Students’ team unearths Sangam era town near Keelakarai

The team, which includes K Kaviarasan, M Vishal, M Vinith, V Kaleeswaran, S Yuvaraj and T Aruldoss, of Class 8, discovered the ancient town known as Natham and also a stone celt of Neolithic age while digging a farm pond near Kanathidal.

The students shared the information with V Rajaguru, Coordinator, Heritage Clubs of Ramathapuram Educational District. Rajaguru told DT Next that the stone celt of the Neolithic Age was discovered by them while digging a farm pond near Kanathidal, which is located between Natham and Kulapatham.

While conducting field surveys along with the students, they found several ancient urns on around thirty acres of land at Kanathidal. Besides black and red potsherds, iron ore, pieces of iron, grinding stone, hopscotch grids and a piece of broken deer horn were found. It seemed that the black and red ware potteries were used by the ancient people of Megalithic civilization and such urns were of Sangam age.

The stone celt, which is seemingly polished with blunted edge, runs to a length of 5.8 cm with a breadth of 5.2 cm, looked as if it was used 5,000 years ago and preserved since the Sangam age. Since black and red ware potteries were found in this ancient town of Natham, it could have been situated along the Vaigai River bed.

Referring to the topography of this ancient town, a channel named ‘Panaiyankal’ was running near by the town. Further, Rajaguru said it was a rare phenomenon in the southern region of Tamil Nadu that such Neolithic antiquities were discovered.

It was during 2017, the Ramanathapuram Archaeological Research Foundation sighted a stone celt of the Sangam age habitation site at Bogalur.

These age old antiquities were discovered when a small portion in the farm pond in Kanathidal was dug up. If archaeological excavation was done in the remaining portion (upper side) of Kanathidal, more antiquities could be unearthed and this new locale could emerge as another Keezhadi like heritage site in this part of Ramnad he said.

Crediting the students, he said they had already discovered urns of Chinese civilization and antiquities of Sethupathi Kings in Melamadai and Kulapatham. The discovery by these students earned praise from the school Head Mistress S Kalaiselvi.