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Showing posts from August, 2016

Lodge Heather No.928, Munnar

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My association with Munnar turned to 3 decade now. I first visited Munnar in 1987 when I was a student. The highlights of Munnar in that time are drizzling, (noolmazha) mist and teagardens. I used to walk through the old and broken road aside the catchment of Head Works Dam.  It is one of the loneliest pathways in Munnar, through which one can walk and enjoy its nature. The thick reed bed of the catchment is home for many species of waders and warblers. Like on nature, my interests browsed through the old monuments of Munnar. The hanging bridge named after Princess Margret, the Churchill Bridge, CSI church and its old cemetery,  Head Works Dam - part of first hydroelectric project in Kerala A green trail for nature walk aside river     High range club etc bears the relics of colonial period. There was an old broken hanging bridge across the river near Munnar bears the memory of few school children who drawn in a heavy monsoon. Among those monuments, an abandoned regular b

Depictions of Banana in Rock Arts of Aanamalais

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Naturalistic depictions of two genera of wild Banana in rock art corpus of Anamalai valley shows that ancient people of the valley were used the progenitors of cultivated banana at least from Megalithic period. Ensete superbem and Musa acuminata ( bermanica ) are the two wild species depicted in Attala and Chinnavendru rock art respectively. Both the caves are located inside the political boundary of state of Kerala, Southern India.  Musa acuminata is one of the progenitors of domesticated bananas in the world.  It supports the theory of spontaneous evolution of domesticated banana in Western Ghats . Naturalistic depictions in rock arts indicate close relationship of ancient man with their environment, especially plant and animals. It helps us to draw ecological history of the area. The rock art corpus of Anamalai Valley East encompass and area of about 150sq km of forest in South Western Ghats Landscape. This geographical region falls in the political boundary of Kerala an