Sankarjang (20°52’08“N; 84°59’19“E),

Odisha Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of Sc ...

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

is an archaeological site near

Angul Angul (also known as Anugul) is a town and a municipality and the headquarters of Angul district in the state of Odisha, India. Angul has an average elevation of above sea level. The total geographical area of the district is 6232 km2. ...

, a former cemetery and settlement with large, worked stones but no one knows what they were made for, although some people think they might have been part of a lithophone . This site was test excavated by the State Archaeology Department of Odisha after a chance find of 20 long unfinished chipped and ground, lithic bars and axes of basalt, together with human skeletal remains and metallic artifacts, by a shepherd in 1971. Archaeologists understood ground stone lithics to be typical of the

Neolithic Period The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

although they were in production later. The elegant lithics from Sankarjang resemble elaborate ones from eastern Asia and the South Seas. Such lithics played a key role in the definition of R. von

Heine-Geldern Robert Freiherr von Heine-Geldern (16 July 1885 - 25/26 May 1968), known after 1919 as Robert Heine-Geldern, was a noted Austrian ethnologist, ancient historian, and archaeologist, and a grandnephew of poet Heinrich Heine. Biography Heine-Geldern ...

’s

Austronesian Austronesian may refer to: *The Austronesian languages *The historical Austronesian peoples The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, M ...

culture. The incisor teeth of nine bodies interred in the graves had a "shovel" form which suggests Mongolian affinities. The absolute chronology rests on few

14C Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and colle ...

dates. Many of the stones give a resonance when struck and judging from the use-wear traces and shape, the stone bars appear to have belonged to finished and unfinished

lithophone A lithophone is a musical instrument consisting of a rock or pieces of rock which are struck to produce musical notes. Notes may be sounded in combination (producing harmony) or in succession (melody). It is an idiophone comparable to instrumen ...

s. Yule and Bemmann thus tentatively identified the stone bars as being part of South Asia's earliest known musical instrument.

References

*P. Yule/B.K. Rath/K. Højgaard, Sankarjang ein metallzeitlicher Bestattungsplatz im Dhenkanal Vorgebirge des östlichen Indiens, ''Anthropos'' 84, 1989, 107–132, ISSN 0003-5572. *P. Yule/M. Bemmann, Klangsteine aus Orissa-Die frühesten Musikinstrumente Indiens?, ''Archaeologia Musicalis'' 2.1, 1988, 41–50 (also in English und French). http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/savifadok/volltexte/2008/177/ *P. Yule/A. Hauptmann/M. Hughes, The Copper Hoards of the Indian Subcontinent: Preliminaries for an Interpretation, ''Jahrbuch des Römisch Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz'' 36, 1989

992 Year 992 ( CMXCII) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Worldwide * Winter – A superflare from the sun causes an Aurora Borealis, with visibility as fa ...

193–275, ISSN 0076-2741. http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/savifadok/volltexte/2009/509/ *

Paul Yule Paul Yule may refer to: * Paul Yule (photojournalist) (born 1956), photojournalist and film maker * Paul Alan Yule, German archaeologist See also * Paul Youll Paul Youll (born 1965 in Hartlepool, England) is a science fiction and fantasy artist ...

, ''Early Historic Sites in Orissa'' (Delhi 2006), . http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/savifadok/volltexte/2008/147/ http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/savifadok/frontdoor.php?source_opus=147&la=de {{Lithophones Lithophones Archaeological sites in Odisha