Finally, there are stone tools. When Mr. Apte started coordinating research he found microliths, small stone tools, characteristic of the Mesolithic period, which stretches as far back as 40,000 years ago. Without definitive dates, Dr. Garge puts the range at 10,000 to 40,000 years.
The next steps in research, he said, are to document each figure with drone photography, photographic mapping, and, if the budget permits, three-dimensional laser scans, so that if the carvings were lost to erosion or construction or mining of the laterite stone for brick, they could be recreated not only in outline, but in-depth, which can give an indication of carving technique.
Dr. Garge’s department will also be looking for evidence of the people who made the carvings. The figures are found only on windswept hills that are flooded during monsoons, places where there would have been no shelter. The carvers would have had to come to these places on purpose to make the drawings.
This year researchers began excavating a cave about 20 miles away and found microliths like those on the hilltops, as well as other, larger stone tools. “We are hoping to find more shelter sites in closer proximity to the petroglyphs,” Dr. Garge said.
For now, the carvings are mysterious and pose interesting questions about the people who lived during that time period. “Do you think society was advanced enough that they would pay for artistic work” in the form of food sharing, for example, Dr. Garge wondered, or were they freeing a group member from hunting or gathering to sit and dig into stone?
And he noted that worldwide, rock carvings come from a time when humans were beginning to grapple with the meaning of the forces that affected their lives, perhaps when the first religious ideas were forming. Many of the animals featured in the drawings could have been objects of fear, he said, “elephants, rhinos, sting ray, shark,” not to mention tigers.
