Edakkal cave and Edakkal Stone carvings

Edakkal Cave is the most popular place, and the most visited place in Wayanad. Edakkal cave is well known for the prehistoric stone carvings inside it. The carvings are made somewhere before 5000BC in the timeline. it is assumed that the Edakkal caves had been inhabited at various stages in History.

The name “Edakkal” literally means “a stone in between”, and this describes how the cave is formed by a heavy boulder straddling a fissure in the rock.you have to climb the mount Ambukuthi to reach the first Edakkal cave, but you will surely reach the top if you keep in mind that you are going to watch one of the first artworks made by human.

Edakkal.com describes the carvings as: "Thousands of years ago in a rock shelter at Edakkal, stone age people recorded their disquiet and anxiety at the social changes brought about by Iron Age technology. In 1910 an amateur archaeologist rediscovered their work and sought to bring it to the attention of professional colleagues and the general public. What makes the Edakkal caves important today."  

As far as we can tell, they were probably created during the Neolithic period of the Late Stone Age and date from about 1000BC. In addition to the pictorial carvings, five ancient inscriptions have been identified of which two have been deciphered.

Historian M.R. Raghava Varier of the Kerala state archaeology department identified a sign “a man with jar cup” that is the most distinct motif of the Indus valley civilization. The finding made in 2009 September indicates that the Harappan civilization was active in the region. Interestingly, the “a man with jar cup” symbol from Edakkal seems to be more similar to the Indus motif than those already known from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Mr. Varier said “The discovery of the symbols are akin to that of the Harappan civilisation having predominantly Dravidian culture and testimony to the fact that cultural diffusion could take place. It is wrong to presume that the Indus culture disappeared into thin air.”