Exploring Prehistoric Arts at Kurullangala

Exploring Prehistoric Arts at Kurullangala

by Bhagya Alwis

Sri Lanka is a country which has enriched with so many gifts from the nature, from the elegant beauty of natural waterfalls, sun shining beaches, tea fields, rain forests, endemic species, and ancient marvelous creations aged more than 5,000 years ago. Unfortunately most of these irreplaceable heritages are being destroyed by the self-centric people who don’t value those things, while others are not paying attention to deforestation and destroying cultural heritage sites, even the most of the government departments have not clearly identified the value of them and sustain those for next generations to come.


 
At present we don’t have strong idea why they did rock arts, they have painted those arts long time ago, the era we cannot even imagine, those are the days when the mammoths and sabre-toothed walks on the earth, our ancestors has lived inside the caves for shelter from the weather conditions, and predators. We do not have any clear idea how they have lived but we can imagine that they had very basic life style and they did not had writing language to write and share, they had primitive language consists of few sounds and gesture for communication. But they have painted various things on the caves walls most of the time celling of the cave, by using primitive colors which they have developed using plant extracts and animal blood.

 

Those paintings are very simple and most of the paintings are monochromic and few paintings have used several colors to draw. They have printed what they have saw in their day to day life, they have very few thinking capacity, because they were planning to live day to day life and survive, therefore they didn’t had much time for imagination, future planning. When compare the rock arts most of them consists Animals, Hunting, Humans or human handprints, various symbols and engravings.

I travelled to Ella, Uva Province with my friends to see the pre historic rock arts being drawn before 5,000 years ago at Kurullangala rock – A truly unique and remarkable place, which is a part of Punagala mountain range. Reaching to the top of mountain is extremely difficult and the mountain is covered with thick forest filled with thron trees and bushes, there is no proper way to climb to the top, our guide has climbed several time to this place, even he lose the direction several times due to the forest is growing rapidly. Not only that there are several venomous snakes living inside this forest and we felt the smell of snakes frequently on our way to top, and the vertical climbing of more than 75 degree angle of the rocks which have to climb with the support of tree roots. With the support of above factors it created perfect barrier to protect those arts, and keep human presence away from it and preserving the Kurullangala Mountains.

Above 1,200 meters from the sea level, the Kurullangala rock art tell us about the uniqueness of Sri Lankan prehistoric cave arts and the civilization had way before we imagine. When you see from the far you can easily see that the top layer of the cave has fallen down due to some kind of earth quick or erosion situation, that theory has supported by the facts that no one wants to live in a place there is no shelter and also the reach to this place, it took us about five hours to reaching to this place and I don’t think if anyone wants to live in a place like that where long travel involved with dangerous climbing’s, assuming with several hand printings on the rock wall we if this place a cave, then most probably we can come to a conclusion that there must be several cave arts was inside the cave celling and due to destroy of the cave we lost them.

It shares some similarity with the cave arts founded in different parts of the world, but these arts are unique from other rock arts founded in world, Kurullangala is currently claimed to be the largest rock art collection found in Sri Lanka, these arts are very simple and they have used one color for paint on the rock surface, which is red. This illustrates birds who are facing down to one direction. With the time and the effects of the nature this place has exposed to the direct sun, air and the rain due to peeling off the cave shelter of the wall above, now there is no more cave at the Kurullngala and these arts on the rock wall are endanger to vanish from the wall in near future.



Due to the exposure of nature, we cannot get the accurate carbon dated age for those arts, but when we compare this with the similar arts in the world these are unique from them and the artists want to express some important message to the generations up to come. We can clearly identify several left palm prints on the wall, which they claimed for proof of their arts. When we compare with other rock arts in the world those artist have also used left palm print on their drawing, they did it by placing hand on the rock and the color the surrounding area of the hand, but in the Kurullangala the artist have painted the hand first and then place it on the rock. It's started above 25 to 30 feet from the ground level and ending around 5ft from the base.
 
All the arts are facing downwards and I believe that they want to give some message, starting with smaller images land its getting bigger in each picture, like the evolution process, might be those people have worshiped the Birds or they came from another planet to earth. That is the puzzle they have left us to solve. I believe that they will draw this way before we expect, sometimes more than 20,000 years.

As mentioned earlier all the arts were illustrating animals, and there were no single human, most of the arts were birds similar to eagles and peacock or we can predict that they have drawn the picture of ‘Gurula’ the Sri Lankan Bird Devil (Gurulu Raksha) gives beauty, power and fame. Sri Lanka's devil-masks are said to be a throwback to primitive pre-Buddhist era. Not only that it contains arts of reptiles which is similar to crocodile, and faded art of deer or Sambar deer. When we compare those arts separately these rock arts have drawn according to the scale of living animals, for draw that way the artist has to see that animals on his own eyes and then he has stored them in his mind for this arts, and we can assume that there were lot of animals were living in this area at that time if he is not migrate from somewhere else.



There were some hunting tools were also illustrated on this rock art which are similar to Boomerang and Bow. We can identify that the artist is naturally talented and experience person by the way he has used his skills by placing circles, triangles, squares and several shapes on the arts to make those animals more attractive to the audience.



What we can do is raise some voice to save those treasured caves and sustain them for future generations to come, while trying to solve the misty behind it. Unfortunately the relevant departments have not taken necessary actions to conserve these arts up to date, if these conditions will stay for some more years to come then these arts will vanish from our sight and only those photographs will stay with us, giving the guilty feeling why we didn’t act on it. As a world citizen we should protect those history, it belongs to everyone regardless of where it located.