The Megalithic Menhirs or standing stones in Telangana’s Narayanpet district, dating back approximately 3,500 to 4,000 years, have made it to a tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites from India.
At present, Telangana has only one UNESCO World Heritage Site at Ramappa temple in Mulugu district.
The standing stones, located in a remote village of Mudumal on the banks of the river Krishna bordering Karnataka, is one of the six structures and sites from India figuring in the tentative list of world heritage sites.
The five other sites are: Kanger Valley National Park in Chhattisgarh, Ashokan Edict Sites in multiple states, Chausath Yogini Temples in Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, Gupta Temples in multiple states, and the Palace-Fortresses of the Bundelas in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
In a letter written to the Indian ambassador to the UNESCO Vishal V Sharma earlier this month, the director of World Heritage Centre Lazare Eloundou Assomo informed about the development.
“The documentation submitted complies with the operational guidelines and the tentative list of India,” Assomo said.
According to Manikonda Vedakumar, chairman of Hyderabad-based Deccan Heritage Academy Trust, it was only on February 11 that the Permanent Delegation of India to UNESCO submitted the proposal to the UNESCO for inclusion of Mudumal Megalithic Menhirs in the world heritage sites list at a world heritage convention held in New Delhi.
“It is heartening to note that in less than a month, the UNESCO acknowledged the same and included this prehistoric site of Telangana in the tentative list,” said Vedakumar, who has been striving for the conservation of these megalithic structures, in association with the Telangana government, Geological Survey of India experts and heritage architects, for the last one decade.
The Mudumal menhirs form a significant archaeological site, known locally as Niluvalla Thimmappa.
This site showcases the culture, traditions, and astronomical knowledge of the ancient inhabitants through its megaliths. There are close to 80 tall menhirs of 10 to 14 feet height, accompanied by nearly 3,000 alignment stones related to the funerary rights of the ancient community. These stones are arranged in lines or rows in a 20-25 feet gap.
Besides the standing stones, there are smaller stones placed in circular formations and also thousands of boulders appearing to be placed in certain alignments across an 80-acre spread of land — all of which hint at something unique about the location.
“These formations align with the sun during solstices, suggesting their use in solar observation. Notably, Mudumal hosts one of the densest concentrations of menhirs and alignment stones in Asia,” he said.
The Mudumal Megalithic Menhirs offer an insight into the perspective the ancient builders might have had as they carefully aligned the menhirs with celestial bodies, marking the solstices, equinoxes, and star patterns, thereby establishing the Mudumal Megalithic Menhirs site as an ancient observatory.
Apart from the main cluster of tall menhirs, there is a notable squarish, vertically planted stone. This stone has a sloping flat top marked by several cup-shaped indentations.
“Studies have revealed that these marks accurately represent the Ursa Major constellation, also known as the Great Bear or Big Dipper, and referred to in ancient Indian literature as Saptarshi Mandala,” Vedakumar said.
A media report quoted Professor KP Rao of the University of Hyderabad as saying that the Mudumal menhirs constitute the largest megalithic-era burial site in South India. Rao, a former director of the State Archaeology Department, has been researching menhirs since 2003 and has presented several research papers at international forums. He says apart from the archaeological relevance, these stones have astronomical significance as well.
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