Edakkal Cave

The name “Edakkal” literally means “a stone in between”, and this describes how the cave is formed by a heavy boulder straddling a fissure in the rock. Inside the cave is on two levels, the lower chamber measures about 18 feet long by 12 feet wide and 10 feet high and can be entered through an opening of 5 x 4 feet. A passage opposite the entrance leads upward to a small aperture in the roof through which one climbs up to the next storey whose interior is about 96 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 18 feet high. Light enters the cave through a big gap at the right-hand corner of the roof where the boulder does not touch the facing wall.

The petroglyphs inside the cave are of at least three distinct types. The oldest may date back to over 8,000 years. Evidences suggest that the Edakkal caves were inhabited several times at different points in history.

The caves were accidentally discovered by Fred Fawcett, a police official of the erstwhile Malabar state in 1890 who immediately recognised their anthropological and historical importance. He subsequently wrote an article about them, attracting the attention of scholars.

The caves contain drawings that range over periods from as early as 5000 BC to 1000 BC. Recently the youngest group of paintings was in the news for a possible connection to the Indus Valley Civilization. Historian M.R. Raghava Varier of the Kerala state archaeology department identified a sign “a man with jar cup” that is the most distinct motif of the Indus valley civilization. The finding made in 2009 September indicates that the Harappan civilization was active in the region. 

Interestingly, the “a man with jar cup” symbol from Edakkal seems to be more similar to the Indus motif than those already known from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Mr. Varier said “The discovery of the symbols is akin to that of the Harappan civilisation having predominantly Dravidian culture and testimony to the fact that cultural diffusion could take place. It is wrong to presume that the Indus culture disappeared into thin air.” The scholar of Indus and the Tamil Brahmi scripts, Mr. Iravatham Mahadevan said the findings were very significant called it a "major discovery".

Location: located at Ambukutty Mala 25 km from Kalpetta.