Trip to prehistoric times

A Stone Age sculpture park near Chennai proves yet again that the past is always part of the present and that it lives on through art. ANJALI SIRCAR writes ...

A 90-kilometre drive from Chennai to Gudiyam village past Poondi brings you to an inaccessible forest of evergreen and deciduous trees, and just five kilometres in this dense region lies the largest Palaeolithic or Stone Age cave of Tamil Nadu.

In 1863, Robert Bruce Foote, a British geologist, discovered a stone tool - a handaxe, made, used and discarded by the Stone Age man - from a gravel pit in suburban Pallavaram. The discovery, small but momentous, opened up an entire new area of research about the Palaeolithic Age in the Tamil Nadu region, and pushed back the antiquity of the Tamil man by 1,00,000 years.

Foote's modesty prevented him from making a sensation of this find but he made a record of it in the Madras Journal of Literature & Science in 1866. In this he not only described the geological contexts of stone tools but also attempted to fix their probable age and contemporary climatic conditions. Handaxes and cleavers, the typical Palaeolithic tools, later came to be called the 'Madrasian Industry' as against choppers of the 'Soan Industry' of the North-West sub-continent.

Foote was joined by his colleague William King in this daunting task of exploring the environs surrounding Madras. They located numerous Palaeolithic sites such as Poondi, Gudiyam and Attrambakkam, among others, in the Chingleput and North Arcot districts of northern Tamil Nadu. With Foote's death in 1912, prehistoric research almost came to a standstill in the State, and though the Archaeological Survey of India conducted excavations at the cave site at Gudiyam during the Sixties and Seventies, lack of published excavation reports shrouded the work.

However, Foote's serious work had drawn national and international attention and many foreigners and Indians attempted to reach the caves in and around Gudiyam but without much success as no tracks or pathways had been laid to get to the difficult rocky terrain once inhabited by the prehistoric man.

The Department of Archaeology, Tamil Nadu, had already set up a museum at Poondi displaying some of the prehistoric finds from different parts of Tamil Nadu, and in 1993 mooted the novel idea of creating a sculpture park within the campus of the Poondi Museum that would have a replica of the Palaeolithic cave, the early hominid and Palaeolithic stone implements. The project was assigned to Dr. Alphonso Arul Doss, former Principal of the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Chennai, for execution in the same year, within a time-frame of six months. Despite certain references available, the task was formidable and the immediate possibility before Dr. Alphonso was to form an efficient and knowledgeable team and inspire the members to carve out this complex.

Sculptors from the College of Arts and Crafts, Chennai - T.R.P. Mukhiah, S. Gopal, Chandrasekhar and Velayudhan - all of them lecturers at that time - were inducted into the team and several students were recruited to help in the overall completion of the project. The technique for making the sculptures of the Palaeolithic man was carefully evolved. First the figures were made in clay according to references and information based on anthropological and physiological studies of the prehistoric man. Dr. Alphonso also made several drawings and miniature models which served as guidelines for the sculpting team.

Once the figures were made in clay, they were cast in plaster and the moulds were used to create sculptures in cement concrete mixed with red ochre, black and green colours to derive a natural stone colour. After the figures were ready, the rock-bed on which to mount the figures as also the cave in the backdrop had to be created. The final work needed a professional touch and a moulder was given the job of searching small hillocks in the suburbs of Chennai to choose a number of suitable moulds. These moulds in turn were used to create numerous cement casts mixed with colours that would bring the natural appearance of rock. The cave was put in place, the rock-bed was laid out in front of it and the Palaeolithic figure placed on the elevated area, completing the 1-lakh-year-old scenario.

As you enter the Poondi Museum, there is the stunning view of the rock-hewn cave covered with natural greenery against the backdrop of which the Palaeolithic man, woman and child are engaged in their daily activities - one roasting a freshly killed bird on a fire created by striking flints, another sharpening a stone arrow as other implements such as handaxes, howes and wedges lie around. Some other hunched hominid keep a watch against unwanted intruders. The woman and child sit cosily basking in the sun, under the protective eye of the men. There is a giant snail that lies curled up on one side and the paintings on the cave wall created by sculptor Chandrasekhar with the help of students and depicting human forms, birds, bulls and elephants, take us back to the caves of Lazcaux in France or Altamira in Spain.

The sculpture park in Poondi not only provides a documentary evidence of prehistoric Tamil Nadu but also proves once again that the past is always part of the present and lives on through art.

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