30 years on, Narmada Human yet to make it to school texts

It has been 30 years since the only known fossil of an ancestor of humans in South Asia was found on the banks of Narmada in Madhya Pradesh, but the discovery is yet to make it to the Indian school textbooks.

Scientists said the fossil skull, called the Narmada Human, was similar to the Java man or the Peking man.

"Thirty years on, Indian school students are yet to learn of their own Narmada ancestor," S Kumar, Managing Trustee of the Center for Advancement of Public Understanding of Science & Technology, said.

A team of scientists of the Geological Survey of India (GSI) led by Arun Sonakia discovered a fossilised piece of a skull bone at Hathnora on the banks of the Narmada in Madhya Pradesh on December 5, 1982.

The team concluded that the bone was of a female hominin, one of the prehistoric ancestors of modern humans.

"It was a spectacular discovery which changed the face of human origin studies in South Asia," said D K Bhattacharya, former Head of the Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi.

Anthropologists led by Sonakia and others studying the fossil concluded that it belonged to a category of homo erectus which preceded the species of homo sapiens.

Homo erectus are believed to have inhabited the Earth from 1.8 million years to as early as 2,00,000 years.

Sonakia himself has put the age of the fossil at 5,00,000 to 6,00,000 years old citing associated animals that he found along with the skull and paleomagnetic studies performed on it.

Scientists are, however, concerned at the threat to some prehistoric sites due to development projects being undertaken across the country.

"While there is a tremendous scope for work, paleoanthropological and prehistoric sites are getting destroyed at an alarming rate," said Parth Chauhan, Research Associate with the Stone Age Institute at the Indiana University in the US.

Bhattacharya said that the dams built on the Narmada took serious toll by permanently flooding the sites.

Earlier, in the 1950s, the Korva project near Mirzapur and the dam on Pravara in Chirkhi Nevasa in Maharashtra have submerged neolithic sites, Kumar said.