Carved sandstone spires and figure sculpture on a temple at Khajuraho.
A carved stone chariot wheel on the plinth of the Sun Temple at Konark.
The Taj Mahal in white marble, reflected in its watercourse at dawn.
Temple ruins among granite boulders in the landscape at Hampi.
Rock-cut monuments on the shore at Mahabalipuram.
Carved sandstone spires and figure sculpture on a temple at Khajuraho.
A carved stone chariot wheel on the plinth of the Sun Temple at Konark.
The Taj Mahal in white marble, reflected in its watercourse at dawn.
Temple ruins among granite boulders in the landscape at Hampi.
Rock-cut monuments on the shore at Mahabalipuram.

Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka

Raisen district, Madhya Pradesh

Inscribed
2003
Period
Mesolithic onward
Property
Cultural
Prehistoric paintings in red and white on the wall of a rock shelter at Bhimbetka.
Hansallumia verma · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

Bhimbetka is a dense group of natural rock shelters in the Vindhyan hills, about forty-five kilometres south of Bhopal. Several hundred shelters carry paintings, of which a subset is open to visitors. The site records human occupation over an exceptionally long span.

History

The shelters were identified as significant by V. S. Wakankar in 1957. Excavation has produced stone tools from the Acheulean onward, and the painted sequence is generally taken to begin in the Mesolithic and continue, in layers, into the historic period. Some walls carry images from several widely separated periods superimposed.

Architecture

The paintings are in natural pigments, predominantly red and white, with some green and yellow. Subjects include hunting scenes, animals — bison, tigers, rhinoceros, elephants — dancers, and later horses and riders with weapons that place those images much closer to the present. The shelters themselves are formed by weathering of the quartzitic sandstone.

Significance

Bhimbetka holds some of the earliest known traces of human life on the subcontinent, and the paintings give an unusually direct view of how people lived. UNESCO's citation notes the continuity between what is painted on the rock and the practices of the villages immediately below the hill.

UNESCO recognition

Inscribed in 2003 under criteria (iii) and (v) as testimony to a long cultural tradition and as an outstanding example of a human settlement in interaction with its environment.

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