CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu forest department is proposing to declare the prehistoric Gudiyam Caves, where Stone Age people lived, and 4,500 hectares of the surrounding Eastern Ghats forest in Tiruvallur district, as the Allikulli Landscape Conservation Reserve.
This was revealed after a five-member advisory committee, formed by Syed Muzammil Abbas, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Head of forest force) and Chief Wildlife Warden, held its first meeting last month.
The Gudiyam Caves are a complex of 16 majestic prehistoric rock shelters, arguably the oldest site in India, that is located within thickly-foliated Pulikundram reserve forest near Gudiyam village.
A forest official told TNIE: “Historical records show these rock shelters were used by people from the Stone Age lakhs of years ago. Robert Bruce Foote, the British geologist, in 1864, first investigated these rock shelters and later documented them in a Geological Survey of India memoir in 1873.”
Move aims at ensuring extra layer of protection to caves
“Excavations by Dr KD Banerjee and his team from Archaeological Survey of India, in Gudiyam and nearby areas of Gudiyam rock shelters (during 1962-63) brought to light the first systematic record of Stone Age artefacts and their cultural aspects.
So, it is important to protect the entire landscape,” the official said, adding that a formal proposal will soon be submitted to the State government. Currently, the area is a reserve forest protected under Tamil Nadu Forest Act, but declaring it as a conservation reserve will give an extra layer protection under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
Shanti Pappu, Secretary of Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, who extensively studied Gudiyam Caves, appreciated the move of the forest department and said the landscape is of great importance both archaeologically and ecologically. “I studied the Gudiyam rock shelter and the vicinity with surface surveys in the 1990s, coming to similar conclusions as Dr Banerjee, of ASI , who reported low-density occupation in cultural phases ranging from what he termed post-Acheulian to Middle Stone Age.”
D Narasimhan, member of the advisory committee and biologist, said Allikulli landscape is one of the dense forests in north TN. There are some plant species that are found only here in Tamil Nadu, like Pogostemon myosuroides, because of the presence of conglomerate rocks.