Tucked away in a village called Hire Benakal of Gangavati taluk in Koppal district are some historical treasures that date back to the Iron Age.
Hire Benakal stands apart in the archeological history of Karnataka with its megalithic stone huts. The stones were as smooth as butter (in Kannada - Benne) giving the hillock the name of Benakal (stone having the smoothness of butter).
Similar findings were made at Rajankollur of Surpur taluk and Vibhutihalli of Shahapur taluk in Yadgir district.
While Hire Benakal and Rajan-Kollur boast of stone huts, stone alignments to measure time and season have been found in Vibhutihalli.
The treasure at Hire Benakal
Hire Benakal village is 20 km from Gangavati and one has to walk for 3 km to climb the Hire Benakal hill, which takes about for 2 hours.
The huts — hundreds of them — date back to 800 B.C.-200 B.C. and can be identified in three different categories. Several of them are dolmens that are three sided chambers, with or without port-holes and with large stone slabs called capstones forming their roofs. The other structures are irregular polygonal chambers and rock shelter chambers.
A pond in the area points to the fact that people lived in those huts. Most of these huts are 8 feet height.
The hill also has rock art from the Neolithic era. Ten rock shelters have lively paintings executed in red ocher depicting people dancing, hunting, holding weapons, taking part in processions, etc.
One painting even shows what appear to be human but with horns and tails. The paintings also have geometric and mystic designs and show animals like deer, antelope, peacocks, humped bulls, cows and horses.
Near the megalithic site is a unique stone kettledrum that rests on a 10-metre high boulder. This rough hemispherical stone has a diameter of over 2 meters and is 1.5 meters tall. When beaten with a stone or wooden hammer, the sound of the drum can be heard even a kilometer away.
According to archaeologists, this drum might
have been used to warn the settlement’s inhabitants against invaders and to announce religious or social congregations.
There are also some small tomb-like structures and villagers of Hire Benakal believe that the dead were buried here.
Lack of maintenance
Though the Archeological department declared it a protected monument more than 3 decades ago, no arrangements have been made to attract tourists to the place. Interested people have to take the help of the villagers of Hire Benakal to reach the spot. There is no security or guides appointed by the department at the place.
Destruction of Iron Age Huts
According to the department and the people of Hire Benakal, there were more than 600 huts at the site. But now their number has reduced to nearly 200 because of the treasure hunters.
Chandrashekhar Kumbar, a graduate of Hire Benakal village, said there were no guards either from the Archeological department or from the forest department to protect the historical monuments on the hillock.
The villagers said they regularly heard noise of digging from the site.
Kumbar said some years ago, some villagers found some weapons and instruments dating back to Iron Age.
“The government should make efforts to make the villagers handover those weapons and instruments to the government,” he said.
At rajan kollur
In Rajan Kollur village of Surpur taluk, there are hundreds of Megalithic tombs in an area of around 4 acres of land.
Researchers claimed the present day village was also a site of the megalithic culture. The cromlechs (the remains of prehistoric stone chamber tomb) have three flat stones placed edgewise on the ground and a fourth stone on the top is like a cover.
One side, usually the north or the northwest, is open.
Several of such cromlechs at Rajan Kullur are surrounded by circles of stones.
Many such cisterns or closed cromlechs form the majority of the monuments at Rajan kolur and Hagavolgi.
One peculiarity is that each of these has a circular aperture in one stone or monolith for the introduction of urns with ashes and bones mixed with charcoal from time to time.
The cairns (piles of stones) consist of circles of large stones, sometimes single and sometimes double, enclosing a space with a grave or graves, and stone chests with bodies and funeral urns.
At Vibhutihalli
Vibhutihalli of Shahapur taluk has some astronomical megalithic stone alignments to measure time and season.
The Vibhutihalli stone alignments are located at a latitude of 16* 39’ 53” E and lie 4 km south of Shahapur at the foot of the Shahapur hill range.
They begin 20m north of Vibhutihalli village and lie on the east side of the Shorapur-Shahapur main road.
This locality is part of Shorapur Doab and fall in the semi-arid Deccan zone. About 20 km east of Shahapur is the Bhima River.
The stone alignments lie in parallel rows at about 10 yards from each other. Many stone circles are seen lying along these rows of single boulders.
The importance of Vibhutihalli has not come in to light as the State Forest Department fenced the site and planted trees (including tamarind and teak), dug bore-wells and began using it as a nursery. Some stones were uprooted and the horizons were blocked by trees and bushes.
Now the Archeological department has declared it a protected area.