Rock Art of Bhimbethka

Bhimbethka is a place of great natural beauty. It has giant sandstone rocks, sculpted into hollows, crests, platforms and curls by the wind, rain and water. These are story-telling rocks, whispering their tales through the art of early humans. It is one of the most fascinating places that I have visited.

I had read about the rock-art of Bhimbethka about fifteen years ago and had immediately decided that one day I was going to visit this place. However, as often happens, life has its own compulsions and thus, I had almost forgotten about it.

A visit to the rock-art site in south-west Mozambique at Chinhampere a few years ago, had touched me deeply and had reminded me about my desire to visit Bhimbethka. Finally, a few months ago I visited it. If you are interested in human evolution and rock art of ancient humans, you will love Bhimbethka. It is located in Madhya Pradesh in the central part of India.

Rock-shelters of Bhimbetka are a World Heritage Monument of UNESCO.

DISCOVERY OF BHIMBETHKA

The rock shelters of Bhimbethka were discovered by V. S. Wakankar in 1957. Wakankar, while passing near Bhimbethka in train was struck by the curiously shaped rocks at the top of the hill and decided to stop and visit them.

This area is 600 metres above sea level and about 100 metres above the surrounding plains of Betwa river. Here the rock shelters used by prehistoric humans are scattered over a large area spread over five different hills – Bhineka, Bhonravli, Lakhajwar est, Lakhajwar west and Bhimbethka. All together there are 243 rock shelters, out of which 133 rock-shelters have rock-art. The whole area is part of Ratapani wildlife protected area.

Only 15 rock-shelters of Bhimbethka hill are open to public.

Bhimbethka is at one hour drive from Bhopal. You can hire a taxi to visit it. If you prefer public transport, state buses can drop you at about two and half kilometres from the caves.

EARLY HUMANS IN INDIA

In his wonderful book “Indica: A Deep Natural History of The Indian Subcontinent”, Pranay Lal writes that the progenitor of Anthropoids (monkeys, apes and hominins) developed in Asia and from there spread to Africa and other parts of the world. The first human progenitor Homo habilis evolved in Africa. The standing hominid, Homo erectus arrived about 2 million years ago and then over a short period of time spread into different parts of the world including India, China and Indonesia.

Standing posture of Homo erectus resulted in anatomical changes in pelvis which affected child-birth and children being born without fully developed brains, which created social needs for ancient humans to help each other and to live in communities. They learned to use fire, could make sounds for communication and made stone tools (Acheulean stone tools). Erectus arrived in India around 1.5 million years ago. Some of big sites of Acheulean tools of Erectus in India have been found around Siwalik hills.

The first modern man, Homo sapiens evolved in East Africa around 190,000 years ago. They left Africa around 75,000 years ago and spread in different directions including some who arrived in India. For some time, Erectus and Sapiens cohabited, then Erectus gradually faded away and only Sapiens remained. There were different sub-species of Sapiens including Neanderthals. The present day humans are Homo sapiens sapiens.

ANCIENT HUMANS IN BHIMBETHKA

The rocks of Bhimbethka are formed of sand-stone (orthoquartzite), which have been modelled by the natural forces into different shapes, which provided shelters to early humans. They are not caves and therefore called rock-shelters. Some of them are very big, more than 20 metres high.

Not very far from Bhimbethka is a tribal village, which shows the continuity of human traditions in this area.

The rock-shelters open to the tourists are located on a hill and are numbered from 1 to 15. The path between the different shelters has been paved and covers around one and half kilometres. The oldest signs of humans in these rock-shelters go back to around 100,000 years while the most recent signs belong to medieval period.

Archaeological excavations have been carried out in some areas of Bhimbetka that have shown tools, burials and other objects from lower Paleolithic, middle Paleolithic, upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. The lower Paleolithic tools include Acheulean stone implements.

However, for the visitors to Bhimbethka, the most important signs of prehistorical humans are their paintings on the rocks made with natural elements like lime and ochre. Over the centuries, ancient humans have painted repeatedly at the same surfaces, thus more recent rock paintings overlie older paintings. In some places fifteen layers of paintings have been identified in Bhimbethka.

The paintings show mainly human and animal figures and depict scenes from hunting, wars, social and spiritual lives of persons. Trees, plants and flowers are rare in these paintings. Persons riding horses and elephants as well as battle scenes are part of more recent paintings from historical period.

THINGS TO LOOK FOR AT BHIMBETHKA

Personally, I found all the rock-shelters of Bhimbethka fascinating. There were some places where I could have spent hours looking carefully at individual paintings. However, there are some aspects that you can look for specifically during your visit:

Rock-shelter 2: It is an imposing structure shaped like an enormous cave open at the two ends and is known as the auditorium. It is 39 metres long and around 17 metres high.

On the left at lower level it has some more recent animal and human figures. To the right and on a higher level it has different animals and birds including a peacock and the hand impression of a child. It also has some cupules from early paleolithic period.

Rock-shelter 3: It has some curious round-shaped holes called Cupules cut into the rock. These are the oldest signs of human occupation in Bhimbethka and go back to 100,000 years. I think that these could have been used as storage spaces.

Rock-shelter 4: This shelter is called “the zoo” because its big wall is completely covered with different layers of animals painted during different epochs. There are 252 figures of animals showing 16 species of animals. In addition there are 90 human figures, 1 bird and 6 decorative designs.

Rock-shelter 5: More recent paintings in this shelter depict battles and a royal procession. These are located on the right side of the wall. The procession includes people carrying swords, riding horses and wearing a head-dress. The figures include two drummers.

Why did the ancient humans paint animal figures? One of the reasons proposed for these images found in different parts of the world, is related to hunting. Painting the animals (and conducting ceremonies in front of these figures) was a way to capture the spirits of the animals so that the hunters had success in hunting them.

Rock-shelter 15: This is a very big rock and on one side near the top, it presents a fascinating fantasy scene – a giant boar like animal is chasing a small human figure and a crab. It seems to be the depiction of a mythological story. Because of this painting, it is known as Boar rock.

Apart from the Boar scene, there are other human and animal paintings in this rock shelter.

View Point: Around half-way into the shelters, there is a raised area with a tortoise shaped rock. From here it is possible to see the alluvial plains around Betwa river going towards Narmada river.

In addition, there are three springs in this area known as Ban Ganga, Gupt Ganga and Pandapur. Water from these springs is used by the adivasi (tribal) groups living in this area. Finally at the top of Bhimbethka hill is an old Shiva temple nestled in the rocks.

CONCLUSIONS

Bhimbethka is an incredible place. Its natural beauty is coupled with a rich cultural, historical and archaeological testimony of the human evolution in central India.

At the rock-paintings of Chinhampere in Mozambique, I had met a woman guardian of the ancient site who lived in the village below. It was not possible to visit those rock-paintings without her permission. She had also explained to me about how the village community continued to venerate those rock paintings during their annual festivals.

This continuity of the sacred relationship between the ancient rock art and traditions of local tribal people seems to missing from the areas open for visits in Bhimbethka. Nor does the site provide any information about the religious/spiritual significance of these rock-shelters to the tribal communities today.

Still it is impossible not to be moved by the art of ancient humans at Bhimbethka. The name of Bhimbethka remembers the muscular Pandav brother Bhim from Mahabharat. Local legends say that Pandavas had lived here during the 12 years of exile.

Diane Ecke in her book “India – A sacred geography” has shown how different parts of India take the sacred stories of Hinduism, add to them their local heroes, gods and legends, and make them their own. The legends of Bhima and the names of the three springs, Ban Ganga, Gupt Ganga and Pandapur, seem to follow this norm.

My interest in ancient humans and their lives was stimulated by the series of books called Earth’s Children by Jean M. Auel in the 1980s and 1990s. If you have not read them, do read them. They will give you a glimpse of the lives of early humans.

I also recommend Pranay Lal’s new book – “Indica: A Deep Natural History of The Indian Subcontinent”. It is an enjoyable read, full of information about geological, archaeological and biological finds in India.

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From Ape to Robocop

Yuval Noah Harari’s first book, “Sapiens – a brief history of humankind” was written in Hebrew in 2011. Its English translation appeared in 2014, and became a bestseller. In 2016, his second book has come out, “Homo Deus – a brief history of the future”. This post about these two books.

Harari’s approach to history is innovative and interesting. It questions many of the scientific dogmas and entrenched beliefs around evolution. At the same time, it links history to knowledge from different fields including biology, genetics, economics, archaeology, sociology and anthropology.

“Sapiens” starts with the first progenitors of humans and ends with the modern age, speculating briefly about the things to come. “Homo Deus” carries forward this speculation on the future and how it could affect the humanity.

Progenitors of the Sapiens

In “Sapiens”, Harari proposes that initially the different human species were unremarkable animals, not much different from other apes. They were not able to compete with the brute strength, force and attacking capacities of most other animals, however they had larger brains and could invent wood and stone tools for cracking open bones. They occupied a niche role - extracting marrow from bones of animals killed and eaten by other larger animals.

The human evolution was not linear. From about 2 million years ago until some 10,000 years ago, the world was home at the same time, to several human species. Fire was first used by humans 800,000 years ago. By cooking food on fire, it became easier to digest and thus humans needed less time and shorter intestines compared to other animals for digesting their food. Thus more time coupled with larger brains leading to stone tools and control of fire gave them a strategic advantage over other animals.

“Sapiens” is broadly organised around the three themes, or the three revolutions –cognitive, agricultural and scientific – that have spurred human evolution.

Cognitive Revolution

Cognitive revolution was constituted by the appearance of new ways of thinking and communicating, between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, due to random genetic mutations. Harari proposes that social cooperation among different groups of humans facilitated by the new communication skills ultimately was the key development of this era.

“Legends, myths, gods and religions appeared for the first time with the Cognitive Revolution”. Capacity to imagine and to share that imagination with other humans was the next step. No other animals before humans were capable of this, and this development of collective imagination helped the sapiens to cooperate in extremely flexible ways with large number of other humans.

Humans shared information with others about the surrounding world, about their social relationships, and about things that do not really exist except in imagination, such as totems, spirits and gods. This same capacity of collectively imagining things continues even today leading to our ideas of countries, brands and human rights. Harari explains how these abilities lie at the base of all that progress that modern humans have achieved.

Initially humans lived as foragers in small groups, at the most a few hundred individuals, hunting and gathering food and materials. They also foraged for knowledge, important for their survival. Foragers had wider and deeper knowledge of their surroundings, they also had to master the internal world of their own bodies and senses. This was the time for the development of human diversity, each tribe developing its customs, language and culture.

This long experience of hunting and gathering life has shaped the biology and psychology of present humans.

Agricultural Revolution

The agricultural revolution, 8-10,000 years ago, changed everything. Harari suggests that “the rise of farming was a very gradual affair spread over centuries and millennia. A band of Homo sapiens gathering mushrooms and nuts and hunting deer and rabbit did not all of a sudden settle in a permanent village, ploughing fields, sowing wheat and carrying water from the river. The change proceeded by stages, each of which involved just a small alteration in daily life.”

Agriculture accompanied by domestication of few animal species, helped in creating villages and towns, along with increases in populations. It led to the creation of rulers, commanders and kings, who lived on the hard work of others. It also led to the arrival of organised religions. Development of agriculture has been seen as important for improving the quality of life of humans, but Harari proposes a different view. He also points out its negative aspects including worsening of diets, poverty, back-breaking hard work and diseases, and suggests that though in the long run it helped to expand the reach of humans, for the early agriculturists its impact was negative.

Scientific revolution

The third part of “Sapens” is about the different ways the scientific revolution is impacting human lives – “A modern computer could easily store every word and number in all the codex books and scrolls in every single medieval library with room to spare. Any large bank today holds more money than all the world’s premodern kingdoms put together.”

Starting from the “discovery” of Americas in the 16th century, this part of the book traces impact of the different changes of modern age on humans. One key change caused by this revolution was the wider understanding about the limits of our knowledge of the world, and that there was/is much more to be discovered. This led to the belief that humans can increase their capabilities by investing in scientific research. While generally optimist regarding the future of humanity, the book raises the issue of environmental destruction as one of the key challenges, “The future may see Sapiens gaining control of a cornucopia of new materials and energy sources, while simultaneously destroying what remains of the natural habitat and driving most other species to extinction.”

Harari notes that inter-dependence and inter-connections between countries are leading to the whole world joined together as one empire, inside whose boundaries peace rather than war is valued – the world has never been as peaceful before as it is today.

He concludes “Sapiens” with discussions on the important issues for the future of humanity - pursuit of happiness including manipulation of our biochemistry for the “chemical” happiness, quest for immortality and possible role of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence leading to the end of Homo sapiens as we know them.

Homo Deus: The Future of Humans

Compared to “Sapiens”, Harari’s second book “Homo Deus” is shorter and less optimistic. Harari explains that it is not about prophecies, but is rather about a possible dystopian future for humans. The book is dedicated to his late teacher, S. N. Goenka, a Vipassana guru from India.

Homo Deus starts with the consideration that ever since their arrival on the earth, across the centuries, Homo sapiens faced three main problems – hunger/famines, plagues/infections and wars/terrorism. Harari explains that at the dawn of twenty-first century, all the three have been already resolved or can be resolved if properly tackled because we have the means to answer each of these challenges.

For example, regarding terrorism, Harari suggests a different remedy than what has been adopted usually by the countries:

However, terrorism is a strategy of weakness adopted by those who lack access to real power. At least in the past, terrorism worked by spreading fear rather than by causing significant material damage… How, then, do terrorists manage to dominate the headlines and change the political situation throughout the world? By provoking their enemies to overreact. In essence, terrorism is a show. Terrorists stage a terrifying spectacle of violence that captures our imagination and makes us feel as if we are sliding back into medieval chaos. Consequently states often feel obliged to react to the theatre of terrorism with a show of security, orchestrating immense displays of force, such as the persecution of entire populations or the invasion of foreign countries. In most cases, this overreaction to terrorism poses a far greater threat to our security than the terrorists themselves.

He thinks that humanity needs challenges and the new challenges will be about prolongation of human life in the quest for immortality, and improvement of human life through biotechnology and artificial intelligence so that we become God-like.

The remaining part of the book is devoted to the possible innovations in these areas and their impact on us. Like “Sapiens”, “Homo Deus” is also organised around three main themes – domination of humans (anthropocene), how humans give meaning to the world and the risk of losing control so that artificial intelligence and machines along with a tiny number of God-like humans control everything.

The possible dystopian future depicted by Harari is scary and uncomfortable. Repeatedly, Harari points fingers at us humans - we think that we are special beings and we have a right to exploit, kill and destroy all other beings. He wonders if the future Homo Deus who will control the world, will treat Homo sapiens as we have treated our planet and the animals on it. Our system of large scale brut use of animals grown in big farms blocked in narrow confined spaces or nailed to the ground for their milk, meat & skin, treats them as commodities. Before humans, no single species of a life form had ever dominated and affected the whole planet, therefore he calls it the Anthropocene age.

Harari devotes a lot of pages to the understanding of the different ideas of humanism which will become the dominant force in future replacing the religions, with the ideas about the centrality of ordinary people, their beliefs and feelings in the way we make decision, instead of leaving the decisions to sacred books or authorities. Thus, Harari is equally dismissive about the threat posed by the fundamentalists of different religions:

How about radical Islam, then? Or fundamentalist Christianity, messianic Judaism and revivalist Hinduism? Whereas the Chinese don’t know what they believe, religious fundamentalists know it only too well. More than a century after Nietzsche pronounced Him dead, God seems to be making a comeback. But this is a mirage. God is dead – it just takes a while to get rid of the body. Radical Islam poses no serious threat to the liberal package, because for all their fervour, the zealots don’t really understand the world of the twenty-first century, and have nothing relevant to say about the novel dangers and opportunities that new technologies are generating all around us.

It is the concluding parts of the books regarding the new humans with long lives and conjoined with artificial intelligence, which are the most disturbing, and at the same time less believable. Probably my lack of technological understanding precludes from understanding some of these ideas.

Conclusions

I found the two books fascinating in their scope and the way they manage to provide an overview and general understanding of so many diverse events and issues of human history - why we are the way we are and where are we going. All this is done with wit and great story-telling, and thus the book is not a dry lesson but rather a kaleidoscope of stories and stimulating discussions that sometimes meander, go out to follow some new paths before folding back and continuing with their chosen direction.

Compared to "Homo Deus", “Sapiens” is much bigger book but it tells a larger and a more fascinating story.

On some specific events about which he uses as examples to explain his points, sometimes I felt that he is a bit superficial. However in the two books looking at the human history of the whole planet and its future, that is inevitable.

I think that both are wonderful books and would warmly recommend them if your interests lie in our history, evolution, how we came to be where we are and our possible future directions.

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