<< Our Photo Pages >> Rola. - Standing Stones in India
Submitted by Andy B on Thursday, 11 October 2012 Page Views: 7331
Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Rola.Country: India Type: Standing Stones
Latitude: 23.992969N Longitude: 85.431192E
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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Andy B has visited here
Although the site has not been excavated, date can be inferred from the fact that as it is a Mundaric Sasandiri - a megalithic burial ground of the Mundas. In the local Mundaric languages such burial grounds are known as sasandiri, harsali, haragarhi etc and can be found in almost all the tribal villages in and around Ranchi. They are still built today, although they are a little different from this one. The Mundas themselves say they stopped making such burials like these thousands of years ago. Finds of black and red pottery in-situ from the surface nearby reveals that this site must have built in very archaic times.
Rola has triangular pointers like many of the Hazaribagh megaliths, this design being common to many megalithic sites in this area.
The triangular top of the stone appears to have been positioned to point towards 120 deg South of East which is the azimuth of the Winter Solstice at this latitude. As predicted, on the Winter Solstice morning of 21st Dec the the sun was seen rising towards the direction of the apex of the smallest trinagle of Rola. Even on the sunset on that day I found two stones to be aligned towards 300 deg North of West the azimuth of the sunset of Winter Soltice day. The sun was seen setting exactly on this line (view the pic).
Location: 23 deg 59'34.69" N, 85 deg 25' 52.29" E. This is an amazing site that I re-discovered this site in 2003/04. The burial slabs are quite a few but the Rola megaliths look so tiny and insignificant.
The time is ripe to change our notions towards these unfortunate stones and begin to regard and venerate them as sources of our country's prehistory, and even history.
To learn more of this site and others like it, visit my web site: www.megalithindia.in
Note: Building close to the Rola megaliths obstructs their astronomical function - they are under threat from further development
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