FRACTIONS in ANCIENT TAMIL CIVILIZATION used till now

• 1= onRu
• 3/4= mukkaal
• 1/2= arai
• 1/4= kaal
• 1/5= naalumaa
• 3/16= moonRu veesam
• 3/20= moonRumaa
• 1/8= araikkaal
• 1/10= irumaa
• 1/16= maakaaNi (veesam)
• 1/20= orumaa
• 3/64= mukkaal veesam
• 3/80= mukkaaN
• 1/32= araiveesam
• 1/40 araimaa
• 1/64= kaal veesam
• 1/80= kaaNi
• 3/320= araikkaaNi munthiri
• 1/160= araikkaaNi
• 1/320= munthiri
• 1/102,400= keezh munthiri
• 1/2,150,400= immi
• 1/23,654,400= mummi
• 1/165,580,800= aNu
• 1/1,490,227,200= kuNam
• 1/7,451,136,000= pantham
• 1/44,706,816,000= paagam
• 1/312,947,712,000= vintham
• 1/5,320,111,104,000= naagavintham
• 1/74,481,555,456,000= sinthai
• 1/1,489,631,109,120,000= kathirmunai
• 1/59,585,244,364,800,000= kuralvaLaippidi
• 1/3,575,114,661,888,000,000= veLLam
• 1/357,511,466,188,800,000,000= nuNNmaNl
• 1/2,323,824,530,227,200,000,000= thaertthugaL

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EXACAVATIONS at the Palaeolithic Site of ATTIRAMPAKKAM, South India

1.5 Million-year-old tools found near Chennai (South India)

Early Pleistocene presence of Acheulian hominins in South India – Shanti Pappu

When the western people repeatedly underestimate the civilization of India to be 2000 – 4000 years back this extraordinary excavation rewrites the history of mankind. Spread our antiquity!

Archaeologists have discovered India’s oldest stone-age tools, up to 1.5 million years old, at a prehistoric site near Chennai. The discovery may change existing ideas about the earliest arrival of human ancestors from Africa into India.

One hundred and fifty years ago, on May 30, 1863, young geologist Robert Bruce Foote bent down and picked up a stone tool on the Parade Ground at Pallavaram cantonment, near Chennai. It turned out to be an epochal discovery. Foote’s discovery revolutionised the study of India’s pre-history.

Attirampakkam (13°13′50″N, 79°53′20″E, 38.35 m a.s.l), is an open-air Palaeolithic site situated near a meandering tributary stream of the river Kortallaiyar, northwest of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, along the southeast coast of India. Discovered in September 1863, by Robert Bruce Foote and his colleague William King, it was investigated in the early to mid 20th century by several scholars- T.T. Paterson, V.D.Krishnaswami and K.D.Banerjee. Later work on the prehistory of this region was conducted by A.Swami. S.Pappu’s doctoral dissertation on the prehistory of the Kortallaiyar river basin (see publications), highlighted the importance of the context of artefacts at this site, in addition to other observations on the nature of the prehistoric record of this region.

A team of Indian and French archaeologists have used two dating methods including Cosmogenic nuclide burial dating to show that the stone hand-axes and cleavers from Attirampakkam are at least 1.07 million years old, and could date as far back as 1.5 million years.

12 years of painstaking work

The Tamil Nadu site was first discovered in 1863 by British geologist Robert Bruce Foote, and has been excavated at various times since then.

Archaeologists Shanti Pappu and Kumar Akhilesh from the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education have spent the last 12 years continuing to excavate the site and have now found 3,528 artefacts that bear a distinct similarity to prehistoric tools discovered in western Asia and Africa.

The tools fall into a class of artefacts called Acheulian that scientists believe were first created by Homo erectus – ancestors of modern humans – in Africa about 1.6 million years ago.

“This means that soon after early humans invented the Acheulian tools, they crossed formidable geographical barriers to get to southern Asia,” said Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, who is an expert in Asian prehistoric archaeology but was not associated with the Chennai study. “The suggestion that this occurred 1.5 million years ago is simply staggering,” he said.

Petraglia himself had earlier been involved in excavating the Hunsgi valley in Karnataka, which has yielded 1.27 million-year-old stone tools, regarded as India’s oldest until now. Although earlier excavations had revealed Acheulian tools at a few sites on the Indian subcontinent, including a two million-year-old site in Pakistan, the dates assigned to the artefacts so far have remained under debate.

The latest dating techniques

Pappu and her colleagues assigned dates to the Attirampakkam tools by analysing traces of certain elements embedded in them and by correlating the archaeological layers excavated at the site with changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.

“We adopted two different dating methods and arrived at consistent results,” Shanti Pappu explained “We believe this is the strongest evidence so far for an Acheulian industry in India older than one million years.”

The dating studies were carried out by collaborating geophysicists in French academic institutions. Researchers believe the new dates will have major implications for current ideas about who carried the Acheulian culture into India.

In the past, some researchers had attributed the flow of Acheulian tools into southern Asia and Europe to the Homo heidelbergensis, another ancestor of modern humans but one that appeared long after the Homo erectus. But the 1.5 million year date assigned to the Attirampakkam tools suggests that groups of Homo erectus carried the tool-making culture into India.

In an independent research study, Petraglia and his colleagues have analysed Acheulian tools in India that appear to be only 120,000 years old. The two findings suggest that the Acheulian toolmakers inhabited India for 1.4 million years – from 1.5 million years ago to 120,000 years ago.

“The excavators have done an outstanding job, unprecedented in archaeology studies in India. This means soon after early humans invented the Acheulean tool kit 1.6 million years ago, groups migrated out of Africa crossing formidable barriers to get to southern Asia,” confirmed Michael Petragalia.

What sets apart the Indo-French discovery from other similar previous findings is the dating accuracy.

The tools in Attirampakkam suggest that the Homo erectus carried the Acheulian culture into India before the Homo heidelbergensis ferried this tool-making culture into Europe, where the earliest sites are about 600,000 years old, said Robin Dennel, a senior archaeologist at the University of Sheffield, in a special scientific commentary in the March 2011 issue of Science.

All images are courtesy and copyright of the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, India

http://www.sharmaheritage.com/index.php/about-attirampakkam

http://www.sharmaheritage.com/index.php/research/attirampakkam

https://www.facebook.com/SharmaCentreForHeritageEducation/photos_stream

Courtesy:

http://www.archeolog-home.com/pages/content/attirampakkam-inde-million-year-old-tools-found-india-s-prehistory-pushed-back.html

http://www.ancientdigger.com/2011/03/excavations-at-attirampakkam-in-india.html

http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/pappu297/

http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/pappu325/

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/april-2011/article/early-humans-occupied-south-asia-over-a-million-years-ago

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2011/stone-tools-reveal-indias-1-5-million-year-old-prehistory

http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/history-and-culture/stone-tools-that-revolutionised-study-of-indias-prehistory/article3516451.ece

A discovery that changed the antiquity of humankind who lived in Indian subcontinent

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/a-discovery-that-changed-the-antiquity-of-humankind-who-lived-in-indian-subcontinent/article4753744.ece

http://www.sharmaheritage.com/index.php/about-us/86-sche-content/aboutus/right-column/110-dr-shanti-pappu

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6024/1532

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6024/1596.figures-only

http://earth-pages.co.uk/2011/05/08/early-bi-face-tools-from-south-india/

http://www.le.ac.uk/has/ps/past/past37.html

http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/pappu297/

Reflections of Lower Palaeolithic, Middle Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Period

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ1sEifntIA

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UNITS of ANCIENT TRADE

Balance weights

GOLD WEIGHTS

• 4 nel edai= 1 kunRimaNi
• 2 kunRimaNi= 1 manjaadi
• 1 manjaadi= 1 paNavedai
• 5 paNavedai= 1 kazhanju
• 8 paNavedai= 1 varaaganedai
• 20 paNavedai= 4 kazhanju = 1 kaqhsu
• 80 paNavedai= 16 kazhanju= 4 kaqhsu= 1 palam.
• 1.5 Kazhanji = 8 gram or one pown

GOODS WEIGHTS

• 32 kunRimaNi= 1 varaaganedai
• 10 varaaganedai= 1 palam
• 40 palam= 1 veesai
• 1000 palam =1 kaa
• 6 veesai= 1 thulaam
• 8 veesai= 1 maNangu
• 20 maNangu= 1 paaram.

Grain volume

• 1 kuNam= smallest unit of volume
• 9 kuNam= 1 mummi
• 11 mummi= 1 aNu
• 7 aNu=1 immi
• 7 immi= 1 uminel
• 1 sittigai= 7 uminel
• 360 nel= 1 sevidu
• 5 sevidu= 1 aazhaakku
• 2 aazhaakku= 1 uzhakku
• 2 uzhakku= 1 uri
• 2 uri= 1 padi
• 8 padi= 1 marakkaal(kuRuNi)
• 2 marakkaal(kuRuNi)= 1 padhakku
• 2 padhakku= 1 thooNi
• 5 marakkaal= 1 paRai
• 80 paRai= 1 karisai
• 96 padi= 1 kalam
• 120 padi= 1 pothi(mootai)
• 21 marakkal = 1 Kottai

1 padi, = 1800 avarai pods = 12,800 miLagu seeds = 14,400 nel grains = 14,800 payaRu grains = 38,000 arisi grains = 115,200 sesame seeds

Fluid volume

• 5 sevidu= 1 aazhaakku
• 2 mahani = 1 aazhakku (arai kal padi)
• 2 aazhaakku= 1 uzhakku (Kal padi)
• 2 uzhakku= 1 uri (Arai padi)
• 2 uri= 1 padi
• 8 padi= 1 marakkaal
• 2 marakkaal(kuRuNi)= 1 padhakku
• 2 padhakku= 1 thooNi
• 21 Marakkal = 1 Kottai

Length

• 10 koaN= 1 nuNNaNu
• 10 nuNNaNU= 1 aNu(atom)
• 8 aNu= 1 kathirtthugaL
• 8 kathirtthugaL= 1 thusumbu
• 8 thusumbu= 1 mayirnuni
• 8 mayirnuni= 1 nuNmaNal
• 8 nuNmaNal= 1 siRu-kadugu
• 8 siRu-kadugu= 1 eL
• 8 eL= 1 nel
• 8 nel= 1 viral= 8^8 aNu(atom)= 1.9444 centimetre
• 12 viral= 1 saaN= 100 immi= 23.3333 centimetre
• 2 saaN= 1 muzham= 46.6666 centimetre
• 2 muzham= 1 kajam
• 4 muzham= 1 paagam
• 625 paagam= 1 kaadham= 5000 saaN= 1166.66 metres= 1.167 kilometre

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UNITS of TIME in ANCIENT HISTORY

• 1 kuzhi(kuRRuzhi)= 6.66 millisecond-the time taken by the Pleiades stars(aRumin) to glitter once.
• 12(base 8 ) or 10 kuzhigaL= 1 miy= 66.6666 millisecond-the time taken by the young human eyes to flap once.
• 2 kaNNimaigaL= 1 kainodi= 0.125 second
• 2 kainodi= 1 maatthirai= 0.25 second
• 6(base 8 ) or 6 miygaL= 1 siRRuzhi(nodi)= 0.40 second-the time taken for a bubble (created by blowing air through a bamboo tube into a vessel 1 saaN high, full of water) to travel a distance of one saaN .
• 2 maatthiraigaL= 1 kuru= 0.50 second
• 2(base 8 ) or 2 nodigaL= 1 vinaadi= 0.80 second-the time for the adult human heart to beat once
• 21⁄2 nodigaL= 2 kuru= 1 uyir= 1 second
• 5 nodigaL= 2 uyir= 1 saNigam= 1/2 aNu= 2 seconds
• 12(base 8 ) or 10 nodigaL= 1 aNu= 4 seconds
• 6(base 8 ) or 6 aNukkaL= 12 saNigam= 1 thuLi= 1 naazhigai-vinaadi= 24 seconds
• 12(base 8 ) or 10 thuLigaL= 1 kaNam= 4 minutes
• 6(base 8 ) or 6 kaNangaL= 1 naazhigai= 24 minutes
• 12(base 8 ) or 10 naazhigaigaL= 4 saamam= 1 siRupozhuthu= 240 minutes= 4 hours
• 6(base 8 ) or 6 siRu-pozhuthugaL= 1 naaL(1 day)= 24 hours
• 7 naaTkaL= 1 kizhamai(1 week)
• 15 naaTkaL= 1 azhuvam(1 fortnight )
• 29.5 naaTkaL= 1 thingaL(1 lunar month)
• 2 thingaL= 1 perum-pozhuthu(1 season)
• 6 perum-pozhuthugaL= 1 AaNdu(1 year)
• 64 aaNdugaL= 1 vattam(1 cycle)
• 4096(=8^4) AaNdugaL= 1 Oozhi(1 epoch)

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ARIKAMEDU : an UNREVEALED HISTORY

வீராம்பட்டினம் அருகில் கண்டெடுக்கப்பட்ட பண்டத்தின் துண்டு, 1st century CE.

Child With Bird Veerampattinam Arikamedu, 1-2 Century CE

Exposed ANCIENT wall

ANCIENT RING Well

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