull discovery as critical and even beautiful.
“It really shows the process of evolution in action,” he said.
Spoor said it seems to have captured a crucial point in the evolutionary process where our ancestors transitioned from Homo habilis to Homo erectus – although the study authors said that depiction is going a bit too far.
The researchers found the first part of the skull, a large jaw, below a medieval fortress in 2000. Five years later – on Lordkipanidze’s 42nd birthday – they unearthed the well-preserved skull, gingerly extracted it, putting it into a cloth-lined case and popped champagne. It matched the jaw perfectly.
They were probably separated when our ancestor lost a fight with a hungry carnivore, which pulled apart his skull and jaw bones, Lordkipanidze said.
The skull was from an adult male just shy of 5 feet (1.5 meters) with a massive jaw and big teeth, but a small brain, implying limited thinking capability, said study co-author Marcia Ponce de Leon of the University of Zurich. It also seems to be the point where legs are getting longer, for walking upright, and smaller hips, she said.
“This is a strange combination of features that we didn’t know before in early Homo,” Ponce de Leon said.
When the Smithsonian discovered an ancient Egyptian colony in the Grand Canyon
At 277 miles (445 kilometers) long, up to 18 miles (28 kilometers) wide, and 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) deep, the Grand Canyon is one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring places in the United States.
The Zoroaster and Brahma Temples are seen in the distance from the South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon National Park
The Hopi Indians believe it is the gateway to the afterlife. Its sheer immensity and mystery attracted more than 6 million visitors in 2016.
But what those people probably don’t know is that the Grand Canyon might once have been the home of an entire underground civilization.
But where are they now? And why did they abandon the canyon? Hosts Matt Frederick, Ben Bowlin, and Noel Brown jump straight into the folklore, the legends, and of course, the conspiracies to find out what really happened to the Grand Canyon’s Lost Civilization in this episode of Stuff They Don’t Want You To Know.
In the article, a cross-legged idol resembling Buddha is described along with a large tomb filled with mummified humans: a veritable mash-up of Egyptian and East Asian cultures.
It all started in 1909 when purported Smithsonian Institution explorer G.E. Kincaid discovered strange caverns during an expedition directed by Smithsonian anthropologist S.A. Jordan. The entrance to the cavern was nearly inaccessible, but Kincaid was able to get in to make an incredible discovery.
The enormous caves, which radiated out from a center cavern-like spokes on a wheel, were full of artifacts, including statues, copper weapons, even granaries full of seeds. Its size indicated that 50,000 people could live inside comfortably.
But even more amazingly, the artifacts didn’t match up to anything in the known record. Rather than appearing to be of Native American origin, as one might expect, the objects had distinct Egyptian or Tibetan designs. Could there actually have been an entire civilization of Egyptians living there? If so, how did they get there?
The story caused a huge sensation when it broke in the Arizona Gazette in 1909, but was soon met with skepticism: The Smithsonian has no record of either of the scientists, nor their discoveries, and firmly quells any claims that Egyptian artifacts have been found in either North or South America.
And no one has been able to find these supposedly massive caves since. Was this some elaborate hoax, may be perpetrated by the Gazette to sell papers?
That’s certainly a possibility, but it doesn’t fly for many conspiracy theorists. Some argue that the Smithsonian Institution has purposely wiped Kincaid and Jordan from their records and actively destroyed artifacts that don’t agree with the “status quo story” of human history.
Others think the caves hold a passage to the fourth dimension, where the reptilians (yep!) who have secretly run the world for thousands of years emerge into our world. Still, others believe the area is top-secret and closely guarded, like Area 51.
So is this series of caverns proof of a long-lost, possibly Egyptian civilization that’s simply being covered up by the Smithsonian, or is it a passageway into this dimension for our reptilian overlords? One thing is for sure.
400-year-old underground complex found in the Grand Canyon
Courtesy & Full Credit: The National Reporter
A group of hikers who had been exploring a virtually untouched area of the Grand Canyon happened upon an opening in the side of the canyon wall last July. Peter Marlington and his friends had discovered the entrance to an underground complex that has been estimated to be over four hundred years old and built in the late 1500s.
“It was hot as hell out and we were hiking up the side of the cliff to get into a wooded area for the shade.” Peter Marlington explained. “When we reached the shrub line we felt a cool breeze coming from the high weeds that were growing on the side of the cliff. It seemed very odd that a cool breeze would be coming from nowhere like that, so we poked around to see why.
When we pushed our way past the shrubbery we came to the entrance of a large brick-lined tunnel. We could tell right away that it was very old, but we had no idea that it would turn out to be as old as they say it is.”
The entrance to the complex has been cleared of the shrubbery that kept it hidden for 400 years.
“We were a little hesitant at first to go inside because we didn’t know what it was. We thought it might be a flood tunnel and we could be drowned in a sudden storm came up. And it was really kind of creepy too. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’ll tell you when you are staring into an old dark musty smelling tunnel like that, it will give anyone the creeps. After a few minutes of debating whether or not we should go inside, the spirit of exploration overruled our fears, out came our flashlights, and into the tunnel, we went.
It went for quite a distance all on very level ground. We knew that if it was a flood tunnel that it would be slopped upward, we were relieved when we realized that we weren’t going to be flushed out in a sudden deluge. After a few hundred feet the tunnel stopped, it was boarded up.” The National Reporter – Did you turn back?
“Oh, hell no. We broke through. We had to. If we quit just because of some old rotten wood blocking our way and turned around, we would have spent the rest of our lives going crazy wondering what was on the other side of that door.”
The National Reporter – I can understand that. As a staff member of The National Reporter, I would have continued on as well to satisfy my curiosity and to bring yet another award-winning news story to my readers. So, What was on the other side of the wooden barricade? “Another tunnel. It was a lot smaller than the one we were in, it was more like a doorway in the wall. It was pitch black inside and it smelled kind of funny, like something that has been dead for real long time, you know, like dried up and dusty smelling. We made our way inside and soon came to another tunnel that went off to the right and another one about twenty feet ahead that went to the left.
We didn’t go down either of them, we just kept going straight.”
The first tunnel was covered with a wooden barricade. Inside were more tunnels that went off to the right and the left.
“We continued down the pitch-black tunnel until we came to a huge chamber. Our flashlights were barely bright enough to light the entire area up because of its immense size. Down below the brick floor looked like it had collapsed and there appeared to be some sort of tunnel system that had been exposed. We had no idea what the tunnels were for, but they were definitely big enough for large groups of people to move through.”
The National Reporter Did you go down to see what was inside of them? “We did after a while. The other guys were getting kind of scared, I have to admit it was getting kind of creepy. Graveyard creepy,..you know what I mean?”
The National Reporter – I know exactly what you mean. “I went down by myself, the other guys were too scared. It took a few minutes to get down to the collapsed floor where the tunnels were. It was pretty dangerous because the morter was all crumbled and powdery and the bricks were loose. I figured that was why the floor had collapsed. I entered the tunnel on the far left and walked for about fifty feet, then it stopped at a bricked-up wall. There was a loose brick in it, so I pushed on it and jiggled it around until it fell into the room on the other side.”
The floor of the immense chamber appeared to be collapsed revealing several passageways underneath.
The National Reporter – What was inside of the room?
“I don’t know, I couldn’t see. “The hole wasn’t big enough to stick the flashlight in and look in at the same time, so I just put the camera into the hole and snapped a few pictures. I had the weirdest feeling while I was doing it like there was something on the other side of the wall watching me the whole time. I’ll tell you this much, it spooked the hell out of me and I ran out of there with the hair standing up on my neck.”
The National Reporter – What did you do then?
“We left.” He said. “When I told my buddy’s that it felt like something was watching me from the other side of that wall, that was it. We ran out of that place so fast nothing could have stopped us.” The National Reporter – What did you do when you exited the complex, Did you report finding it right away?
“Yeah, pretty much. We went to the park rangers’ office and told them what we found. Naturally, they didn’t know what we were talking about. They checked their map and there were no tunnels or underground facilities in that area. They thought we were making the whole thing up.” The National Reporter – What did you do then?
“We took them out to the tunnel so they could see it for themselves. They didn’t want to go at first because they still thought we were on something. I guess I would have thought the same thing if I was in their position. The whole thing sounds so made up.”
The National Reporter – I can understand that most people would think that you made this story up. It’s a good thing you have photographs to prove it’s all true. Your photographs coupled with the integrity and reputation of The National Reporter as being one of the most reliable news sources in the nation is guaranteed to make believers out of many skeptics.
“I know, that’s why I contacted The National Reporter and not one of those silly tabloids who make up ridiculous stories.” The National Reporter – What did you think when you found out that the underground complex that you and your friends discovered was 400 years old?
“It blew our minds. I mean,..who the hell built it? The Indians sure as hell didn’t have the know-how to build something like that and there were no European settlers that far west at the time and even if there was, they sure as hell didn’t have the equipment to dig out an underground complex of that size and manufacture the millions of bricks it took to build it.”
The National Reporter – The complex was to be opened to the general public after your discovery, but those plans were quickly cancelled when a government agency closed it down suddenly for some unknown reason. Do you have any ideas on why they did that?
“I have my suspicions. Remember when I told you about how I stuck my camera into the hole in the wall and snapped a few photo’s and it felt as though something was watching me?”
The National Reporter – Yes, was there something in the photographs? “Take a look for yourself.” He said, handing it to me. “If this is 400 years old, then something really weird was going on back then that people don’t know about and they sure as hell aren’t going to find out what it was from reading their history books, I’ll tell you that.”
I took the photograph from him and to tell you the truth, I was speechless by what I saw. I could understand what Peter Marlington meant when he said something weird was going on back then. I won’t say anymore, I will just present you, readers, with the image Mr. Marlington captured on film and leave you to ponder on it.
7,000-Year-old Horned Face Image found Under Ancient Polish Home
In the area of a large, prehistoric settlement populated by a group identified by specialists as the Linear Pottery culture, the discovery in Biskupice was completed.
Marta Korczyńska, Field Work Chief at the Institute of Botany of the Polish Academy of Sciences said: “The fragments of pottery that we discovered are decorated with a plastic ornament depicting a stylized outline of a human face. There are two bumps on the forehead, reminiscent of horns.”
She added that only a part of the unusual ornament has survived, including the eyes and nose. The preserved fragment measures approx. 10 cm in width.
This photo clearly shows the eyes, nose and two bumps over the eyes that are presumed to be horns.
Project leader Dr Magdalena Moskal-del Hoyo from the W. Szafer Institute of Botany PAS said: “Today we are not able to clearly interpret this image. It seems likely, however, that such an unusual artefact could be related to the sacred sphere to some extent.”
According to Professor Marek Nowak from the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, who was also involved in the research, this type of artefact is evidence the inhabitants of the settlement had contact with people living in the area of today’s Hungary and Slovakia.
This is indicated not only by the discovery of the broken bowl, but also products made of obsidian, a raw material not found in Poland. It is a volcanic glass with a black and shiny surface.
Korczyńska said that while vessels with similar ornamental motifs are known from that period in Slovakia and Hungary (although they usually do not have stylised horns), this is the first such object been found in Poland.
The archaeologists also found over 3,000 artefacts, including obsidian tools and so-called cores, stone blocks used to strike stone flakes and chips that were later used to make tools. These products were primarily used as leather scrapers, tools for processing wood and bones, and sickle blades.
In addition to archaeologists, experts in the field of botany are also involved in the project. ‘It may be surprising that the employees of the Institute of Botany PAS conduct archaeological research, but in this interdisciplinary project, next to ceramics and other artefacts, plant remains are an equal, unfortunately often overlooked source of information on material culture and old customs’, said Dr Moskal-del Hoyo.
She added that the remains of plants from sites dating back to the early Neolithic period (the time when farming began) were and are relatively rarely collected and studied by excavation leaders.
Meanwhile, in her opinion, they can provide very important information about the people of the time and their crops.
The project is financed by the National Science Centre.
Archaeologists say they’ve found a massive underground structure that could be four times the size of Stonehenge
Archaeologists have confirmed that the ruins of a significant, modern prehistoric stone monument, buried less than 3 kilometres (186 miles) from Stonehenge have been identified.
Artist’s concept of how the stones at Durrington Walls may have been positioned.
The site is 15 times the size of Stonehenge. The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project team – a group of British archaeologists – used multi-sensor technologies to reveal evidence for a row of about 90 standing stones hidden beneath the bank of what is now called Durrington Walls, a super-henge in Britain.
Durrington Walls is one of the largest known henge monuments measuring 500 meters (0.3 miles) in diameter. It’s thought to have been built around 4,500 years ago.
The word henge refers to a particular type of earthwork, typically consisting of a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch surrounding a central flat area. Henges may have contained (or may still contain) ritual structures such as stone circles, timber circles and coves.
Durrington Walls may have contained an ancient village at one time. The henge surrounds several smaller enclosures and timber circles and is associated with a recently excavated later Neolithic settlement.
The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project team, using non-invasive geophysical prospection and remote sensing technologies, discovered evidence for a row of up to 90 standing stones, some of which may have originally measured up to 4.5 meters (14.8 feet) in height. Many of these stones have survived because they were pushed over and the massive bank of the later henge raised over the recumbent stones or the pits in which they stood.
These stones have been hidden for millennia.
Durrington Walls is less than 3 kilometres (1.86 miles) from Stonehenge. It is a circular earthwork, some 15 times larger than Stonehenge.
Artist’s concept of standing stones beneath Durrington Walls super-henge.
At Durrington, more than 4.5 thousand years ago, a natural depression near the river Avon appears to have been accentuated by a chalk cut scarp and then delineated on the southern side by the row of massive stones. Essentially forming a C-shaped ‘arena’, the monument may have surrounded traces of springs and a dry valley leading from there into the Avon.
Although none of the stones has yet been excavated, researchers are interested in a unique sarsen standing stone – a kind of sandstone boulder – which they are calling the Cuckoo Stone, in the adjacent field.
The researchers say this particular stone suggests that other stones may have come from local sources.
“Cuckoo Stone” in a field near Durrington Walls. Researchers are interested in this stone as being possibly related to the stones buried beneath the structure.
Previous, intensive study of the area around Stonehenge had led archaeologists to believe that only Stonehenge and a smaller henge at the end of what researchers call Stonehenge Avenue possessed significant stone structures. The researchers now say:
The latest surveys now provide evidence that Stonehenge’s largest neighbour, Durrington Walls, had an earlier phase which included a large row of standing stones probably of local origin and that the context of the preservation of these stones is exceptional and the configuration unique to British archaeology.
Radar evidence for hidden stones at Durrington Walls.
The earthwork enclosure at Durrington Walls was built about a century after the Stonehenge sarsen circle (in the 27th century BC), but archaeologists say the new stone row could be contemporary with or earlier than this.
Paul Garwood, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Birmingham is the principal prehistorian on the project. Garwood said in a statement:
The extraordinary scale, detail and novelty of the evidence produced by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which the new discoveries at Durrington Walls exemplify, is changing fundamentally our understanding of Stonehenge and the world around it.
Everything written previously about the Stonehenge landscape and the ancient monuments within it will need to be re-written.
Artist concept of standing stones at Durrington Walls.
8th-Century A.D. Rock-Cut Temple Revealed in India
On the banks of the Arjuna River at Sivakasi ‘s M Pudhupatti village in India, a three-chambered rock-covered temple, believed to be 1,200 years old, has been identified.
The three-chambered historical site is on banks of Arjuna River at Sivakasi’s M Pudhupatti village; no idols, statues of god identified so far
The building, cut in the side of a limestone rock, was riddled with thickets and debris until a week ago when residents in the locality chanced upon it.
While archaeologists have identified the structure as a rock-cut temple,no idol, statue, or relief of gods or goddesses has so far been identified inside the temple’s three chambers — the garbhagriha (sanctum sanctorum), ardhamandapam, and maha mandapam. A 20-feet long limestone mound marks the entrance to it. There are traces of cement on the walls and in the ceiling.
Archeologists believe these might have been part of the repair carried out by devotees around 100 years ago.
At several places inside the structure, the limestone is falling apart; there is a massive hole in the ceiling of the maha mandapam. Retired assistant director of the State Archeology Department Dr C Santhalingam said, “The temple is unique in three aspects.
First: It is a Sandhara-type of temple. There is no identified Sandhara-type rock-cut temple in India”. These temples have a circumambulatory passage (pradakshinapath) around the shrine.
Not all temples have these passages, said sources. “Second: The temple has two circumambulatory passages; this is very rare. While one passage moves in a clockwise direction from the ardhamandapam, the second one is adjacent to the mahamandapam,” he added.
“Third: The temple is carved entirely out of limestone,” he said. The stone is considered an inferior type owing to its features. “This is the reason why there is no artistic design, sculpture, or carving in the temple. However, there are niches on both the sides of the entrance to the garbagriha.
Moreover, there is a stone naga statue in the garbagriha,” said Santhalingam. The residents might have placed it there over a century ago to offer worship. The interior of the structure and the surrounding riverbank were cleaned by the local body.
‘From the Pandian Era’
The temple belongs to the early-Pandian era, around 8th century CE. It is similar to the Valli cave temple in Tiruchendur, which is carved out of sandstone, a rock similar in features to limestone, Santhalingam said.
