THE DOLMENS AND MEGALITHS OF INDIA SRI LANKA - MEGALITHS.CO.UK

MEGALITHS.CO.UK
SOUTHEAST ASIA
SRI LANKA INDIA
MEGALITHS DOLMENS


A good overview of "Preshistoric human colonization of India" is given by V.N. Misra here, although the megalith culture is there seen to date - incorrectly - to the Iron Age, on the unproven presumption that iron tools were necessary to make such sites. Certainly this does not apply to Neolithic megaliths and dolmens

Misra writes:

"A variety of megalithic monuments, erected as burials or
memorials, are found in the northern Vindhyas in southern
Uttar Pradesh, Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and over
most parts of south India. These monuments include
cairns, stone circles, dolmens, dolmenoid cists, port-hole
cists, menhirs, and rock cut caves, the last confined to
Kerala (Krishnaswami 1949; Gururaja Rao 1972; Sundara
1975). At several places in the northern Vindhyas,
Vidarbha and south India, there are large megalithic fields
containing several hundred burial monuments. In comparison
to the burial sites, the habitation sites are few and
far between, suggesting that a part of the megalithic
population may have led a semi-nomadic life. The erection
of these burials could be achieved only with the help
of iron tools meant for quarrying and dressing large rock
slabs and boulders. Some of the burial types like port-hole
cists (a type of megalithic monument) are very elaborate,
involving several large dressed slabs and provision of a
hole in one of the slabs for insertion of new dead bodies
at a later date.

A number of burial sites and a few habitation sites have
been excavated, the more important being Takalghat and
Khapa (Deo 1970), Mahurjhari (Deo 1973) and Naikund
(Deo and Jamkhedkar 1982) in Vidarbha; Brahmagiri and
Chandravalli (Wheeler 1948) and Jadigenhalli (Seshadri
1960) in Karnataka; Nagarjunakonda (Subrahmanyam
et al 1975) in Andhra Pradesh; Adichanallur (Rea 1902),
Amirthamangalam (Banerjee 1956) and Sanur (Banerjee
and Soundara Rajan 1959) in Tamil Nadu; and Porkalam
(Thapar 1952) in Kerala."


Megalithic Site Photos

Some photos of megaliths in India are found at:
http://www.lessing4.de/megaliths/non_europ.htm

Megalithic Information

Hyderabad

Kerala

A note on Megaliths and Megalithic Culture of south India
by Ramchandra Rao

SRI LANKA MEGALITHS

Sri Langa megaliths here and here


We do not have enough information, photos or maps available about the megaliths of India or Sri Lanka to draw any conclusions about them.