NEWS

Recently, Archaeologists have identified 65 large sandstone jars (Megaliths) believed to be used for ritual burials across four sites in Hasao district, Assam

DETAILS

WHAT ARE FOUND

• Some jars are tall and cylindrical, while others are partly or fully buried in the ground.
• Some of them spanned up to three metres high and two metres wide. Some of the jars feature decorative carvings, while others are plain.

BACKGROUND

• The jars of Assam were first sighted in 1929 by British civil servants James Philip Mills and John Henry Hutton, who recorded their presence in six sites in Dima Hasao: Derebore (now Hojai Dobongling), Kobak, Kartong, Molongpa (now Melange Puram), Ndunglo and Bolasan (now Nuchubunglo).
• Two sites were discovered in 2016. In 2020, four more sites were discovered by the History and Archaeology Department at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya.
• At one site, Nuchubunglo, as many as 546 jars were found which was the largest such site in the world.

SIGNIFICANCE

• Links could be drawn with the stone jars found in Laos and Indonesia.
• No reported parallel anywhere else in India, apart from the northeast – this points to the fact that once upon a time a group of people having similar kind of cultural practice occupied the same geography between Laos and Northeast India
• Dating done at the Laos site suggests that jars were positioned at the sites as early as the late second millennium BC