After inauguration and tea break of IX Annual Conference of ASASI that held at Udupi in April 2017, a trip was organized to the pre-historic site Gavali by the host, Vidhyodaya Trust, Udupi. The site was explored by Prof. Dr. T. Murugeshi and team of MSRS College, Shirva and details of his exploration, artefacts collection, other pre-historic sites were also presented in the session. The delegates, organizers were taken to the site in two vans, all the Tamil speaking people including the organizers gathered in one van. We were not able to catch with the name of the place, so everyone misspelled the place ‘is it Kabali?’ as Tamil Nadu was caught in Kabali fever.
Nearly it took an hour to reach Gavali from Udupi since it is a remote village located in the Kundapura taluk. The Megalithic burial sites that I have seen in Pudukkottai district increased my interest over pre-historic sites. The artefacts shown in ppt also induced my curiosity, I was in big excitement as am going to see a Neolithic site. Like me everyone in the team remained in excitement without bothering the burning sun.
From the tar-road it took a long walk on one-way track to reach the site. Most of them are elderly people and struggled to walk through the course unpaved path in the scorching sun. Atlast, after some 15 minutes of walk we reached the site.
There rocky boulders both above and under the ground are seen spreading here and there in that area. On the faces or on the surface of the rocky boulders line drawings are seen engraved. The petro-glyphs are animals, astrix like markings, circles like markings and even rangoli like patterns are seen. In one of the rock two humped bulls are drawn with long horns, one of the humped bull’s legs is extended as rangoli. In another rock a humped bull and some geometric patterns are seen. Dr. Murugeshi said that such engravings are also found at villages of neighbouring districts of Udupi like Kollanukallu, Nancharu, Masikere, Rampur etc. The rock-engravings are dated 2500-2000 BCE.
Another huge boulder is seen in few yards under a tree, it is concaved, looks like a bowl. Dr. Murugeshi and team explained it as a natural shelter used for dwelling purpose. As like natural cavern it was used by pre-historic man as dwelling, over the bowl shaped boulder, roofing of tree branches or twigs and leaves might have be done for shelter purpose. Stone tools belonging to new stone age period are also found in and around the region. Dr. Murugeshi explained that weapons are made of dolorite.
There were lot of discussions and queries; some towards Dr. Murugeshi and team, Some to Dr. Rajavelu and some to Dr. Sathyamurthi; how the neo-lithic man have resided in the bare open rock, whether it was a permanent dwelling, single one resided or a group or a family, some even had discussion among themselves he might have done this, that, it would be of his night shelter…….. The brain storming session went on for an hour. Even some, were in search of tools to take a credit of exploration. On my side I was hearing all the comments and busy in taking photographs. After an hour of roaming around the region we proceeded to the van. We reached Udupi for lunch, we were provided with delicious lunch in the Udupi Matt. Even under the burning heat it was an interesting and exciting trip for us.
